The university plans to begin offering a new doctoral program in water diplomacy next fall, offering what organizers say will be a nuanced framework for studying the vital natural resource.
The program, started under the guidance of 17 faculty members from the Schools of Engineering and Arts and Sciences and The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, expects to enroll 25 students over five years, according to Professor of Political Science Kent Portney, a member of the program's core faculty.
Although Tufts currently has programs that examine water−related issues, the doctoral program offers a unique interdisciplinary approach, according to Shafiqul Islam, director of the new program.
"The water diplomacy doctoral program is an interdisciplinary initiative," Islam, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the School of Engineering and a professor of water diplomacy at The Fletcher School, said. "We have essentially focused on bringing in faculty and students from two domains of knowledge: those who focus on the natural domain and those who focus on the societal domain of approaching water issues."
"We argue that origins of most water problems may be understood as [an] intricate coupling between natural and societal domains," he said.
Portney said a study of water issues must address the societal domain.
"It refers to the idea that the way we address water scarcity issues is very much influenced by the social and political context in which that conflict arises — i.e. who the people are, the geography of the place, preferences of the people who live there and the wide array of social context issues that are brought to bear," Portney said.
"Thus, what we understand and do about water is influenced by the social and political contexts," he said.
The Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program of the National Science Foundation, an independent federal agency, provided funding for the doctoral program.
The IGERT program is geared toward creating new models of interdisciplinary doctoral programs, according to Islam. Of the 500 proposals submitted last year, Tufts' water diplomacy program was one of 20 that the National Science Foundation will support with $4.2 million grants, he said.
Once underway, the program's curriculum will initially focus on water problems in the United States and South Asia.
"We chose these regions because of their wide ranges of historical and emerging water problems as well as our existing collaborations and ongoing research activities," Islam said. "These regional foci will allow us to compare and contrast [the] nature and origin of water disputes and their resolution in developing and developed country contexts."
Islam saw a demand for a water diplomacy program when he co−taught a university seminar on the subject in Fall 2008 with William Moomaw, a professor of international environmental policy and director of the Center for International Environment and Resources Policy at The Fletcher School.
In addition to the Tufts faculty members involved with the program, an external advisory board of scientists, policymakers and practitioners will contribute expertise to different specialties of the doctoral program, according to Islam.
The members of the board are close acquaintances of some of the program faculty and collaborate with them on various research projects or teaching, according to Islam.
Lawrence Susskind, a professor of urban and environmental planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the board, said that a key focus of water diplomacy — and environmental negotiations at large — is facilitating the international management of vital resources.
"Environmental diplomacy involves helping all of the nations of the world work together to manage natural resources that transcend the borders of any one country, such as ocean, big freshwater seas, water basins, mineral deposits, atmosphere — that is, all of these natural resources that are all beyond what any one country could control," Susskind told the Daily.
The program, Islam believes, will teach students to conceive of ways to expand the usage of a limited but essential natural resource.
"Through an interdisciplinary synthesis of knowledge from natural and societal domains, students from this program will transform fixed water quantity into a flexible resource and create actionable knowledge to resolve emerging water problems," Islam said.
Islam said that a crucial component of the program's curriculum will be the completion of a water−related internship at a partner organization.
Among the international partner organizations are South Asia Consortium for Interdisciplinary Water Resources Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, and the Institute of Water and Flood Management of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.
