The 2011-2012 European Report on Development (ERD), the third such report to be published by the EU, will focus on how natural resource management can promote sustainable and inclusive growth. Within this overall theme the report will depart from a contextual analysis of increasing scarcity and the effects of climate change, and will explore the actual and possible roles of public and private actors (both for-profit and non-profit) as they engage in the management of water, energy and land, resources.    This WEL nexus (water-energy-land), the interactions between its three elements and the need to manage this nexus in an integrated fashion will provide the overall framework of analysis for this Report.

Chapter 4 or the ERD 2011-2012 Report will look into defining a framework for understanding the role of public and private sector in natural resource management, while Chapter 5 will provide specific case study analysis on Investment in Land. Chapters 8 and 9 will then look in turn at the contributions the private sector (in its broadest sense) and then the public sector (at different levels) make to the governance and management of not only land but also to the other two elements of the nexus: water and energy

This event was part of a series of consultation events on the ERD that will inform the analysis and writing process for these chapters. Various academic authors have been commissioned to write background papers for the ERD and a number of these were invited to come and present their ideas to the consultation.

This consultation event looked into the governance of natural resources, and more specifically at the area of investments in land for production and growth and issues arising from the access, management and conservation of land. In addition, both issues were analysed in the third part of the programme in relation to the Water-Energy-Land nexus, a key part of the analytical context to be used in the Report.