What is Water Diplomacy?
Rooted in the ideas of complexity theory and negotiation, water diplomacy is a theory and practice of adaptive water management being developed at Tufts, MIT, and Harvard.
Why Water Diplomacy?
Conflicts over water occur when natural, societal, and political forces interact, creating complex water networks. Management of them becomes critically important as population growth, economic development, and climate change create pressure on finite water resources.
Complex Problems Require Negotiated Solutions
Science or policymaking alone is not sufficient. Sustainable solutions can only come from diplomacy that takes science, policy, and politics into account.
A Network of Water Professionals
Below you will find information about various efforts to advance and implement the evolving theory and practice of water diplomacy.
The Water Diplomacy Graduate Program at Tufts University educates doctoral students who will become the next generation of teachers and scholars of water diplomacy. Supported by the Integrated Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) of the National Science Foundation, this degree teaches interdisciplinary water professionals to think across boundaries, integrate explicit and tacit knowledge, and link knowledge and action from multiple perspectives to help resolve water issues through mutual-gains negotiations.
The Water Diplomacy Workshop (WDW) is an annual “train-the-trainer” event that builds the capacity of senior water managers. Through highly interactive presentations and exercises, it helps participants master important water network management tools, and gain the skills needed to teach these tools to others. The 2012 WDW is scheduled for June 25-29 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Read about it or apply.
The Research Coordination Network (RCN) is a group of researchers and practitioners who will synthesize theory and practice to address complex water problems where natural, societal, and political elements cross multiple boundaries. Supported by the National Science Foundation, this global Water Diplomacy RCN explores ways to incorporate recent developments in complexity theory and negotiations, as well as advances in social networking technology, to generate actionable knowledge for adaptive water management.
Aquapedia is a managed wiki that gathers case studies of water management and water conflict. It is meant to provide reliable, relevant, and readily available water information and wisdom from users and producers of explicit and tacit water knowledge. The potentially transformative and collaborative power of AquaPedia will, we hope, make water a flexible and expandable resource.