This thesis examines the negotiation of groundwater futures in the Mansfeld-Südharz district in Germany, initiated by the junior research group regulate. As part of the research, qualitative, guideline based interviews were conducted with stakeholders in groundwater management in Mansfeld-Südharz and with researchers from regulate.
Dženeta will join the conference “Making and Doing Transformations” in Amsterdam from July 16th to July 19th, organized by the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) and the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST). She will present major findings of her PhD and ‘regulate’ project in two talks.
More transfers of water over long-distances are prepared across Germany to ensure drinking water supply security in times of droughts and peak drinking water demands on hot summer days. Originally, such transfers were meant as an exception for e.g. metropolitan areas with high industrial and public water demand and unfavourable local water resources. Today, already 20% of Germans are supplied with water imported from other administrative areas or hydrological basins.
Our regulate researcher Dženeta Hodžić was interviewed by igrac in light of world toilet day 2023. Read the full article entitled “Plitvice, natural treasure becomes victim of its own success”.
The “German Congress for Geography (DKG)” took place in Frankfurt am Main, September 19-23. Almost the entire regulate-team participated with various contributions. A particular highlight was the lightning session “Groundwater Geographies” chaired by the regulate-team.
Our colleagues David Kuhn, Fanny Frick-Trzebitzky et al. recently published a new ISOE discussion paper on the conceptualisation of the non-human, for example animals, forests or water, in the context of environmental conflicts.
Drawing from research on municipal water supply in Accra (Ghana) and Mansfeld-Südharz (Germany),
Fanny Frick-Trzebitzky et al. demonstrate the usefulness of bricolage thinking for a more grounded and power-sensitive analysis of adaptive water governance.
Next Monday, June 19, Robert will give the opening talk at the Summer Academy “Act Green – Water: Responsible use of a scarce resource”, organised by “Katholische Akademie die Wolfsburg”.
The regulate-team is going to chair a session on “Groundwater Geographies: (in)visible flows, (un)traceable past, (un)certain future” at Deutscher Kongress für Geographie 2023 in Frankfurt am Main. The session welcomes interdisciplinary contributions that explore the multiple dimensions of groundwater.
In the new ISOE Blog Post, Fanny and Robert reflect on the UN Groundwater Summit, which took place in Paris in December 2022, and provide a perspective on the Water Action Agenda, an outcome of the 2023 UN Water Conference.
Robert was invited to give a public lecture on January 25, as part of the lecture series “Limited Resources – Consumption, Use, Protection” organized by the ‘Frankfurter Geographische Gesellschaft (FGG)’. He will talk about current and future water availability and societal water demand in context of climate change and other socio-political dynamics.
Recently, the entire ‘regulate’ team was able to have a first in-person meeting since over a year. Three days of updating on current project status, case study progress and individual research.
Fanny and Robert will join the UN-Water Summit on Groundwater in Paris and give an input on December 6th. They will talk about telecoupling effects on groundwater, mainly related to our case-studies in Germany and Croatia.
Linda and collegues are going to chair a session on “Socio-Hydrology: fostering transdisciplinarity in groundwater sciences” at the general assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) 2023 in Vienna. The session welcomes contributions around transdisciplinarity and groundwater research.
Robert will represent the ‘regulate’ project at the AGU (American Geophysical Union) Fall Meeting 2022 on December 16th, with a poster discussion on Groundwater in Telecoupled Social-Ecological Systems.
This Friday, September 30th, regulate researchers will conduct the 2nd stakeholder workshop in Rijeka, Croatia. This is part of a larger trandisciplinary research process in this case study.
Fanny and Robert will talk about ways humans affect the natural water cycle and will give recommendations for sustainable (ground)water management under climate change scenarios in Germany and Europe.
In the new article Fanny, Robert and Linda are exploring the various pressures humans put on groundwater and discussing how human-groundwater interactions could be shaped more sustainably.
The United Nations has declared ‘Groundwater: Making the Invisible Visible’ its theme for World Water Day on 22 March 2022. This is because policies and decision-makers have paid little attention to the global groundwater problem thus far. Read more about Groundwater as an invisible resource and (non-) visible problems
A brief overview of David’s various locations during his exploratory trip to Spain in November as well as his impressions of potential local conflicts around (ground) water.
During the week of September 6th-10th, regulate researchers will participate in several conferences on (ground) water. At these, they will present the regulate research approach.
On the ISOE-blog, Robert and Fanny provide an insight into the importance of the telecoupling concept in groundwater research. Additionally they present the research mode of the “regulate” project.
In the new ISOE blog called “Social Ecology. Crisis – Critique – Design”, Dženeta provides some research insights from her ethnographic fieldwork on renewable energy infrastructuring practices in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
At the Waterworlding Conference, Dženeta presented on subterranean waterworlding in the border region of Croatia and Bosnia. Afterwards Fanny and Dženeta moderated sessions in the international symposium bringing together social and cultural water studies.
Last week, we could finally meet all together in person. We used this day to reflect on the first months of the project and to work on various team products.
In the event ‘Meet the Scientist’ on June 23, 2021 from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., ISOE scientists Robert and Stefan will present current results from water research in conversation with citizens.
Robert gave a talk on groundwater resources for BUND Saarland on April 13th 2021. The topic was, how climate change and societal demands potentially lead to conflict situations over groundwater resources among stakeholders.
By November 1st, the regulate team was completed and we had our first 3-day virtual retreat to pave the way for the next 5 years of groundwater research.