Nexusing Water, Energy and Food to Increase Resilience in the Cape Town Metropolitan Area

Dr. Shaun Smith

Assistant Professor at Utrecht University

General Co-ordinator of the WEF Nexus project

My research predominantly concerns the coordination between the water, energy, and food sectors at a city level in the Cape Town Metropolitan area. I am particularly interested in how different urban infrastructure systems can be better coordinated to address the interrelated crises occurring in those three sectors, such as joint strategies for sustainable infrastructure transitions. For this research, I have interviewed public officials at the city, provincial and national levels concerning how they coordinate, the barriers to coordination, and in which areas they see coordination as important.