Lucy Rodina is currently in Cape Town, South Africa, for her fieldwork research from April to September 2016. In Cape Town Lucy is visiting the African Climate and Development Initiative, where she will be working in collaboration with Gina Ziervogel and colleagues. Lucy is giving a guest lecture as part of the ACDI brown bag lunch series on May 5th.
Date: 05 May 2016, 1-2 pm
Venue: ACDI Meeting Room, Geological Sciences Building 6th Floor, Upper Campus, UCT
Abstract: In the coming decades, countries throughout the world will face increasing challenges due to climate change, especially with respect to changing hydrologic conditions. These challenges will be particularly acute in the Global South as they interact with existing pressures on already stressed water resources, such as increasing demand for water due to population and economic growth, poverty and inequality, and lack of institutional capacity, among others. Lucy Rodina’s doctoral study aims to investigate key themes in resilience thinking as they apply to urban water governance, with specific attention to droughts, floods and associated water-related risks, such as water pollution. One of the key objectives of this research is to investigate the uptake and use of key constituents of resilience thinking in the context of urban water broadly, both conceptually and in practice. With a specific focus on a case study from South Africa, the goal is to theorize and develop a situated understanding of water resilience – attentive to specific biophysical environments, lived experiences, socio-political and governance contexts, power and marginalization – for water experts and decision makers on one hand, and residents of impoverished, peri-uban and informal settlements on the other. Through this approach, the study will also further inform the possibilities for addressing equity and social justice concerns within a resilience framework, by investigating the discursive and practical manifestations of questions of poverty, inequality and differentiated water-related vulnerabilities in water governance. Ultimately, this project aims to engage with resilience thinking critically by investigating the different dimensions in which resilience can be evaluated.
