Abstract Developing regions face critical water security challenges driven by rapid urban growth, economic development, and climate change. In India, these issues are particularly evident in Pune, the country's 9th most populated city. It is evolving into a sprawling urban agglomeration expected to grow from 7 to 11 million residents by mid‐century. The city's aging water‐supply system is ill‐equipped to ensure water access during droughts lasting 2–3 years, particularly for residents in informal settlements. We present a policy‐evaluation model to assess options for addressing future urban freshwater insecurity. The model uses a coupled multi‐agent systems approach that integrates human‐environment interactions and responses to future drought, population, and economic conditions. Under business‐as‐usual for a mid‐century, multi‐year drought, major reservoirs dry up and groundwater levels decrease dramatically. The water use Gini coefficient exceeds 0.5, indicating severe inequality where most low‐income individuals face: (a) unaffordable water costs (10%–18% of income), (b) vulnerability (<40 L daily), and (c) prolonged shortages (>6 continuous months). Comprehensive interventions, combining supply‐ and demand‐side measures, cut the water use Gini coefficient in half and lower water costs by two‐thirds. Implementing a strategic subset of interventions creates synergies that significantly enhance water security, yet remains insufficient for the low‐income population. This study highlights how growing inequalities in urban water access exacerbate water security challenges, even under a suite of mitigating measures. In all scenarios, additional drought emergency supply will be required to address water insecurity of the lowest 10% income population.

Systems models of the Food–Water–Energy (FWE) nexus face a conceptual difficulty: the systematic integration of local stakeholder perspectives into a coherent framework for analysis. We present a novel procedure to co-produce and systematize the real-life complexity of stakeholder knowledge and forge it into a clear-cut set of challenges. These are clustered into the Pressure–State–Response (PSIR) framework, which ultimately guides the development of a conceptual systems model closely attuned to the needs of local stakeholders. We apply this approach to the case of the emerging megacity Pune and the Bhima basin in India. Through stakeholder workshops, involving 75 resource users and experts, we identified 22 individual challenges. They include exogenous pressures, such as climate change and urbanization, and endogenous pressures, such as agricultural groundwater over-abstraction and land use change. These pressures alter the Bhima basin’s system state, characterized by inefficient water and energy supply systems and regional scarcity. The consequent impacts on society encompass the inadequate provision with food, water, and energy and livelihood challenges for farmers in the basin. An evaluation of policy responses within the conceptual systems model shows the complex cause–effect interactions between nexus subsystems. One single response action, such as the promotion of solar farming, can affect multiple challenges. The resulting concise picture of the regional FWE system serves resource users, policymakers, and researchers to evaluate long-term policies within the context of the urban FWE system. While the presented results are specific to the case study, the approach can be transferred to any other FWE nexus system.

There are a multitude of challenges confronting resource-limited, rapidly growing cities that revolve around food-water-energy (FWE) resource issues, and there are a multitude of potential solutions. But such solutions often address one or just a few challenges without regard to their impacts on the entire FWE system. We report on an innovative stakeholder engagement concept that links a living lab approach with the development of an integrated multi-agent urban-FWE systems model for two study regions: Pune, India and Amman Jordan. The model captures connections and feedbacks among the FWE sectors and aims to support long-term policy planning for a more sustainable and equitable provision of food, water and energy. In this context, knowledge of local stakeholders with regard to the FWE nexus is key. Moreover, stakeholder participation increases the chance that the model results are useful for and therefore used by policy makers and other relevant stakeholders, and consequently that the model supports efforts for achieving greater equity and sustainability in the FWE-nexus sectors. We have implemented a two-stage sustainability living lab process (2SLL), embedding several characteristics of existing living lab approaches, and adapting it to the requirements of our effort in Jordan and India. This paper presents the objectives of stakeholder engagement within FUSE, differentiating between model-related and process-related objectives, and discusses requirements for reaching those objectives: First, workshop preparation was key. For one to two months, members of our team were in the study regions, and were able to select a representative cross section of workshop participants. Second, professional facilitation of the workshops was essential in bringing together stakeholders from many different sectors with scientists from different disciplines, and for creating an environment in which the stakeholders were able to formulate their food-water-energy challenges and to propose solutions. Third, an interdisciplinary research team was essential to be able to translate workshops results into inputs for different parts of the systems model. We conclude that the 2SLL process shares many of the characteristics of the classical living labs, such as collaboration between scientific and societal actors, embeddedness in real-world contexts and use of experimentation and learning. However, the 2SLL process adds to these approaches by engaging stakeholders to co-formulate the model and ultimately evaluate the viability of solutions aimed at meeting the multitude of present and future food-water-energy challenges.

