This month, King’s Water staff and students will travel to the Okavango delta in Botswana for an interdisciplinary project on river sustainability. As part of the Global River Basins Connections project funded by the PLuS Alliance, a network between Kings, Univ of New South Wales and Arizona State Univ, this trip aims to enhance experiential learning on key issues of river basin management, water cooperation and conflict and human-ecosystem dependence.
The Okavango delta is a significant biodiversity hotspot as well as a UNESCO World Heritage site. The management of the river requires international cooperation with the river being shared between Botswana, Namibia and Angola. This basin has also recently experienced drought, making the question of sustainability even more pressing.
Students from the three universities will working together to practise various field sampling, survey skills and monitoring methods to understand the river and terrestrial environment as well as enhance their knowledge of river basin governance, development and geopolitics in this transboundary setting.
From King’s Water, Dr Mike Chadwick, Dr Naho Mirumachi and Dr Emma Tebbs coordinates this trip to pilot an interdisciplinary fieldwork module for the Geography Department. Six undergraduate and master’s students from the department have been selected on a competitive basis to join this trip.
