research overview
- Water literacy, or community water knowledge, attitudes and behaviors, is a concept of increasing importance for water managers around the world. Supply-focused paradigms that aimed to capture, control, and commodify water resources are increasingly unreliable and often depend on environmentally and socially damaging practices. Particularly in drought-prone regions, water managers stretch limited water resources using equitable water policies, conservation programs, and alternative water sourcing, the success of which relies in varying degrees on a water literate citizenry. Communities with higher water literacies are better prepared to understand drought needs and uptake water conservation practices. Moreso, water managers who engage their communities with water literacy benefit from the transparency, perceived trustworthiness, and ability to identify and address local water injustices. My research is therefore focused on understanding how drought management paradigms contribute to or detract from community water literacy. I have researched this through case studies in Cape Town, South Africa, and Colorado, USA.
