Interdisciplinary Collaboration for Water Diplomacy A Principled and Pragmatic Approach

This book introduces the concept of Water Diplomacy as a principled and pragmatic approach to problem-driven interdisciplinary collaboration, which has been developed as a response to pressing contemporary water challenges arising from the coupling of natural and human systems. The findings of the book are the result of a decade-long interdisciplinary experiment in conceiving, developing, and implementing an interdisciplinary graduate program on Water Diplomacy at Tufts University, USA. This has led to the development of the Water Diplomacy Framework, a shared framework for understanding, diagnosing, and communicating about complex water issues across disciplinary boundaries. This framework clarifies important distinctions between water systems - simple, complicated, or complex - and the attributes that these distinctions imply for how these problems can be addressed. In this book, the focus is on complex water issues and how they require a problem-driven rather than a theory-driven approach to interdisciplinary collaboration. Moreover, it is argued that conception of interdisciplinarity needs to go beyond collaboration among experts, because complex water problems demand inclusive stakeholder engagement, such as in fact-value deliberation, joint fact finding, collective decision making, and adaptive management. Water professionals working in such environments need to operate with both principles and pragmatism in order to achieve actionable, sustainable, and equitable outcomes. This book explores these ideas in more detail and demonstrates their efficacy through a diverse range of case studies. Reflections on the program are also included, from conceptualization through implementation and evaluation. This book offers critical lessons and case studies for researchers and practitioners working on complex water issues as well as important lessons for those looking to initiate, implement, or evaluate interdisciplinary programs to address other complex problems in any setting.

Part I: Problem-Driven Interdisciplinary Collaboration: A Principled Pragmatic Approach to Addressing Complex Problems Using Water Diplomacy as an Example1 .Origins: Conceptualization, Implementation, and Evolution of an Interdisciplinary Graduate Program on Water DiplomacyShafiqul Islam, Kent Portney, Michael Reed, Timothy Griffin, and William Moomaw2. Making Distinctions: The Importance of Recognizing Complexity in Coupled Natural and Human SystemsKevin M. Smith and Shafiqul Islam3. Working Together: An Argument for Problem-Driven Interdisciplinary CollaborationKevin M. Smith and Shafiqul Islam4. Principled Pragmatism: How Water Diplomats Approach Complex Water Issues? Kevin M. Smith and Shafiqul IslamPart II: Problem-Driven Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Action: Case Studies from the Tufts Water Diplomacy Program5. Operationalizing Problem-Driven Interdisciplinary Collaboration: An Overview of Case Studies from the Tufts Water Diplomacy ProgramKevin M. Smith and Shafiqul Islam6. Flood Diplomacy: The Hydrological, Technical, and Socio-Political Challenges of Delineating Usable Floodplain BoundariesMichal Russo and Laura Read7. Cholera in Haiti: Why Many Efforts Have Failed and How We Can Do BetterMichael Ritter8. Water Diplomacy at the Macro Scale: Agricultural Groundwater Governance in the High Plains Aquifer Region of the United StatesGregory N. Sixt, Ashley C. McCarthy, Kent E. Portney, Timothy S. Griffin9. Creating Flexibility in Freshwater Availability for the Eastern Nile BasinAgustín Botteron10. Confronting the Natural Domain: Strategies for Addressing Ecology and Conservation in Complex Water Management ChallengesCharles B. van Rees, Gabriela Marie Garcia, Jessica Rozek Cañizares11. Access to Safe Drinking Water across the Navajo NationLaura Corlin12. Coupling and Complexity of Natural and Human Systems: A Case Study from the Southwest Bangladesh DeltaWahid Palash, Kevin M. Smith, Shafiqul IslamPart III: Looking Back and Looking Forward: Reflections and Lessons from the Tufts Program on Water Diplomacy13. Evaluation of an Interdisciplinary Graduate Program: Lessons Learned From the Tufts Water Diplomacy ProgramGlenn G. Page, Shafiqul Islam14. Reflections on the Tufts Experiment with Interdisciplinary Water Diplomacy ResearchKent E. Portney, J. Michael Reed, Amanda C. Repella15. Perspectives on Water Diplomacy: Key Findings, Remaining Challenges, and Future DirectionsLawrence Susskind, Enamul Choudhury, Greg Koch16. Quo Vadis?Shafiqul Islam and Kevin M. Smith

Shafiqul Islam is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and the Director of the Water Diplomacy Program at Tufts University, USA. Kevin M. Smith is a PhD candidate in environmental and water resources engineering and a member of the third cohort of Water Diplomacy graduate students at Tufts University, USA.