The global spread of COVID-19 represents a massive challenge for developing countries. Beyond the health crisis and the sudden stop of domestic economic activities, many countries face turmoil linked to commodity dependence. Commodity prices have reacted strongly to the crisis, reflecting changes in supply and demand due to policy measures to limit contagion. Commodity-dependent developing countries are therefore confronted with an unprecedented combination of shocks. However, the crisis has also exposed structural vulnerabilities of these countries linked above all to commodity price dynamics. In the context of a longstanding debate on commodities and development, we portray recent commodity price developments and underlying drivers and discuss implications for commodity-dependent countries, including the risks of depressed export earnings and of changing global production patterns in the long run. Responses to the crisis have to include measures to stabilize commodity prices as well as strategies for economic diversification.

Green finance has been increasingly presented as being an effective solution to global environmental problems and climate change. However, today’s global financial structures tend to reproduce global inequali-ties and contribute to continued, highly unequal over-use and destruction of the environment, as well as a global ecological crisis. This paper introduces the topic with a specific emphasis on green finance, and provides an over-view of the contributions to this special issue on Global Finance and Socio-Ecological Transformation. We discuss the implications of global green finance and propose a typology that differentiates between neoliberal, reformist and progressive transformative types of green finance. Based on this, we present insights for progressive strategies and policies for financing a socio-ecological transformation towards global sustainable welfare.

China is today the second-largest economy after the US and the world-leading export nation. The economic and political development of China in the past decades has had a big impact on other parts of the world. The Chinese demand for natural resources has dramatically changed trade volumes and structures in many resource-producing countries. Even though China has recently shifted its internal economic focus away from export manufacturing towards a more consumption and service-based economy, securing the supply of primary commodities remains one of China's main priorities. It is today the world's major consumer of iron ore, steel, coal, zinc, lead, tin, nickel, copper and aluminium. As part of this trend, the relationship between Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and China has also intensified over the last two decades. The value of total trade between China and all LAC countries has increased twentyfold since 2000. Taking out Mexico from the LAC dataset reveals that China has become the most important single export market for the remaining LAC countries. Chinese Foreign Direct Investment in LAC has grown significantly since 2000. It has been particularly dynamic from 2010 onwards and is directed primarily towards the raw materials sector. Chinese policy banks have become the largest lender in Latin America in the past two decades, providing more financing to the region than the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) combined. This paper looks at the role of China in Latin America with a focus on natural resources, and, in particular, minerals. It first describes the evolving economic and diplomatic relations between China and LAC and depicts the main Chinese actors in this region, before giving an overview of developments in the areas of trade, finance and investments. It concludes that if the relationship with China is to contribute to inclusive development in LAC, the countries in the region have to coordinate their efforts in order to obtain greater benefits from the new economic relations.

The implementation of the Agenda 2030 entails massive financing needs. The debate increasingly emphasizes the importance of the private sector and the role of aid to 'leverage' private sector investments for development. In this context, the concept of blended finance is key. This briefing paper traces the current debates about blended finance. It introduces definitions, instruments and main actors, presents existing data and provides a critical assessment of the concept.

No blood in my cell phone - In the early 2000s, NGO-campaign slogans pointed out the links between raw materials in electronic products and the financing of armed conflicts. These campaigns focused on the responsibility of companies for their supply chain. In July 2017, an EU regulation came into effect that aims to prevent companies from financing armed conflicts via their procurement of raw materials. This Policy Note explains how the debates on 'conflict minerals' led to the formulation of various regulatory initiatives and analyses the scope and potential impact of the current EU-regulation.

As demand for natural resources increases due to the rise in world population and living standards, conflicts over their access and control are becoming more prevalent.This book critically assesses different approaches to and conceptualizations of resource fairness and justice and applies them to the analysis of resource conflicts.Approaches addressed include cosmopolitan liberalism, political economy and political ecology.These are applied at various scales (local, national, international) and to initiatives and instruments in public and private resource governance, such as corporate social responsibility instruments, certification schemes, international law and commodity markets.In doing so, the contributions contrast existing approaches to fairness and justice and extend them by taking into account the interplay between political scales, regions, resources and power structures in 'glocalized' resource politics.Various case studies are included concerning agriculture, agrofuels, land grabbing, water resources, mining and biodiversity.The volume adds to the academic and policy debate by bringing together a variety of disciplines and perspectives in order to advance both a research and policy agenda that puts notions of resource fairness and justice centre-stage.

