The latest update on the Watershed Metagenomics project shares some of the major findings from the project from a GE3LS perspective (Genomics and its Ethical, Environmental, Economic, Legal and Social Aspects).

The GE3LS team includes Dr Karen Bakker, Dr Leila Harris and Gemma Dunn of the Program on Water Governance, who analyzed current microbial risk assessment, management and communication practices among practitioners in BC and Ontario. This research has identified key factors that enable and constrain the operationalization of microbial risk management and the readiness for integrating novel methods.

For a summary of the key insights from the GE3LS work, see the update.

More information is provided on the project website – www.watersheddiscovery.ca

Join Dr Karen Bakker for the latest iteration of her popular (free!) online course on Urban Water: Innovations for Environmental Sustainability.

The course is hosted on MIT/Harvard’s online platform EdX, beginning May 5th 2015. The course length is 6 weeks.

In this interdisciplinary course you will learn about the water-related dimensions of environmentally sustainable urbanism. The course features Vancouver, one of the world’s leading cities for green design.

Each week, you’ll watch lectures plus a compelling documentary-style video featuring architects, planners, artists, engineers, and academics that have created real-world innovations which link water and sustainability in the built environment. You’ll meet the inspiring founder of the Center for Interactive Research on Sustainability (one of the greenest buildings in North America); visit North America’s largest urban wastewater-to-energy plant; learn from architects designing urban waterscapes as ‘landscape infrastructure’ along Vancouver’s revitalized waterfront; travel along one of North America’s largest revitalized urban streams, which has become a hub for community engagement; and explore the creation of a ‘watershed mind’ with an award-winning poet and artist.

What you’ll learn:

• core concepts such as the “water nexus” and “regenerative sustainability”
• blue-green building design
• eco-health and the role of water in environmentally-sensitive urban planning
• urban stream regeneration
• water ethics

Five members of UBC’s Institute for Resources Environment and Sustainability participated in a special issue of Ecology & Society as part of a Universitas 21 Network water focused effort.

The special issue on Urban Water Governance has just been released, featuring:

• The notion of sewage as waste: a study of infrastructure change and institutional inertia in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Vancouver, Canada by Gunilla Öberg, Maria G. Merlinsky, Alicia LaValle, Margaret Morales, and Melina M. Tobias
• Participation, politics, and panaceas: exploring the possibilities and limits of participatory urban water governance in Accra, Ghana by Cynthia Morinville and Leila M Harris

Congratulations to the authors!

The Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability and the Program on Water Governance at the University of British Columbia are pleased to partner with the UNESCO Chair in Community based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education for a recently funded SSHRC Partnership Development grant– ‘Training the Next Generation of Community-based Researchers.’ In the past 25 years, community-based research (CBR) has become recognized as an important method to conduct social and scientific research—one that is often considered to be more responsible and sustainable. CBR is an umbrella term that includes approaches such as participatory research, participatory action research, asset-based development, collaborative inquiry, in addition to other participatory research methods.

The ‘NextGen’ project is led by Budd Hall from the University of Victoria, and brings together four global partners, each responsible for a thematic area:

1)     The Coady International Institute responsible for local asset development;

2)     The Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) responsible for participatory governance;

3)     The University of Victoria (UVIC) focuses on indigenous knowledge; and

4)     The Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES) at UBC focuses on CBR in the realm of water governance.

The goal of the project is to establish a global partnership for training in Community Based Research, including creating an open source database on training materials for researchers, professors, and NGOs. Initially, we aim to review and summarize community based research training that is currently available related to each of the four focal themes, particularly efforts based at Institutions of higher learning.  From this global review, we aim to identify best practices to inform the development of future training materials and efforts. Ultimately, the project aims to increase global access to high quality training materials in CBR, with focus on the four thematic areas.

Information on involvement of UBC’s Program on Water Governance, IRES

Dr. Leila Harris, Dr. Crystal Tremblay, and Kelly Sharp from IRES, and Dr. Leonora Angeles from SCARP, are delighted to be collaborating on this project, which includes co-creating a global survey, as well as literature review and case study analysis on best practices for CBR and water governance.  For more information please contact Kelly Sharp kelly.sharp45@gmail.com

UNESCO Chair in CBR website: http://unescochair-cbrsr.org/

For more information on the project, please visit the project page.

Learn about innovative urban solutions to the global water crisis, with inspiring real-life examples from architects, engineers, planners, ecologists, and artists.

