Nexus of sustainability and intersectoriality: public policies in urban peripheries

Author(s)

Alberto Matenhauer Urbinatti

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Saúde Pública (FSP/CIR)
• Defense date: 2020-09-15

Examining board members

Leandro Luiz Giatti; Marco Akerman; Ana Paula Fracalanza; Klaus Frey

• Advisor: Leandro Luiz Giatti

Abstract

The water-energy-food nexus approach has gained considerable prominence in recent years as a theoretical category for addressing sustainability issues in governance processes. This study seeks to understand the nexus approach critically as a theoretical way to think about sustainability. Likewise, as a way to assist in the identification of intersectorial practices in health governance in peripheral urban contexts of the São Paulo Metropolitan Region. For this purpose, first, concepts of \"nexus governance\" were reviewed; then, a conceptual framework of \"nexus of humility\" was elaborated, which from the pillars of framing, vulnerability, distribution and learning seeks to acknowledge the hybrid and plural nature of intersectoriality in governance; and, finally, under this framework, two municipal programmes with social and environmental guidelines, and aligned with the Family Health Programme, were analysed. They are: the Green and Healthy Environments Programme, in São Paulo, and the Environment Health Programme, in Guarulhos. The conclusions suggest that several narratives converging with the nexus have been developed in peripheral contexts through these health programmes in intersectorial agendas that encompass water, energy, food and environment issues. The interactions between different actors within these programmes, especially community health workers and environmental promotion workers, have sought to stimulate resource-sustainable day-to-day practices in local populations. The plural narratives converging with the nexus provide an opportunity to contest the normativeness of the approach as a universally applicable theoretical category. Thus, they indicate ways to rethink it also from the so-called Global \"South\", based on the involvement of different knowledges in the scientific making and development of public policies in the search for sustainable transformations on the horizon. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 16/25375-5 - Resilience and sustainability nexus in metropolitan contexts: intersectoral synergies from public policies
• Grantee: Alberto Matenhauer Urbinatti
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate