EP2 | Urban and Rural Water Security: What should a Futuristic Research Agenda Address?
Session Details
| Moderator: | Andreas Haarstrick Victor Shinde |
| Date/Time: | 11.10.2024, 14:15 – 15:15 |
| Location: | Aula |
Description
The interface between urban and rural is consistently becoming blurred. The omnipresent peri-urban context of expanding urban spaces makes it challenging to demarcate the necessary ‘boundary conditions’ for water management. Not only does this have implications on sustainable use of available water sources, the ambiguity of jurisdiction affects the ‘formal’ or legal provision of water supply to such areas.
A pitfall of rapid urbanization is that it results in a perpetual ‘catch-up’ game for officials to augment water supplies that are invariably falling short of a growing demand, leaving them with very little scope and bandwidth to attempt new and creative approaches.
Existing models of water management for urban and rural water security are primarily engineering driven. The lack of a broader perspective offers little to enable water managers and officials to challenge the ‘business as usual’ scenario. Very few cities and countries have undertaken expansion of the capacities of the ‘water departments’, for example, in terms of expertise required with new technology or for assessing/ monitoring the socio-economic and environmental impacts of adopting any solution.
There is, therefore, a need to re-imagine models of ensuring urban-rural water security in an increasingly dynamic context, which is accentuated even more as climate change is beginning to manifest its effects.
The purpose of this panel discussion is to discuss these futuristic research needs required for these models from different perspectives:
- Creating scientific evidence to aid decision making
- Developing enabling policy frameworks
- Establishing adaptive governance mechanisms
- Facilitating On-the-ground action
Additional information regarding the panelists and their topics will be shared soon.