Investigating Water Issues: Methods and Principles

This workshop introduces participants to basic principles of Water Issues and investigation. It provides guidance and tips on investigating exposure to water access, water pollution, vulnerabilities and coping capacities that participants can apply to their local context. Participants will gain awareness on the complex relationship between climate change, human activities, public policies and societal safety, as well as potential wrongdoing related to water infrastructures.

Shortcuts

• Workshop Overview
• Learning Activities
  • Opening
    • Workshop Introduction
    • Participants’ Introductions / Icebreaker
  • Introduction to Water Issues
    • Presentation with Shared Materials
    • Starting points – Water Issues Adaptation investigations
  • Investigating exposure to water hazards
    • Introduction to Water Hazards
    • Data resources for investigating water issues exposure
  • Investigating social vulnerabilities to water issues
    • Introduction to “vulnerability investigations"
    • Avenues for investigating water vulnerabilities
  • Investigating capacities to cope with water issues
    • Introduction to “coping capacities investigations
    • Investigating based on the four disaster management phases
  • Closure
    • Remember: key aspects to investigate
    • Wrap-up Activity: Takeaway Poster
    • Conclusion
• Further Resources
  • General Resources
  • Research, articles and guides
  • Collaborative Networks and Organisations
• Credits and Licensing

Workshop Overview

Topic: Mindset, methods and tools to investigate Water Issues

Aims:

• To introduce participants to basic principles of Water Issues.
• To provide guidance and tips on investigating exposure to Water Issues, human activities, vulnerabilities and coping capacities that participants can apply to their local context.
• To provide resources and data tools to investigate water hazards, pollution, water access and disasters.
• To raise awareness on the complex relationship between water, public policies and social safety, as well as potential wrongdoing related to water infrastructures.

Learning outcomes:

• To be able to understand the concepts of individual and collective risks, and to be aware of resources and organisations for training and further education.
• Learn how to monitor access to water and water pollution, water hazards and the exposure of populations, landsides, buildings, cities, etc. to these issues.
• Identify ways of assessing potential vulnerabilities in access to water and water quality, including the historical legacies and root causes of these vulnerabilities.
• Be able to take part in a field investigation
• Apply context relevant methods and tools for investigating Water Issues adaptation, in climate change perspective.

General guidelines for trainers:

• This workshop can be divided into 30-50 minute long sessions. Between sessions, trainers can add a short break or a quick energizer activity.
• For small group activities, divide participants into groups of 3-5 people. Adapt the time you allocate to feedback and post-exercise discussions based on the number of workshop participants and size of groups/teams. You can also assign roles depending on the number of participants. Roles can include: Facilitator, Recorder/Note-taker, Timekeeper, Presenter, Artist (whenever a visual presentation is required.)
• For online workshops (introduction level), we recommend sharing a timer on the screen during energizers and small group activities.
• Whenever possible, adapt the workshop examples to the context of your audience.

Mode of delivery: online / in-person workshops

Workshop duration (without breaks):

• Online session (introduction level): 3 hours and 40 minutes (minimum)
• in-person introductivion level: 4 hours

Size of class: 8 to 24 participants for 1 or 2 trainers

Related resources:

• From Exposing the Invisible
  • “No Disaster Is Natural: How investigating climate change adaptation could make a difference”, by Léopold Salzenstein for Exposing the Invisible, Tactical Tech.
  • “Bio-investigations in the field”, Methods, tools and good-practices for investigating your local environment, by XavCC for Exposing the Invisible, Tactical Tech.
• From petites singularités
  • hack2o.eu
  • Hack2O intro / explication
  • O₄FFDEM Theme: Watersheds

Learning Activities

Opening (15 minutes)

This Openning can be used as part of an online session (introduction level) or a full training session.

Workshop Introduction (Read Watch Listen | 5 minutes)

Instructions for trainer

• Grab attention if needed by posing a question or commenting on a relevant topic, image, etc.

• Introduce yourself and the goals of the workshop.

• Optional: Introduce the source of the workshop material

• Inform participants of the workshop agenda.

• Suggest ground rules for the workshop. Ask participants whether they would like to modify your suggestions or suggest other rules. Ensure that everybody understands and agrees with the ground rules. Specific suggestions about setting ground rules are available in the Facilitator’s Guide, section on “Delivering the Workshops”.

Participants’ Introductions / Icebreaker (Produce | 10 minutes)

Instructions

• Make a quick round of introductions by asking participants to answer a couple of questions about themselves, their work, their workshop expectations. In particular, ask participants if they are interested in focusing on one or several specific water issues and take note of the topics mentioned to refer to them during the workshop, if possible.