Price instability is a major concern for commodity producers in developing countries. Commodity derivative markets have become the central pricing mechanism for international commodity trade. This is problematic given the high volatility and increased short-termism of these markets in the context of financialisation. The effects on producers depend on the market structure in producer countries. Burkina Faso and Mozambique have different types of national cotton price stabilization schemes in place while global coffee price fluctuations are transmitted directly to producers in Ethiopia. Policy reforms are required at two fronts - on commodity derivative markets to reduce excessive speculation and stabilize commodity prices and in producer countries to ensure fair and stable prices for producers.

Commodity prices have crucial implications, in particular for developing countries that are often dependent on the import and export of commodities. An understanding of commodity prices and their determinants are therefore important for economic and social development. Commodity derivative markets, where contracts are traded that provide the obligation or right to buy or sell a commodity at a specific price in the future, have an important role for commodity prices by providing two functions. First, the price discovery function as trading on futures markets 1 enables the open-market discovery of commodity prices that are used as a benchmark for physical transactions and as a basis for decisions on production, consumption and investments. Second, commodity derivative markets offer an insurance function as they enable spot market participants to hedge against the risk of price fluctuations. With the dismantling of price stabilization systems in the last decades, this function has become important for producers, consumers and traders of physical commodities. The rise of commodity prices in the 2000s has coincided with deregulation of commodity derivative markets and a dramatic increase in the size of and in the share of traders from outside physical commodity markets, especially financial investors, on these markets. The increasing dominance of these non-commercial traders has changed the microstructure of commodity derivative markets – in terms of trading volumes and open interest positions, investment products and strategies, speed and complexity. The impact of financial investors’ trading strategies – that are often not based on fundamental demand and supply conditions but on macro models, technical/algorithmic trading or high frequency trading (HFT) – on prices has been controversially debated but there seems to emerge some agreement that the so-called “financialisation of commodity markets” has increased the likelihood of excessive short term price fluctuations. These developments question the price discovery function of those markets and make them less reliable for decisions and planning of commercial traders. Always a difficult risk management instrument particularly for smaller commercial traders with limited capacities to monitor financial markets and access to finance, hedging has become even more complex, expensive and inaccessible (see Heumesser/Staritz 2013 for more details). In this context, a political consensus emerged within the Group of 20 (G20) and other countries on the necessity of reforms to reduce excessive speculation. In order to fulfill the G20 commitments and following US legislation, the EU

In the context of a global surge in demand for commodities, increasing competition and rising prices, several industrialized countries including the European Union have adopted strategies to secure access to raw materials. At the same time, in resource-rich developing countries the debate has intensified about too little benefits from their mineral wealth and about a necessary greater contribution of the mining sector to economic transformation. Through Article 208 of the Lisbon Treaty the EU has a legal obligation to consider the interests of developing countries in all its policies. The question therefore arises if the policies outlined and implemented in the EU Raw Materials Initiative (RMI) live up to this obligation. This Policy Note first outlines the content and implementation of the EU RMI and second assesses its possible effects on policy space in African countries that aim to pursue resource-based development strategies.

Commodity prices that are increasingly determined on global commodity derivative markets are important for economic and social development. The historically unprecedented commodity price boom - combined with high volatility - since the early-2000s has led to a debate about the functioning of commodity derivative markets. In the context of an international political consensus on the necessity to reduce excessive speculation, the EU has introduced several reforms. They include important measures on improving transparency, limiting market power and strengthening regulatory authorities but their effectiveness will strongly depend on the implementation rules that are currently discussed. More interventionist regulations that address the fundamental problems of these markets and limit the dominance of financial investors were only marginally addressed.

Private sector development (PSD) has taken on an increasingly prominent role in international development cooperation. This note argues that the private sector has to play an important role in sustainable economic and inclusive development but points out three concerns for effective PSD interventions: PSD is not a 'technical solution' but there are different theoretical approaches to the question which policies support a sustainable and inclusive private sector. There is no 'one' homogenous private sector but important interest conflicts and the interest of foreign firms should not be equated with the interest of the local private sector and national development concerns. A pro-development international policy environment in particular in the areas of trade and investment policies is crucial for PSD which stresses the importance of donors' policy coherence.