Science and Policy for Water Security

A strategy to improve scientific literacy among policymakers and investors

To tackle the challenge of how to effectively educate important stakeholders about ground water in the United States, 11 graduate students from the Earth Institute and School of International and Public Affairs MPA in Environmental Science and Policy program, advised by Nancy Degnan, adjunct faculty at SIPA, were asked to recommend a strategy to improve scientific literacy among policymakers and investors. Working with Upmanu Lall, director of the Columbia Water Center and their client, Circle of Blue, the team came up with a thematically and regionally focused approach. The students won SIPA's Leous/Parry Award for Progressive Sustainability for their work, and their recommendations are already being implemented.

Researchers and students at the Columbia Water Center, Earth Institute have been spending months collecting data, analyzing and evaluating the conditions of U.S. water resources under the leadership of Lall, principal investigator for the National Science Foundation-funded project, America's Water: The Changing Landscape of Risk, Competing Demands and Climate. As part of the education and outreach component of the project, students from the MPA program designed a strategy for groundwater education, with an accompanying report, for their graduate capstone experience called the Workshop in Applied Policy Analysis. The goal of the education strategy revolved around one driving question: How do we communicate scientific findings effectively and to the right people? As one of the experts interviewed in the VICE episode noted: "few people know too much, and most people know too little." And, as Lall himself has said, "Water is the incipient issue of 21st-century sustainable development."

Students made a strategy for education and proposes a pilot education program. In the education strategy, students emphasize the need for integration of resources on U.S. groundwater, implementation of an accessible go-to platform where stakeholders can obtain reliable information on groundwater, whether scientific or regulatory. Another key component of the education strategy is infusing an interdisciplinary understanding of groundwater stresses. Environmental problems and solutions embody rigorous science, yet scientists usually aren't the individuals with the decision-making power.

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Taxonomy

• Water Security
• Water Security
• Water Security
• Water Policy
• Water Policy