India’s Water Crisis: Bridging the Science-Policy-Practice Gap
Name of the Speaker: Dr. Veena Srinivasan
Title of the Seminar: India’s Water Crisis: Bridging the Science-Policy-Practice Gap [Gallery]
Date and Time: 26th June, 2019 (Wednesday), 4:00 PM
Venue: Lecture Hall, ICWaR
About the speaker: Dr. Veena’s research interests include inter-sectoral water allocation and conflict transformation, impacts of multiple stressors on water security, ground and surface water linkages, low-cost sensing and citizen science, and sustainable water management policy and practice. More recently, she has initiated work on Bangalore’s lakes with the goal of understanding how lakes can contribute to water security as well as creating a citizen’s dashboard, which synthesizes data from low-cost sensors and citizen scientists to help manage urban lakes better. Dr. Veena is in the leadership team of the Panta-Rhei initiative of the International Association of Hydrologic Sciences (IAHS). She was recently appointed to the Strategic Advisory Group of the task force for Monitoring SDG6 by UN-Water. Dr. Veena has served as a resource person for National Water Mission, and serves on the Steering Committee of the Water Conflicts Forum in India. Dr. Veena has won several awards for her research including the 2015 Jim Dooge Award for best paper in the Journal of Hydrology and Earth System Science from the European Geophysical Union, the 2012 Water Resources Research Editor’s Choice Award from the American Geophysical Union. She has received an Editor’s citation for excellence in reviewing for the Journal of Water Resources Research in the years 2016 and 2017. She is the current chair holder of the prestigious Prins Claus Chair in Netherlands from 2018-2020. She has also been invited to be an IUGG Union Lecturer in 2019. She has been a recipient of the Teresa Heinz Environmental Scholars Award, a Presidential Graduate Fellowship at Boston University as well as the government of India’s National Talent Search Scholarship. Veena received her PhD from Stanford University’s Emmet Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER). Dr. Veena holds a Masters in Energy and Environmental Studies from Boston University, Massachusetts and a B-Tech in Engineering Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.
Abstract: India is one of the most water-stressed countries in the world. However, despite an appreciable increase in funding for water research, high-quality science, that is usable by stakeholders remains elusive.There is an urgent need for “use-inspired” research on questions that actually matter to stakeholders, trans-disciplinary research, and empirical primary data on fundamental science questions. But what does such research entail? What do we understand, what questions still remain to be answered? Finally, how does science actually translate into policy and practice? What are the policy levers or game changers and how do we ensure that scientific research actually informs efforts to adopt them.
Date/Time
Date(s) - 26/06/2019
4:00 pm
