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Water Security (Cluster)

Program Type: Cluster

Water security, the ability to access and benefit from affordable, adequate, reliable, and safe water for wellbeing and a healthy life, is imperative to human flourishing. The Water Security graduate cluster provides interdisciplinary training on the many causes, consequences, and solutions for water insecurity. Students will be exposed to training in the arts, the social and physical sciences, technology, and their appropriate application.

There are four unambiguous facts about water that make it one of the most serious problems humans will face this century. First, humans need a regular supply of clean water to have even minimally decent lives. Second, water is distributed across the planet in dramatically uneven ways, leaving large swaths of the earth, and its inhabitants, with little to no water security. Third, delivering an adequate supply of usable water is expensive, technically challenging, and creates serious trade-offs with other imperatives, such as environmental protection and property rights. Finally, this global water crisis is vast and expanding. Worldwide, roughly a billion people do not have access to safe drinking water sources and 4 billion people spend at least 1 month of the year facing severe water scarcity. Water consumption globally is rising at double the rate of population increase, and compounding this issue, global per capita freshwater availability has concomitantly dropped. In fact, many countries consume water—for agriculture, industry, and energy production—at rates far exceeding natural replenishment.

Because of these complexities and severity, water insecurity is a necessarily cross-disciplinary domain. Water security is determined at many levels of the Socio-Ecological Framework (Figure 1). Similarly, the effects of water insecurity span all of these levels (Figure 1). There are severe consequences for individuals (e.g. poor mental and physical health), communities (e.g. infrastructure, migration), nations (e.g. political stability, foreign relations, national security), and the natural environment (e.g. desertification, flooding).

Training in the Water Security cluster will occur across disciplinary, geographic, and political boundaries. The required courses and activities offer three key advantages to participating students and mentors; these intellectual and competitive advantages can also easily be translated beyond the topic of water security.

Advantage 1. The ability to articulate the links between different types of knowledge and methods across the social sciences, natural sciences, humanities, and engineering.

Advantage 2. The ability to identify unanswered questions at the intersection of disciplines, and to answer these questions using a wide array of methods.

Advantage 3. The ability to work in multi-disciplinary teams and communicate complex concepts to diverse audiences.

Programs and events

The cluster in Water Security organizes events two annual events that cluster students are expected to attend: the NU Water Jamboree and the Transboundary Water Symposium.

There are also two monthly seminars that are mandatory: the Watering Hole Seminar Series and the Wildcats in Water Seminar Series.

How to Apply

Perspective and enrolled PhD students interested in participating in this cluster should email both cluster co-Directors, sharing their CV and describing their interest in the Cluster in 2-3 paragraphs.

Who to Contact

Please contact the cluster co-directors, listed below, with application materials. General questions about this program can be directed to water@northwestern.edu.

The following requirements are in addition to, or further elaborate upon, those requirements outlined in The Graduate School Policy Guide.

The cluster in Water Security requires students to take three courses. These span several colleges and engage multiple university-wide centers, programs, and institutes:

  1. ANTHRO 357-0 /GBL_HLTH 357-0 Biocultural Perspectives on Water Insecurity: Causes and consequences from cultural and health perspectives. This is offered each Winter quarter.
  2. CIV_ENV 395-0 Special Topics in Civil and Environmental Eng: Water in Israel and the Middle East: Resilience, Sustainability, and Security. This is offered each Spring.
  3. One graduate level course related to water, approved by cluster director(s).

The Anthropology/Global Health course will train students to think about water security from the micro- to the macro- perspective, and focus on issues of perception, experiences, cultural expectations, and health. The Civil Engineering course will provide a place-based example to explore social, political, natural science, and engineering dimensions of water security with coteaching by faculty in McCormick and Weinberg. Students are also encouraged to take additional elective courses as appropriate.