Last July 2019 was a milestone for the “GovernAgua Project: Transforming water governance in South America: from reaction to adaptation and anticipation.” Between July 24 and 27, at SARAS headquarters, it was carried out the first workshop that brought together researchers from Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay., , This activity included a public event held to launch the project, with the participation of project partners and government agency authorities, among others.

GovernAgua is one of the most important and ambitious projects that SARAS is currently developing. With a team of more than thirty researchers from Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, this project will focus on six river basins: Laguna del Cisne and Laguna del Sauce in Uruguay, Chubut river, lower basin (Chubut) and Río Nuevo river (San Luis) in Argentina, and rivers Paraíba do Sul and Piriacicaba, Capivari and Jundiaí in San Pablo, Brazil.

Water, as an ecosystem service, interconnects spaces, scales, uses, temporalities, actors and knowledge. Water supply crises arise in contexts of global and local changes. They offer windows of opportunity for learning and transforming public goods governance systems based on collaboration, co-creation of knowledge and construction of shared meaning or agreements. Mostly, these crises only result in reactive and ephemeral actions that fail to stimulate learning, anticipation and resilience. In a region like South America, with a large part of global water resources and that is underrepresented in comparative studies, studying crises in different watersheds is an opportunity to improve water governance.

On this basis and in this context, researchers had four intensive working sessions aimed at reviewing project objectives, research strategies and planned activities for 2019-2021; reaching agreements on the common conceptual framework for the three countries; and promoting team integration (including the formation of a group of fellows).
On July 26, the launch event of the GovernAgua project was held at SARAS, with the presence of project PI and Co-PIs: Micaela Trimble(SARAS), Pedro Jacobi (Institute of Energy and Environment, University of São Paulo (IEE / USP ), Brazil), Esteban Jobbágy (Institute of Applied Mathematics San Luis, IMASL-CONICET, National University of San Luis, Argentina) and Miguel Pascual (Patagonian Institute for the Study of Continental Ecosystems, IPEEC-CONICET-CENPAT, Argentina) and their teams.

It brought together more than fifty people, including project partners such as: Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI), funding institution, UNESCO International Hydrological Program, Global Water Partnership ( GWP) South America, authorities of the National Water Directorate (DINAGUA), local authorities of the National Water Supply and Sanitation Company (OSE), local government authorities, as well as civil society, academy and media representatives.

This project intends to achieve a goal. It will seek to answer various questions about the water crises that have occurred in the region and how they have been managed, in order to create precedents that allow us to adopt a proactive and adaptive role, rather than just being reactive. At the same time, it will have a transdisciplinary approach, that is, an investigation oriented to real-world problems, which will actively involve different actors during the process and that will combine different sources of knowledge, know-how and experiences.

For more information about GovernAgua project clic here