China struggles to manage many types of resources in an environmentally sustainable way, for example, water, minerals, energy and agricultural land. The challenges of governing the extraction and use of these resources are exacerbated by the interactions between the supply chains associated with each resource – in other words, the resource nexus. In this seminar, I apply institutional concepts to examine two specific challenges relating to the resource nexus in China: the water-energy nexus, looking at water use for energy and energy use for water, and the role of synthetic nitrogenous fertilizer in the wider resource nexus. 
A number of the constraints to improving the governance of the resource nexus in China have their origins in the country’s wider institutional environment. These include poor coordination between government agencies, weak incentives for local governments to comply with central government policies, the role of pricing and subsidies, the nature of property rights, and a preference for self-sufficiency and supply-side solutions. These longstanding characteristics of the institutional environment are reflected in the organisational fields of energy, water and N-fertilizer where they have instilled cognitive routines and normative values that are proving difficult to change, notably among farmers and local governments.