Course description
Governance for Transboundary Freshwater Security
Freshwater scarcity, stress, and crisis are increasing worldwide. More than a billion people live in water-scarce regions, and 3.5 billion could experience water scarcity by 2025. These pressures disproportionally affect vulnerable and marginalized people, including those living in poverty and displacement. Rising pollution levels accelerate the crisis by reducing water availability for human use and impacting aquatic life in rivers, lakes, aquifers, and the oceans.
Transboundary basins account for roughly 60% of freshwater resources, serving 2.8 billion people, or 42% of the world’s population. Complex shared transboundary freshwater and ecosystems cut across myriad sectoral needs, themes, and political boundaries. Setting effective policy goals, coupled with investments, means working at multiple scales with a range of public and private stakeholders throughout the watershed, from source to sea and beyond.
This course presents multiple facets of governance for transboundary freshwater security – from financing mechanisms to negotiation skills – while emphasizing the urgency of sustainable development and cooperation at many levels. It extends from basic building blocks and concepts to advanced thinking about transboundary governance, and applies theory to practice through examples and case studies. Topics covered in six modules range from the fundamentals of transboundary water security to international water law, water diplomacy, negotiations, institutions, management tools, and sustainable finance.
Upcoming start dates
Who should attend?
Prerequisites
None
Training content
Introduction to the Massive Open Online Course on Transboundary Freshwater Security
- Introduction to transboundary water cooperation and water security
- Water diplomacy and negotiation skills
- International water law
- Institutions
- Management tools and mechanisms for governance of transboundary freshwater security
- Finance for transboundary water security
Concluding lecture: Key learnings from the course and next steps
Course delivery details
This course is offered through SDG Academy, a partner institute of EdX.
4-6 hours per week
Costs
- Verified Track -$49
- Audit Track - Free
Certification / Credits
What you'll learn
- Basic understandings of transboundary freshwater security
- Fundamentals of transboundary water cooperation
- Concepts, roles, and functions of different tracks of water diplomacy
- Key approaches to negotiation, including inter-personal skills and techniques
- Principles of international water law
- Case studies of international water law in application
- Transboundary water institutions’ roles, functions, establishment processes, and success factors
- Management tools on transboundary water: including decision support tools, transboundary diagnostic analysis (TDA), and strategic action programme (SAP)
- Conjunctive management of surface water and groundwater
- The source-to-sea approach in a transboundary water context
- Stakeholder participation approaches and tools
- Various options for financing transboundary water cooperation
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edX
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