Events

When? Lecture 13:15 - 14:45, Meet the Member 15:00 - 16:00

Where? Fritz-Reuter-Saal, Dorotheenstraße 24, and on zoom

Water security - for whom?

In this lecture, I will sketch how I came to work with the notion of water security (or should we rather say insecurity?). I will begin by discussing the normative commitments of contemporary water security definitions based on unpublished work with Johannes
Himmelreich when he was at IRI THESys. A risk-based definition will be singled out as particularly problematic drawing on work with Mark Zeitoun and others. This part links to my long-standing interest in uncertainty models. I will then explain how Karen Lebek turned me onto water insecurity through her work with marginalised rural communities in South Africa. This gives me the opportunity to showcase how we brought ethnographic field work and statistical modelling into innovative dialogue. Finally, I will outline how we brought all these insights, and wider experiences with interdisciplinary education at IRI THESys, together in the design of our new 'Water Security for Whom' project funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. Together with Rossella Alba, Laura Betancour Alarcon, Joerg Niewoehner, Patrick Hostert and partners in Colombia and Brazil I will be researching inequalities around three multi-purpose dams in Colombia over the next 3-4 years.