Water, Health, and Sustainable Development

label Diverse autorenew 2025-09-29, 17:01 history_edu Ioana Dinescu
Water, health, and development are closely connected in our transition to a sustainable future. Clean and healthy water will become a crucial resource in the future and climate change will require new and creative solutions for water quantity management. Novel solutions like these are developing at a very high pace, with new experiments, research and techniques being launched all the time. This course will showcase several novel approaches for managing the nexus between water and health and reveal new ways to support the transition to a more sustainable future.This sustainable transition requires an equally sustainable approach in the ecological, social, and economic sense. It also requires smart technological solutions, social change, and fundamental choices about what the world should look like after the transition - a process that is both cognitive and political in nature. What makes this process so complex are the socio-political questions it raises in terms of equity, competing visions of the future, and values worth protecting. Are garden swimming pools more important than wetland conservation? Is water for cash crop monocultures more valuable than safe drinking water for the urban poor? Even with the best available knowledge, questions like these cannot (and should not) be answered by experts alone. This research should always take into consideration inherently political processes such as the formation of preferences, public support and deeply-rooted cultural beliefs and practices. Such issues require not only interdisciplinary cooperation among experts from natural and social sciences, but even transdisciplinary cooperation of experts and stakeholders.Sooner or later, sustainable transitions will make difficult demands on these experts and require them to cooperate beyond their own disciplines and core values, reflect on their assumptions and appreciate the challenges of interdisciplinary collaboration. The latter proves particularly challenging among the natural, technical and social sciences. It is a dialogue that is often fraught with misunderstanding, preconceptions and tribalism. This course will confront these issues head-on and provide you with the tools you need to improve your interdisciplinary cooperation. It will also encourage you to reflect on the boundaries between experts and non-experts and give you the resources to manage the tensions that arise.Contributing fields include:- Water management, Engineering- Public Health- Sustainable Development studies- Public Policy studies- Science and Technology studies

Period
04-08-2014 - 15-08-2014 (2 weeks)

Target group
This course is intended for early PhD students working on the water/health nexus in perspective of sustainable development.

Course aim
After this course you will:1. Understand the intricate connection between water, health, and sustainable development2. Learn about available tools, to organise sustainability from both a technical and social point of view3. Know how to identify (personal) assumptions and issues among experts and stakeholders4. Know how to identify the bottlenecks in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary cooperation and develop strategies to overcome them



Credits
6.0 ECTS credits

Course fee
EUR 1100[Convert to USD]The course fee includes the registration fee, course materials, access to library and IT facilities, coffee/tea, lunch, and a number of social activities. The fee does not include accommodation, travel costs, dinner, insurance and other costs. Discounts 10% discount for early bird applicants. The early bird deadline is 1 April 2014.15% discount for students and PhD candidates from Radboud University and partner universities

Course leader
Prof. A.J.M. (Toine) SmitsDepartment head, Institute of Science, Innovation & Society, Radboud University

Radboud University
Address: P.O Box 9102 Nijmegen
Postal code: 6500 HC
City: Nijmegen
Country: Netherlands
Website: http://www.ru.nl/radboudsummerschool/
E-mail: radboudsummerschool@ru.nl
Phone: +31 (0)24 8187706