May 27, 2022

Online symposium

Deadline (registration): May 26, 2022

Water is the medium through which we experience many of the impacts of climate change: in droughts or floods, in melting glaciers, rising sea levels and more. Accordingly, visualisations of water or its absence have been at the core of climate change media discourse for decades and have shaped popular perceptions of this crisis. In recent years, ‘water resilience’ has increasingly been embraced as a tool for addressing the impacts of climate change and other ongoing stressors; not only as a tool for adaptation, but also as a tool for mitigation that addresses the water-energy nexus and greenhouse gas emissions from water infrastructure. However, water resilience scholarship is still primarily focussed on the physical, technological and managerial aspects of the climate crisis, while issues of social justice, power and politics are at the margins of the debate. As such, the transformative potential of climate and water resilient futures goes unrecognised.

This symposium aims to bring together the overlapping conversations around resilience, climate, water, communication and politics in order to advance social justice and reduce climate-induced water vulnerability. 

Keynote speakers:

Prof. Joanne Garde-Hansen (University of Warwick), author of Media and Water: Communication, Culture and Perception

Dr Filippo Menga (University of Bergamo), author of Water and Power in Central Asia and co-editor of Water, Technology and the Nation State

Registration is via Eventbrite – registration is open until May 26th (a day before the event).

Timetable:

10:00-11:15 Opening Keynote Talk:

Opening greetings by Prof. Melissa Leach (IDS).

Keynote lecture by Prof. Joanne Garde-Hansen (University of Warwick): Amphibious Screens – Sustainable Cultures of Water

11:30-12:50 Session 1: News, media and water resilience:

• Swati Jaywant Rao Bute (Jagran Lakecity University): Role of news channels in running media campaigns for water conservation projects in India
• Edson Capoano, Alice Balbé & Pedro Rodrigues Costa (University of Minho): Analysis of Brazilians comments on the water issue on Twitter
• Nelson Okorie (Pan-Atlantic University): Media Framing, Climate Change and issues of Water Security in South Africa
• Shai Kassirer (University of Reading): “Israel Is Drying, Again”: Framing Resilience in Televised Water Conservation Campaigns

12:50-13:20 Break

13:20-14:40 Session 2: Water (in)justice in Jamaica and India

Henrice Altink (University of York): “No water”: the unequal impact of drought in Jamaica in the 1990s.
Shruti Jain (Institute of Economic Growth Delhi) & Bhupen Singh (Uttarakhand Open University): Essentiality of Rights for Building Resilience Climate and Water Politics in Uttarakhand Himalaya
Farhat Naz (Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur): Dynamics of Water Access: Trust and Mistrust at the International Border Line
Asrarul Haque Jeelani (Jawaharlal Nehru University): No Water No Votes: Electoral Right as a Political Tool for Dealing with Water Distress

15:00-16:20 Session 3: Water, technology and public perception

• Piotr Szpunar (University at Albany): Walled Shores, Waning Future
• Christina Walter (Universität Augsburg): Digital Technologies for Water Resilience? Examining the Discourse on Digital Water
• Biliana Gaume, Pascal Verhoest, Joke Bauwens, Petrus te Braak and Marijke Huysmans (Vrij Universiteit Brussel): Food for Thought A Survey on the Acceptance of Crops Grown with Treated Wastewater
• Ruhil Iyer (IDS), Jeremy Kohlitz (University of Technology Sydney), Nicole Klaesener-Metzner (UNICEF) & ​Sue Cavill, (UNICEF): Water management for hygiene and sanitation in the climate crisis: Programming lessons from South Asia and the Pacific

16:30-18:00 Closing Keynote Talk:

Dr Filippo Menga, University of Bergamo: Spectacular Environments: Framing the Global Water Crisis in Troubled Times

For further details contact s.kassirer[at]reading.ac.uk

Registration is via Eventbrite