Ways of Water - Ethical, Socio-Economic, Environmental, and Engineering Perspectives on Riverine and Oceanic Commons

It takes place on Monday, June 12 and Tuesday, June 13, 2023, the conference “Ways of Water - Ethical, Socio-Economic, Environmental, and Engineering Perspectives on Riverine and Oceanic Commons”, organized by and held at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna School, in cooperation with EELISA Partners Scuola Normale Superiore, Université Paris Sciences et Lettres, and Budapesti Műszaki és Gazdaságtudományi Egyetem. It will focus on two separate yet very interconnected iterations of water: rivers and oceans. We will look at them through a lens of the commons. We will explore the ways these waters are used and understood and can be used and understood in the future. Who owns water? Adjacent countries, all of humanity, or nature itself?

There are many ways to understand water. These range from a scientific conceptualization, as in H2O, or an ecological one, since it is the source of life, but also cultural, as with the Whanganui, a river in Aotearoa New Zealand that has been recognized as a legal person in 2017. Water is used metaphorically (calm, turbulent, stagnant, symbolising purity, renewal, and cleansing) but these expressions can quickly become very literal when considering the rise in droughts and sea levels. 

The conference is more than timely and inspired by, among others, the UN Ocean Decade (2021-2030), the recent UN Treaty on the High Seas, adopted in March of 2023, as well as the 30x30 Challenge, adopted in December of 2022. These developments reflect a growing awareness regarding the urgency of water-related decision-making processes on a global, European, as well as national level which will be mirrored in future research projects like Horizon Europe, among others.