Research Projects

My Ph.D. focuses on water governance and water politics in transboundary water basins using the Cubango-Okavango River Basin (CORB – a transboundary river basin shared by Angola, Namibia, and Botswana) as a case study. The PhD is part of a wider Resilient Waters Programme supported by USAID Southern Africa which inter alia aims to build more resilient communities and ecosystems by improving governance of transboundary water resources in the midst of shifting hydroclimatic regimes.

Governance challenges such as legal pluralism, panaceas like integrated water resources management (IWRM) and adaptive governance, and the inherent complexity of the Cubango-Okavango River Basin (CORB) are potential precursors to an increasing level of discordancy between state and non-state actors in the CORB. These discordances may lead to potential conflicts and tensions between state and non-state actors in decision-making regarding water resources. This contributes to inequities in access to, allocation, use and sustainability of transboundary/shared water resources. Transformative changes are essential to curtail these trends and to bring about equitable water governance and enhance access for marginalised actors in social-ecological systems like the CORB.

The PhD aims to explore whether other forms of water governance approaches other than the IWRM can lead to more equitable and sustainable water governance in the CORB; to examine how pluralistic water governance influences the role of state and non-state actors in water governance of the CORB from a Namibian perspective; to understand how state and non-state actors mediate hydropolitics of transboundary water basins such as the CORB; to explore the role of futures studies in transformative water governance of the CORB; and finally to explore how we might think about solutions that work within Complex Adaptive Systems features.