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.

We congratulate one of regulate’s master students, Sofia Redeker, for receiving the Frankfurt Prize for Environment and Sustainability 2023.

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.

Along with other water experts, Fanny and Robert spoke with Deutschlandfunk about possible solutions to address future water crises.

Robert talks about drought, groundwater and sustainable water reuse in an interview with Frankfurter Rundschau.

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.

During the past few weeks, regulate researchers were speaking at two international conferences.

Fanny introduces ‘regulate’ project in the EWA yearbook 2022 as one “European Highlight”.

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.

From now on regulate is active on Twitter. Follow us to stay up to date.

On the occasion of World Water Day, Robert talks about the state of our groundwater in an interview with radioeins.

On valuing groundwater: in an interview with PDmedien Fanny talks about key issues and how regulate intends to tackle them.

We congratulate one of regulate’s doctoral researchers, Dženeta Hodžić, for receiving the 2nd prize of the THESys award for her Master thesis!

We are happy to announce that regulate’s Practice Advisory Board (PAB) came together in late January to hold it’s first constituent meeting!

The German Federal Environmental Foundation held an online meeting on groundwater challenges and Robert and Hans Jürgen joined the panel.

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.

Robert was invited to the German TV show ‘alle wetter’ to talk about conflicts around groundwater under current drought conditions.

The research network GeoERA is holding a series of webinars towards a Geological Service for Europe in early November.

The parliamentary group Alliance90/The Greens held a drought dialog and Fanny provided an input on sustainable water management.

We are happy to announce that the junior research group ‘regulate’ was finally launched in early September and we are thrilled to start working!