Module GEOG3177: WATERWORLDS AND WELL BEING

Department: Geography

GEOG3177: WATERWORLDS AND WELL BEING

Prerequisites

• Any Level 2 Geography Module

Corequisites

• None

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None

Aims

• To explore the multiple perspectives and scales through which water is understood
• To interrogate the implications of taking a multiple perspective approach to the global contemporary challenges in water use and governance
• To connect insights from a multiple perspectives approach to everyday encounters with water

Content

• This specialised module will meet the overall aims through a mix of conceptual and case study material. Only 2.5% of the Earth's water is fresh-water, and 98.8% of that water is stored in ice and groundwater. Water plays an important role in the world economy as it is vital for human wellbeing; water and its availability is a major social and economic concern and it has been estimated that by 2025 more than half of the world population will be facing water-based vulnerability. Safe drinking water is essential to humans and other life-forms and there is increasing pressure to conserve our environments to support more sustainable wildlife and water use. Academic and policy communities proliferate multiple and competing understandings of the ways in which we engage with water in our everyday lives. The module will reflect on these different ways in which water is perceived and explore how bringing some of these together may bring new insights to addressing the very real challenges facing our ‘waterworlds’ in the future. This will include discussion of themes of sustainability, ownership, cultural and managerial uses of water.

Learning Outcomes

• On successful completion of this module students will be able to:
• Bring a critical approach to reviewing academic and policy literatures on water
• Reflect on the different kinds of values adhering to water in our everyday worlds
• Realise the opportunities and challenges in mobilising an inter-disciplinary understanding of water related issues
• Understand the complexities of connections in flows and consumption of water across different scales of analysis

• On successful completion of this module students will be able to:
• Synthesise information across different perspectives (political, economic, cultural, emotional, biological, managerial etc.)
• Explore the ways apparent different scales of analysis interconnect
• Critically examine the hidden assumption and possible vested interests of specific framings in different academic and policy approaches.

• On successful completion of this module students will be able to:
• Show critical written analytical skills by evaluating concomitant factors within the ‘waterworld’
• Manipulate and communicate the language and arguments across different (social and technical) academic perspectives (for example what changes in wellbeing may result from a technical intervention in the ‘waterworld’)
• Integrate complex themes relating to water availability, provision and use with multi-scalar arguments (i.e. ranging from a personal to wider global perspective)

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• The module will be structured through participatory lectures across substantive themes and issues relating to water. Students will be supported in their own learning through two tutorials based on key readings that illuminate the learning outcomes. Students will prepare mini-presentations for discussion based on the formative assignment through a workshop format.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

A group presentation of mapping one-day’s encounters with water, the networks of those encounters, the institutions involved in those networks.

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University