Water, Knowledge and Participation

This course examines the connections between water governance, knowledge frameworks, and participatory methods, offering a detailed look at how diverse forms of understanding and collaboration influence decision-making around water resources. Participants will explore how integrating multiple perspectives and disciplines enhances the ability to address water-related challenges effectively and inclusively.

The learning experience begins with “Ways of Knowing Water,” where participants explore how scientific, cultural, and local insights shape approaches to water management. Building on this, “Adaptive Water Governance” focuses on fostering flexibility and resilience in managing resources in changing environments. The following lesson, “Adaptive Water Governance and Learning,” highlights the importance of ongoing reflection and improvement to strengthen governance systems.

The course also covers “Knowledge Co-production and the Science-Policy Interface,” emphasizing joint efforts between practitioners, researchers, and policymakers to align strategies and solutions. It concludes with “The Interdisciplinary Study of Water Governance,” presenting a cultural political economy perspective that integrates social, economic, and political factors into a broader understanding of governance challenges.

This course equips learners with the tools and insights needed to engage with water governance from informed and collaborative viewpoints, preparing them to contribute meaningfully to sustainable water management efforts.

Course Provider

The detailed information about each instructor involved in this course is provided in each lesson.

NEWAVE e-Lecture Series

This course is part of the NEWAVE e-Lecture Series on Water Governance Theoretical Perspectives. This online training module is designed to engage the NEWAVE Early-Stage Researchers (ESRs) and the wider public in interactive, thought-provoking discussions on various water governance theoretical perspectives. Learn more about the e-lecture series here (Link).

Course Content

Ways of Knowing Water – Prof. Margreet Zwarteveen

Knowing water is always a simultaneously social (political, cultural, institutional, historical) and scientific practice. This also means that answers to questions about “what is true?” will be mixed up with opinions about “what is right?” or “what is good?”. Donna Haraway’s notion of knowledge as situated and partial – and her definition of objectivity as being about particular and specific embodiment – provides an interesting way of grappling with this entanglement between science and society. The lecture uses her theoretical proposal to discuss different ways of knowing water. Rather than considering these as different perspectives on the same water, the argument is that these produce different versions of water – or indeed different waters. Such differences should and often cannot be made to disappear through integration or commensuration, which is why there is merit to instead learn how to live with them – even when they are in tension with each other.

Instructor: Prof. Margreet Zwarteveen

Margreet is a Professor of Water Governance at IHE-Delft and the University of Amsterdam. Trained as both an irrigation engineer and a social scientist, Margreet is interested in water allocation policies, technologies and practices, and the knowledges that justify or inform these. She focuses her research and education on questions of (gender-) equity and justice. Her current research includes a project (financed by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, NWO), that looks at the mobility of Dutch Delta experts and expertise to examine the production of evidence under conditions of uncertainty. She is also the coordinator of a large international research network (funded by the Belmont-Norface Programme on Transformations to Sustainability) to study and learn from bottom-up initiatives to protect or share groundwater. In her work, Margreet favors an interdisciplinary approach, seeing water flows and distributions as the outcome of interactions between natures, technologies and people.

Instructor: Prof. Dave Huitema

Dave Huitema is professor and chair group holder Public Administration and Policy at Wageningen University and Research. His research is focused on the role of government in accomplishing transformations in the sustainability domain. How can government play a role in facilitating certain ongoing transformations, how could government trigger certain transformations, and how does government need to transform itself in light of desirable transformations? In light of this, Huitema has focused in the past on the ways in which individuals (so called policy entrepreneurs) can consciously affect policy dynamics, learning processes in government (for instance through citizen participation, through evaluation, through serious games, or policy experiments), but he has also focused on the way governments can enhance the societal impact of citizens collectives that seek to introduce more sustainable approaches. Much of the work done by Huitema is aimed at the domains of water management, climate change and energy. Conceptually he connects to theories about policy dynamics, the science-policy interface, adaptive governance and polycentricity. Huitema received his degree from Twente (M.A.and PhD) and previously worked for the Vrije Univeriteit Amsterdam and the Open Universiteit as professor of environmental policy. At the moment Hutema is involved in various ongoing research projects, notably NWO funded project ADAPT-LOCKIN about locked in policy system, NWO-TTW project AquaConnect about circular water management, and the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action NEWAVE that aims to give an impetus to the global way of thinking about water governance. Huitema teaches in various courses at the WUR and is welcoming students who would like to do research together in his expertise areas.

Instructor: Prof. Andrea Gerlak

Andrea K. Gerlak is Professor at the School of Geography, Development & Environment (SGDE) and Director of the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, at the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on institutions for governing water resources. She examines cooperation and conflict around water, including questions of institutional change and adaptation to climate change in rivers basins, and human rights and equity issues in water governance.

Gerlak is a senior research fellow with the Earth System Governance Project, an international social science research alliance exploring political solutions and novel, effective governance mechanisms to address global environmental challenges. She recently served as a Lead Author on the Earth Systems Governance Science and Implementation Plan, which sets out the agenda for the next decade of earth system governance research. Her most recent books include Learning for Environmental Governance Insights for a More Adaptive Future, published by Cambridge University Press in 2024 with Tanya Heikkila and The Conversation on Water, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2023.

Presently, she serves on the City of Tucson’s Water Advisory Committee. She is a senior fellow with the Earth Systems Governance network. Dr. Gerlak has more two decades of experience leading interdisciplinary environmental studies programs and university-community environmental partnerships. She has consulted on water governance and climate resilience efforts for UNESCO and the WMO.

Peter Mollinga is a Professor of Development Studies, at the Department of Development Studies SOAS University of London. His research interests are: 1) water and development; 2) the dynamics of agriculture and environmental resources management; 3) interdisciplinarity in efforts at ‘integrated’ natural resources management and governance. His geographical focus is Asia, particularly South Asia and Central Asia. He was trained as an irrigation engineer at Wageningen University, the Netherlands; his Master’s dissertation was on small-scale irrigation management in the Senegal River valley; his Ph.D. is on irrigation water management in South India. He completed his Habilitation in Development Sociology at the University of Bonn, Germany. Since 2010 he is Professor of Development Studies at SOAS University of London, UK, where he also initiated the Centre for Water and Development.