Research Project
Havrelock, Rachel
A Comparative Study of the Great Lakes and the Jordan Valley: Articulating Water Needs, the Right to Water, and Water Sovereignty in the Quest for Water Justice
- Principal Investigator
- Havrelock, Rachel
- Start Date
- 2016-06-01
- End Date
- 2018-08-16
- Funding Source
- Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Abstract
Our project aims to critically examine three dominant concepts in academic writings on water –water needs, water rights, and water sovereignty – and determine how these concepts are lived on the ground. Our sites of investigation are the vastly different Great Lakes region and Jordan River Valley. Prior support from the Global Midwest initiative has enabled us to draw productive comparisons and relationships between these transboundary basins, so this next phase of support will lead to published research that recasts these findings in new, compelling conceptual terms and disseminates them widely. Our humanistic approach emphasizes the need for social and environmental justice to inform practices of water management that tend to be technocratic, top-down, mechanistic, and exclusionary.