Partnering Institute: Institute for Water Research, Rhodes 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网
Project leads: and
About the project: There is need to upscale A-IWRM approaches in South Africa in catchments that are most at risk from degradation, e.g. the Olifants catchment. Working with the SARChI Chair in Ecosystems Health at UL, the IWR will expand its contributions to A-IWRM development in the Olifants. The IWR will also partner with the RU Chairs and the SARChI Chair in Systems Analysis at Wits in the Tsitsa catchment to develop transdisciplinary capacity building, monitoring and governance approaches for catchment wide governance shifts. Here the IWR will research and support transdisciplinary governance system development across traditional and modern institutional activity systems.
A third contribution of the IWR to the CoP will be to contribute knowledge on the scaling of transformative social learning and transdisciplinary sustainable development actions within complex social-ecological systems perspectives to a wider network of African river systems and partners via the IWRs leading role in the ARUA CoE in Water.
The IWR’s contribution in the CoP will result in policy outcomes (on AIWRM and catchment governance), science outcomes (principles and methods for water quality and flow assessments and transdisciplinary water science), and practice outcomes (tools and resources for improved water quality management and governance). All of these outcomes contribute to sustainable development actions related to clean water (SDG 6), but also address other SDGs, especially SDG 17.
Focus Area 1: Development and use of water quality and A-IWRM tools and approaches
One of the sites that will be in focus in this research is the predominantly rural Olifants River Catchment where about 4.2 million people live, with 70% of the population living in rural areas. Degradation of the water system exposes already vulnerable people to threats to their health and well-being (AWARD, 2019). There are challenges with high salinity associated with mining activities, acid mine drainage and irrigated agricultural practices. Sulphate, pH and phosphate levels are high due to mining effluent, acid mine drainage and runoff from phosphate fertilizers. Disposable nappies, animal waste and poorly functioning wastewater treatment plants (AWARD, 2019; Griffin et al., 2015) add to the problem, with downstream impacts from upstream pollution, indicating a need for A-IWRM approaches. The IWR, in the CoP, will focus on advancing AIWRM approaches in partnership with the SARChI Chairs in Ecosystem Health at the UL, and the transboundary Limpopo Basin Curriculum Innovation Network and Changing Practice Environmental Justice Networks which are currently supported by the SARChI Chair in Global Change and Social Learning Systems at RU. The IWR will draw on completed research conducted with various partners in the Olifants Catchment to support further development of A-IWRM approaches. These include 1) a water quality biophysical assessment that includes methodologies and data for water quality analysis (Griffin et al.,2015,
2017), 2) concepts and tools for expanding A-IWRM, 3) a study on water quality requirements within environmental flow requirements (Palmer et al., 2018), and 4) a study on transdisciplinary catchment-sustainability (Palmer et al. 2012). This collaborative history will underpin CoP partnership development. A first step will be to review the current status of how transformative social learning can be used to further amplify these initial sustainability science outcomes in the context of the Olifants River catchment, followed by transdisciplinary A-IWRM interventions (Palmer et al., 2018) using materials produced by the IWR (/iwr/howtohandbooks/). The IWR will also draw in materials from the six short-course modules making up the course Operationalising Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM).
Focus area 2: Development of transdisciplinary sustainable development action at catchment and landscape levels to facilitate integrated water resources management.
The IWR will also develop transdisciplinary sustainability science for catchment governance, in the large-scale DEA “Tsitsa Project” – which aims to use restoration investment to catalyse landscape and social change towards sustainable and thriving landscapes and livelihoods in a rural catchment (Cockburn et al. 2018). IWR will support co-engaged governance capability pathways that will aim to leave local residents more able to engage effectively with formal and traditional institutions on matters concerning their wellbeing as connected to their natural resources. The Tsitsa Project is planned to extend from for 2014-2023, and therefore can act as a learning landscape feeding insights and knowledge into the proposed CoP. This contribution of the IWR in the CoP will complement and extend research undertaken into capacity building, participatory monitoring and evaluation and ecological infrastructure social learning strategy development in the Tsitsa undertaken by the RU Chair of Environmental Education and Sustainability (Prof Rosenberg), and research being undertaken by the SARChI Chair of Systems Analysis at Wits GCI.
Focus Area 3: Extending the CoP network and pathway to impact via links into the Association of Research Universities in Africa’s Water Centre of Excellence.
In addition to the above two programmes, the IWR will contribute a strong continental reach to CoP partners as Prof Palmer from the IWR is currently directing the Association of Research Universities in Africa (ARUA) Centre of Excellence for Water Research. The ARUA Water CoE research is based on an understanding that human life is intricately coupled with the natural world, i.e. it works with a framework of complex social-ecological systems (Folke, 2006). Research development and practice will forefront community engagement knowledge co-production for sustainability. We will use research to catalyse change towards social and ecological justice and sustainability, paying attention to African community water and sanitation needs. The Water CoE has eight nodes in seven countries. The COP partners will have access to developing thinking and practice of the links between transformative social learning and sustainability science across Africa through the Water CoE. The ARUA Climate Change CoE is therefore also part of this proposed CoP, which adds leverage and depth to continental perspectives. Additionally, knowledge will also be shared with two other IWR African-partnership projects: i) Enhancing urban wetland and river ecosystems health to support environmentally sustainable urban development in selected African cities – a systemic-relational (SR) ethical perspective. ii) African water resources mobility network: building transdisciplinary capacity for sustainable water resource management.
Professor Tally Palmer is Director of the Institute for Water Research at RU. She will contributing to leading on the themes clean water and ecological infrastructure governance. She has extensive experience and expertise in water quality as well as adaptive integrated water resources management, water sector policy development and transdisciplinary research in the water sector. She will be leading one of the IWR projects focussing on TD water governance in the Tsitsa, and will work with Dr Odume on the water quality project of the IWR, with partners as indicated in their proposal. Prof Palmer also leads the ARUA Water Centre of Excellence, and will help the CoP to make wider Africa-wide links to transdisciplinary water research as the CoP and the ARUA CoE objectives are well aligned.
Dr Nelson Odume is the Director of the Unilever Centre for Water Quality in the Institute of Water Research at Rhodes 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网. He will contribute to the thematic area of clean water in the CoP and will help to advance citizen engagement and tools and approaches for citizen engagement in water quality monitoring and in A-IWMQ practice. His contribution will expand the work of the 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 of Limpopo in this area, and also help to strengthen the work of the SARChI Chair in Global Change and Social Learning Systems focussing on citizen sciences. Currently the SARChI Chair is undertaking a national review of citizen-based water quality monitoring to identify how these approaches can be scaled and better supported under the Integrated Water Quality Management Strategy. The IWR contribution of Dr Odume can significantly strengthen this work. Dr Odume will also link the CoP to the newly forming African Cluster Centre which is one of four ACCs linked to Bayreuth CoE in African Studies.
Institute for Water Research (IWR), Rhodes 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网The Institute for Water Research (IWR) at Rhodes 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 has a 28 year history of research excellence, and is the Hub of the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) Water Centre of Excellence. The IWR is inter- and multi-disciplinary with disciplinary excellence in hydrology, aquatic ecology and environmental water quality, and transdisciplinary water governance. It provides theoretical and methodological foundations for the practice of Adaptive Integrated Water Resource Management (AIWRM).
Last Modified: Mon, 04 Oct 2021 14:53:56 SAST