SP 12: Academic Curriculum on Adaptive Water Management
Aim and Audience
A curriculum in Adaptive Water Management is available for teaching at universities at the Master’s and PhD levels. The teaching materials were published as downloadable modules on the internet for interested instructors of Environmental and Resources Management, Hydrology, Public Policy and other fields that may include studies in water resources management. The curriculum is available at www.newatereducation.nl.
The broader learning goals of this curriculum are to teach students about:
- Water issues in the context of global change
- Adaptive management concepts
- Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM): what it is and how it is practiced
- The role of adaptive management in IWRM
- Making the transition to adaptive river basin management
Although all teaching materials are available in English only, the curriculum is geared as much as possible to an international audience, with examples drawn from cases in variety of regions including developing countries. It is however acknowledged that teaching approaches vary among countries and regions, and that instructors may have to adapt the curriculum based on their own requirements and preferences.
The Curriculum
The curriculum was developed as part of the training and education activities in the NeWater project (New Approaches to Adaptive Water Management under Uncertainty) funded by the European Commission. The NeWater project has, among other goals, an explicit aim to provide an effective outreach mechanism for scientific results, methodologies and tools to various levels of stakeholders in the water sector, including education at the university level, policy and water management practitioners.
The curriculum has been implemented by the Institute of Environmental Systems Research at the University of Osnabrück, Alterra/Wageningen University and the Global Water System Project.
The Modules
Modules include:
- lectures with accompanying script and reference to examples from relevant case studies
- discussion questions
- exercises or projects (primarily group projects)
- supporting literature (background reading)
- relevant links to electronic databases, atlases, glossaries, etc.
Examples from NeWater case studies including the Rhine, Guadiana, Tisza, Nile, Orange and Amu Darya river basins help illustrate approaches and areas of application. The modules were drawn primarily from the teaching materials prepared for the NeWater summer schools. They were tested on academics with some experience in teaching adaptive management, as well as students of related fields.
Module 1: Global change and Water Resources | Module 2: Introduction to Adaptive Management and IWRM |
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Module 3: Adaptive Management Tools and Methods | Module 4: Managing Transitions to Adaptive Management |
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Contact
For more information: Caroline van Bers, cvbers[at]usf.uos.de
Name | Size | Published | |
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![]() Short introduction to the online curriculum | 167 kb | Mr. Stefan Riffert | 2009-03-05 14:37:58 |