Boa_ma_nhã, Maputo! Exploring the water-energy-food nexus in the Maputo metropolitan region and province

The paper presents the premises and some ongoing results from “Boa_Ma_Nhã, Maputo!”, a transdisciplinary research project based at Politecnico di Milano in partnership with Eduardo Mondlane University (Maputo, Mozambique) and the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation. The project is focused on the districts of Boane, Moamba, and Namaacha, questioning their role in consideration of the ongoing metropolisation of the Maputo Province, where the relation between urban and rural, national and transnational, local and global has become critical. Among the most pressing challenges, the main ones are related to the changing rural-urban socio-economic conditions and the local effects of climate change, including water competition, food insecurity, and access to energy. The research project embraces these challenging issues, mainly untackled by local planning tools, by proposing a multi- and inter-disciplinary approach to address the development of the growing peri-urban environment of Maputo in an integrated way and considering the interdependencies between internal/transnational migrations, demographic transitions, the increasing scarcity of natural resources, climate risks, natural hazards, local economic patterns (formal and informal). Particular attention is devoted to the Water-Energy-Food Nexus, considering the potential evolution of the agriculture sector, backbone economy of the region, in relation to the whole food system and its multiple environmental, economic, social, and cultural implications.