SASUF Sustainability Forum 2024

Our workshop is centred around the activities of our SASUF-NRF funded Seed Grant project entitled:  Fresh and Marine Water Management for Food Security and Water Democracy in the context of Climate Change and Regional Policy in South Africa and Sweden. Our research activities include interaction and dialogues with farmers, water institutions and local communities in the two countries. The main objectives of our workshop are to advance deeper comparative understanding of the challenges arising from the links between local water security and sustainable coastal management in the context of climate change and regional policies for climate adaptation in Sweden and South Africa.

Based on our previous work funded by SASUF, we expect to address the following questions in the proposed workshop: 1) How can actors with conflicting interests in water management cooperate in finding ways for better local water policy governance and food security in regional areas of Sweden and South Africa? 2) How is the management of fresh and marine water incorporated into regional policies in Sweden and South Africa? 3) What are the water policy problems contributing to climate change maladaptation in rural territories of South Africa and Sweden? 4) How can existing local approaches and actions for water democracy and food security enable the achievement of the SDG13 (Climate Action) and SDG 6 (Water)? In the workshop we want to share some of the results of our field work that relate to this project, including activities that we will carry out in Uppsala before the Sustainability Forum. We also want to seek collaboration with other partners working in the same research areas. We aim to build capacity in this area by involving students in the research and our field activities. Beyond the Sustainability Forum we plan to host our Swedish colleagues in South Africa, together with our partners, and we will have conversations with farmers and communities.

The four principal investigators in the project will share their field research experiences for about 10-15 minutes each. Then we will open the last hour for discussion/dialogue on the following questions:
What are your experiences on the challenges faced by local communities in participating in water policy governance and contributing to ensuring food security? How can existing local approaches and actions for water democracy and food security enable the achievement of the SDG13 (Climate Action) and SDG 6 (Water)?

We will facilitate the workshop and synthesise the discussion by using participatory methods to engage other researchers in collectively addressing the questions above.

Keywords: Fresh Water, Marine Water, Food Security, Climate Change, Water Security