Connecting Water Resilience and Climate Resilience Policy Discourses: advancing advocacy practice and development theories

在这个不确定的时代，对气候变化的理解已经从“未来风险”转变为“当前问题”，韧性已经成为政策制定的主要概念，由世界各地的政府、非政府组织和学术界推广，以解决气候不稳定问题。弹性是一种解释和分析从外部冲击和干扰中恢复的能力的方式，在环境背景下用于描述在从经验中学习的同时为特定风险做好准备（McGreavy 2016; Adger 2000; Moser 2017）。在我的论文中，我开发了一个理论和方法框架来研究弹性政策的争论。在我的框架中，弹性不仅是一个研究主题，而且是一种分析工具，用于绘制随时间变化的话语变化，并揭示导致这种变化的原因。这种想法的核心是理解弹性是一个过程，而不是一种状态。通过这一弹性过程，社会环境系统通过学习和沟通来抵抗、调整和转变威胁（Matyas和Pelling 2014）。目前发展研究中的关键弹性奖学金已经开始解决其政治因素，不仅研究弹性“从/到什么”，而且研究“由/为谁”？（Cretney 2014）。我将这些问题纳入传播学研究，询问弹性过程是如何被调节的。到目前为止，我的研究创造性地应用了这一弹性框架，通过报纸上的媒体代表和政府宣传活动来调查以色列关于水政策的辩论。气候危机与水有着千丝万缕的联系，因为它增加了水循环的可变性，引发了极端天气（洪水和干旱），并影响了水质和生物多样性。再加上不断增长的水需求和能源密集型水业务（如抽水和处理）（联合国水机制，2019年），在气候变化时期保持有弹性、可靠和高效的供水是一项影响公民、社区、企业和政府的重大挑战。我的博士论文通过使用弹性观点来分析关于水利政策的争论，展示了这一观点如何有助于我们对气候风险和水资源管理的理解。我的奖学金的目的是通过出版物、会议演讲和组织活动的形式，加深我与水部门参与者和发展研究/政治生态奖学金之间的知识接触和传播。我的一份出版物将介绍我在论文中提出的弹性理论框架，以便在发展中国家的其他案例研究中实施。与Waterwise合作，我将为水务部门的决策者、水务公司和英国的国际发展慈善机构组织一个利益相关者研讨会，探讨水倡导倡议的挑战和趋势，以及“气候/水弹性”话语对他们工作的潜在影响。在雷丁全球发展研究部和IDS资源政治与环境变化集群的支持下，我将组织一个关于气候适应能力的国际在线研讨会。研讨会将汇集学者和实践者，发展伙伴关系，分享知识，确定发展实践的理论差距和挑战。最后，在推进我的出版组合，建立知识共享和合作生产的关系，并确定民间社会的理论差距和挑战之后，我将在该奖学金期间申请进一步的资助。在此奖学金期间产生的影响活动和产出，包括获得专著合同，将使我成为一个领先的跨学科社会科学研究人员，研究气候适应能力和水资源管理的个人、文化和政治层面以及相互作用。

In this era of uncertainty in which the understanding of climate change has shifted from a 'future risk' to a 'current issue', resilience has become a leading concept for policymaking, promoted by governments, NGOs and academics around the world for addressing climatic instabilities. Resilience is a way of explaining and analysing abilities to recover from external shocks and disturbances and is used in environmental contexts to describe building readiness for specific risks while learning from experience (McGreavy 2016; Adger 2000; Moser 2017). In my thesis, I developed a theoretical and methodological framework to study contestation of resilience policies. In my framework, resilience is not only a subject of study but also an analytic tool for mapping discursive changes over time and revealing what caused that change. Central to this thinking is an understanding that resilience is a process and not a state. Through this process of resilience, social-environmental systems resist, adjust and transform in response to threats, via learning and communication (Matyas and Pelling 2014). Current critical resilience scholarship in development studies has begun addressing its political elements by not only studying resilience 'from/to what', but also 'by/for whom?' (Cretney 2014). I incorporate these questions into communication studies by asking how processes of resilience are mediated.My research so far has innovatively applied this resilience framework to investigate the debate in Israel about water policies, through its media representation in newspapers and government publicity campaigns. The climate crisis is inextricably linked to water as it increases variability in the water cycle, induces extreme weather (floods and droughts), and affects water quality and biodiversity. Coupled with increasing water demand and energy-intensive water operations (e.g. pumping and treatment) (UN-Water 2019), sustaining a resilient, reliable and efficient water supply in times of climatic change is a significant challenge affecting citizens, communities, businesses and governments. By using the resilience perspective to analyse contesting discourses over hydropolicies, my PhD thesis demonstrated how this perspective contributes to our understanding of climate risks and water management.The aim of my fellowship is to deepen my engagement with and dissemination of knowledge among water sector actors and development studies/political ecology scholarship, in the form of publications, conference presentations, and organising activities. One of my publications will present the theoretical framework of resilience developed in my thesis in order to enable its implementation in other case studies from developing countries. In collaboration with Waterwise, I will organise a stakeholder workshop for water sector policymakers, water companies, and UK-based international development charities, to explore challenges and trends in water advocacy initiatives, and the potential impact of 'climate/water resilience' discourses on their work. With the support of Reading's Global Development Research Division and the IDS Resource Politics and Environmental Change Cluster, I will organise an international online symposium on climate resilience. The symposium will bring together scholars and practitioners to develop partnerships for sharing knowledge and to identify theoretical gaps and challenges for development practice. Finally, after advancing my publication portfolio, establishing relationships for sharing and coproduction of knowledge, and identifying theoretical gaps and challenges for civil society, I will apply for further funding during this fellowship. The impact activities and outputs produced during this fellowship, including obtaining a monograph contract, will establish me as a leading interdisciplinary social science researcher into the individual, cultural and political dimensions and interactions around climate resilience and water management.