What are the factors that push households over thresholds of water insecurity -- from lower levels to more severe experiences? How do we measure this shift, and what are the implications for public policy, specifically in Brazil? These questions are at the center of our paper on urban household water insecurity using survey and qualitative …
Continue reading New publication on water insecurity in Brazil
The National Science Foundation, Geography and Spatial Sciences Program, recently awarded $500,000 to support the Household Water Insecurity Experiences (HWISE) Research Coordination Network to operate at the strategic intersection of social science discovery, policy, and practice to address the complex dynamics of household water insecurity across the globe. The RCN's mission is to build a community …
Texas A&M University announced last week that it will fund a new interdisciplinary project on urban water security -- "Pathways to Sustainable Urban Water Security: Desalination and Water Reuse in the 21st Century" -- for $1.5M over the next three years. Desalination of seawater and brackish groundwater and wastewater reuse are seen as major technological …
Continue reading New project on urban water security and sustainability funded, $1.5M from TAMU
I am happy to post this mini-documentary on the social conflicts and land grabbing as a result of the wind-power boom in Ceara, Brazil. Low-carbon projects are not inherently socially just. Innovation requires not only technological change but attention to the social and economic structures - and how they are either changed, reinforced and for …
"Do not take our water." A simple message. Don't take our water. Over the past ten months, communities in the peripheral northwest region of Fortaleza, Brazil have begun to organize against the state's "water security plan" to manage the five-year drought for the metropolitan region of 3.5 million people. The plan, which attends to the …
Continue reading Emerging water conflict in Fortaleza, Brazil
This past year I had the privilege of working with freshman from the College of Geosciences on a year-long service-learning experience that addressed water security and water provision from a global perspective. In fall, these freshman met once a week to discuss global water challenges and to read a Doc Henley's book Wine to Water: …
Water security is not the first environmental challenge that comes to mind when one mentions Costa Rica. Perhaps tropical deforestation or biodiversity loss probably come to mind before water resources. The nation, as a whole, is water wealthy. The available water in Costa Rica is 2.8 × 104 m3/person-year while only 1.5 × 103 m3/year is used, allowing some growth in resource …
Thank you, Dr. Biolock. A clear reminder that titles do matter.
It happens so frequently, to me, to my friends and colleagues, and in professional settings no less. In asking about your work, they say, “Mrs. Biolock, can you explain your findings?” You find yourself wondering if it is necessary to correct them, to ask them to refer to you by your professional title: “Dr.” When deciding whether to halt the conversation, to introduce that awkward moment of correction, we are actually considering whether (as my mother would say) we are willing to ruin the party. Is your name, your title worthy of the tricky pause, the halted speech, and the stilted correction?
Whether someone refers to you as “Dr.” or “Mrs.” or “Ms.”, and whether or not you correct them is in some small part about the politics of respectability. Not the typical respectability politics (à la Don Lemon ) that continues to haunt the Black community, but the…
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Urban water insecurity increases as poor governance and water scarcity collide in small cities in the interior of Northeast Brazil. See video.Waiting for water
Leaving for New Orleans to attend the Conference of Latin American Geographers Conference early tomorrow morning. I appreciate smaller conferences and hopes of less performance and more engagement. The organizers have kept the conference to only three concurrent sessions, but I probably will miss some talks regardless of the careful planning. Here are the …
Continue reading Water Security Sessions in CLAG New Orleans
Wendy Jepson 
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