 

This free, 6-week course will be offered on edX, the non-profit, open source online learning platform founded by Harvard and MIT.

 

About this Course

Over 1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water. High levels of water insecurity threaten 80% of the world’s population. Addressing the global water crisis is increasingly complicated by controversial trade-offs between water needs for energy, food, and the environment.

How can we innovate to address these issues? In this course, you will learn how to apply innovative “blue-green design at the urban scale, focusing on Vancouver–one of the world’s leading cities for blue-green design. In a series of compelling videos, you will meet inspiring innovators: architects, planners, engineers, ecologists, designers, academics, community activists, and even an artist. As you learn about cutting-edge concepts from urban ecology to blue-green building design, you will explore multiple perspectives from interdisciplinary research in the social and natural sciences, and be inspired by examples of regenerative sustainability in action.

Join our community of water-centric thinkers seeking solutions to the global water crisis!

 

The Program on Water Governance at the University of British Columbia is proud to be a member of the International WaTERS (Water-related Training Education and Research in the global South) research and training network.  International WaTERS will promote networking and collaboration among researchers working on water related issues, particularly water governance issues in contexts of the global South.  The network will also engage in training and development of graduate students and promote interdisciplinary research.

The International WaTERS considers water governance one of the most critical global issues for the 21st century. The network will advance the understanding water resilience and security in the face of increasing climatic and hydrologic variability including the governance, socio-institutional, and equity dimensions of this challenge.

International WaTERS is made up of academics and practitioners from diverse backgrounds and institutions. Partners include; Leila Harris (Program on Water Governance and Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia), Karen Bakker (Program on Water Governance and Geography, University of British Columbia), Karen Brown (Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change, University of Minnesota), Michelle Kooy (UNESCO-IHE), Rutgerd Boelens (Wageningen University), Justicia Hidrica (Wageningen University), Jacqueline Goldin (University of Western Cape, South Africa), Anjal Prakash (SaciWaters India, Lawrence Baker (Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change, University of Minnesota), Mark Johnson (Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia), Gerardo Damonte (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru), Frances Cleaver (King’s College London, UK), Marwan Hassan (Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia, UBC), Farhana Sultana (Syracuse University, New York), Gert Jan Veldwisch (Water Equity Network and Wageningen University), Margreet Zwaterveen (UNESCO-IHE), Shiney Varghese (Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy), Michael Goldman (University of Minnesota), Nikhil Anand (University of Minnesota), and many more.

The International WaTERS network is funded in part by a $200,000 SSHRC Partnership Development Grant.  Partnership Development Grants provide support to “develop research in the social sciences and humanities, including knowledge mobilization and the meaningful involvement of students and new scholars, by fostering new partnerships for research and related activities involving existing and/or potential partners; or design and test new partnership approaches for research and/or related activities that may result in best practices or models that either can be adapted by others or have the potential to be scaled up to a regional, national or international level.”

We will be reporting on the progress of the Network as things develop.  At this stage, congratulations to the team and please take note of the Network website, www.international-waters.org

If you wish to subscribe to the International WaTERS email list, to receive newsletters and other news, write to internationalwatersubc [at]gmail.com.

Governing Transboundary Waters: Canada, the United States and Indigenous Communities.

By Emma S. Norman

Routledge – 2015 – 224 pages

With almost the entire world’s water basins crossing political borders of some kind, understanding how to cooperate with one’s neighbor is of global relevance. For Indigenous communities, whose traditional homelands may predate and challenge the current borders, and whose relationship to water sources are linked to the protection of traditional lifeways (or ‘ways of life’), transboundary water governance is deeply political.

This book explores the nuances of transboundary water governance through an in-depth examination of the Canada-US border, with an emphasis on the leadership of Indigenous actors (First Nations and Native Americans). The inclusion of this “third sovereign” in the discussion of Canada-U.S. relations provides an important avenue to challenge borders as fixed, both in terms of natural resource governance and citizenship, and highlights the role of non-state actors in charting new territory in water governance. The volume widens the conversation to provide a rich analysis of the cultural politics of transboundary water governance.

In this context, the book explores the issue of what makes a good up-stream neighbor and analyzes the rescaling of transboundary water governance. Through narrative, the book explores how these governance mechanisms are linked to wider issues of environmental justice, decolonization, and self-determination. To highlight the changing patterns of water governance, it focuses on six case studies that grapple with transboundary water issues at different scales and with different constructions of border politics, from the Pacific coastline to the Great Lakes.

Release date: November 20th 2014

Available for pre-order