Part 7: ‘Virtual water’ as an inter-disciplinary innovation for water policy and water politics

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来自 University of Manchester 的课程

Water Supply and Sanitation Policy in Developing Countries Part 2: Developing Effective Interventions

9 个评分

University of Manchester

Water Supply and Sanitation Policy in Developing Countries Part 2: Developing Effective Interventions

9 个评分

Water Supply and Sanitation Policy in Developing Countries Part 2 is our second MOOC in a two-part sequence, and looks at ‘Developing Effective Interventions’. Here we invite you to develop analytical skills and deep understanding about a complex, controversial policy problem – one with no simple, easy answers. About half a billion people on our planet still lack access to improved water supplies and about two billion do not have improved sanitation services, leading to an unknown but very large number of avoidable deaths each year from water-related diseases. Millions of dollars are spent on avoidable health care expenditures, and people – mostly women – spend many billions of hours carrying water from sources outside the home. Reducing these costs is a major global challenge for us all in the 21st century. Join us to explore the challenging and complex political, economic, social, and technical dimensions of the policy interventions that donors, national governments and water utilities use to address this challenge. This second MOOC consists of the following seven sessions: • Session 1: Introduction and how our ‘ancient instincts’ affect water policy interventions. • Session 2: Planning better policy interventions: Roles, features and examples of planning protocols. • Session 3: Water pricing, tariff design and subsidies. • Session 4: Providing information to households and communities to improve water and sanitation conditions. • Session 5: Changing the institutions that deliver water and sanitation services: Privatization in developing countries. • Session 6: Changing institutions: Lessons from the UK water privatization story. • Session 7: Changing institutions: Improving regulation of the water and sanitation sector. Your instructors for this course have worked in and studied this sector for many years. Professor Dale Whittington has worked on water and sanitation policy and planning issues for over 40 years in more than two dozen low and middle-income countries. Dr Duncan Thomas has worked in the UK and European water sectors for 15 years, focusing on overcoming barriers to technological, organizational, regulatory and policy innovations. Please watch this introductory video outlining the course: https://youtu.be/KkBmo3EKkkI

从本节课中

Changing institutions: Improving regulation of the water and sanitation sector

Part 7: ‘Virtual water’ as an inter-disciplinary innovation for water policy and water politics7:44

Part 8: Water metrics for ‘virtual water’: Origins, uptake and impact of water footprinting9:26

Part 9: Professor Allan’s university working conditions when ‘virtual water’ was invented and adopted5:53

Part 10: Professor Allan’s advice for students to become creative, courageous, well-read and effective water policy researchers13:26

与讲师见面

Dr Duncan Thomas
Lecturer
Alliance Manchester Business School
Prof Dale Whittington
Professor
Manchester Business School

Tony, I'd like to ask you about your virtual water concept.

Really, it's a kind of intellectual innovation.

But before I start and give some ideas about that,

I'd like to ask you, what's your idea, your thought about

what innovation means in the study of water policy around the world?

>> Well, they're tendency in most water policy makers

to concentrate on the physical water and not on the politics.

And since my journey has been from that side, and

as I've worked more abroad and even in this country

I find that the role of politics is so important.

That it's essential that we try to get scientists not to be

brilliant political scientists, but

to be aware that announcing the truth is not enough.

It's got to be announced and shared in a way which is communicable and welcome.

But the thing is we press me, I've come

across over as many managing directors of

consulting water engineering companies.

And they weren't in that position until quite a way through their career seven or

20 years or more.

And during the first 20 years, they were doing many technical things, and

then they had to learn how to think politically,

both because they were in private sector organizations.

They had to be taking so many other things into account, big budget and

various other things.

And they could quite easily do it, but

they weren't encouraged to think about it in the early parts of their career.

And that's,

I thought both in the professional world as well as in the academic world.

It was a pity that there was not some awareness amongst

the engineering community.

That there were a political factors to take into account

that could stop everything.

>> And in your own career having come from geography, but still in the sort of

science part of it, did you have to go through that journey yourself?

Where you were at when you started with ritual idea?

Have you changed your kind of orientation that in all into discipline then you were?

>> Well, I have always been and if you going to do more in a developing certainly

you've got to be aware of the economics and

you've gotta be aware of the hydrology, you've got to be aware of politics.

So from first when I came back into the university world I had to adjust to that.

What I have discovered over the intervening over 50 years are worst,

because one is a generalist and not a specialist.

And you are always engaged with specialists.

You've got to be able to offer connections which matter.

Otherwise, you're always in this subordinate position of being

a second-rate economist or a second-rate hydrologist and so on and so on.

So it isn't having the label of geographer is a big disadvantage,

that I'm Tony Allen that's made a contribution to water.

Any thinking is significant.

[LAUGH] I can go into meetings with that, but if I was to be measured

by my competence in economics and

hydraulic engineering, I would find it hard to get a hearing.

>> And how have you managed then to make those kind of intellectual connections

yourself between these different areas that you have to address?

>> I think it's just by partly, anything that you do you need a bit of courage.

[LAUGH] You've got to be prepared to knock on doors.

And if you need an answer to a question, and

you know that it's in the mind of a person in that organization.

You've just gotta have the courage to go and persuade them that it's necessary,

that there would be a productive result from this encounter.

So I'm in a position now that one goes to any meeting and

I'm able to converse in the ballot of well

in the necessary standards of economics,

political economy, and water science and

engineering that it is a progressive conversation.

I've been lucky in being in long enough to become a reasonably successful

interdisciplinarian, but that is, and sometimes people, as I indicated when

I talked about senior engineers becoming managing directors and CEOs.

They have to suddenly become interdisciplinarians,

because there's one thing about the private sector, it doesn't.

If you get big corporations they can be in silos, but if you're going to solve

a problem in the private sector, you've gotta get on and do it.

And relate to the issues that count you can't just say,

because I'm interested in this this is where the solution lies.

That is one thing about being having an early career in geography is

that you pick up the idea that the answer will not necessarily be in economics, so

I [INAUDIBLE] actually.

It might be in something completely different.

And one feels entitled to go into those other areas.

>> And so, you have a prize-winning idea associated with your name, as you've said.

And you've hinted at the sort of impact of it maybe being not just in one field, but

how do you kind of see it in your own terms?

Is it a kind of incremental development of something that was already there,

say in Marxist ideas or other places, or was it a real breakthrough, and if so,

how did you understand that yourself?

>> Well, I grafted on the Marxist ideas afterwards,

because obviously, [COUGH] the idea, [COUGH] was a bit like it.

And then it laid there, which is something which

was since the value of labor inputs wasn't valid in Marxist and Kelly.

The environment wasn't very much value towards that stage, but

it's because of the at little effort in labor value was in fact addressed and

lost totally not the fair system put in place, but a much better system.

So all I was saying for a time and

as I said I could say it at least this was the second failure of capitalism, but

unfortunately capitalism fails in different ways over labor and

the environment in different ways over centuries.

>> And so, do you think that it's hard to the idea of have more impact in say some

areas of practices or some areas of academia than others?

You think that, there were critics and economics and so on,

where do you think it's had the most impact?

>> Just in general understanding that water isn't what you thought it was.

If you think that water is just in the suitcase of waters that I talked about,

then that's very weak analytical position to be in.

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