• Note regarding expectations: make sure to specifically ask participants what they expect from the workshop; this allows you to make final adjustments on how to cover the content but also to clarify what will not be covered, and why.

In addition, if your time allows it, you can include one of the following brief questions / activities:

• Ask each participant to pick one or two emotions from the “wheel of emotions” (see Annex: Emotion & Feeling Wheel - The Junto Institute for Entrepreneurial Leadership), in order to describe their feelings towards this workshop topic. Start yourself and be honest and open, so as to encourage participants to be comfortable with sharing their feelings in the group.

• Alternatively, you can pick an icebreaker exercise that encourages participants to get creative by drawing answers or ideas on an online whiteboard or, if offline, stand up and perform some tasks. Check the Icebreakers section in the Facilitator’s Guide for inspiration.

Introduction to water issues (40 minutes)

This Introduction can be used as part of an online session (introduction level) or a full training session.

Introduction to water issues (Discuss | 10 minutes)

Instructions

• Ask participants to share the story of a water issue that happened in their region or country:

  • What happened?
  • How did they respond?
  • How did authorities respond?
  • What could have been done better?

• Remind participants that they are also welcomed to pick an example not connected to their personal experience, or even step out of the exercise if they are uncomfortable with the question.

• Take brief notes of the cases shared by participants. You might want to refer back to some of these examples later on during your presentations or discussions.

Presentation with shared materials

Tools/materials

• shared files (if online)
• sheets of paper and pens (if offline)

Instructions

Prepare and give a presentation, using shared (or projected) slides, including:

Introduce the topic:

• Starting an investigation means facing up to risks, for oneself, for the group, for friends and family. Safety First! Stay digitally, physically and psychologically safe and aware of potential risks at all times by adopting some basic good practices and tools to keep your human sources, yourself and your evidence protected. And Risk is inherited

• Emphasize the need to have a basic understanding of the “natural” (e.g. water cycle,season, volcanic activity, rainfall, etc.) and human-caused forces / factors (e.g. farming, land artificialization or deforestation, pollutant from industrial activities, mining, damn, etc.) behind water issues and climate change.

• Describe common resources for learning about the science and impacts of the water cycle and global warming (using examples from the list of “Further Resources” provided below). Ask participants to share additional resources by writing them in the chat (if online) or on a piece of paper (if offline), which will be placed in a common file / box and reviewed at the end of the workshop.

• Define Water Issues – Society’s understanding of water as part of the earth system and as a resource for living beings is uneven. Knowledge and understanding of the water cycle is often very approximate. The quantity and qualities of water are difficult to grasp. Water is a subject of discord and even conflict, sometimes armed, between populations, regions and states. Global warming is a major factor in the changes affecting water, and water is a key element in climate equilibrium.

  • Define Water issues adaptation – the process of adapting to the actual or expected effects of changes in water quality and quantity in order to reduce damage or exploit opportunities.
  • Define climate change adaptation – the process of adjusting to actual or expected effects of climate change to reduce harm or exploit opportunities.

• Describe the relationship between adaptation and mitigation −− adaptation is managing the unavoidable; mitigation is avoiding the unmanageable.

• No disaster is natural – a disaster happens when three factors meet:

  • Exposure to a hazard — such as a storm, a flood, a fire, a heatwave or drought.
  • Local vulnerabilities — the physical, social, economic and environmental factors that make a specific context vulnerable to external shocks. In Brazil, for example, favelas, or historically neglected informal neighborhoods, are often most impacted by landslides and flash floods, because they are built with low-quality material, on steep slopes and away from hospitals. Similarly, depending on their gender or religion, social class, people are differently exposed to risk and threats, Drinking in inequality: the fight against lead contamination in Lahore, Pakistan
  • Coping capacities — the ability or inability to respond to and recover from the effects of stresses and external shocks.

• Describe how vulnerabilities and coping capacities are shaped by decisions from a range of actors, including governments, municipalities and corporations. If relevant, illustrate this point using some of the examples shared earlier by participants.

• Provide examples of past investigations looking into each of these three components and the relationship among them. For instance:

• Exposure

  • Water Risk Atlas of the World Resources Institute, water stress, drought risk and riverine flood risk using a peer-reviewed methodology. The group evaluated the water stress levels of 189 countries and the regions within them. The top 17 high risk countries are Qatar, Israel, Lebanon, Iran, Jordan, Libya, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Eritrea, the UAE, San Marino, Bahrain, India, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Oman and Botswana.
  • In a 5-4 decision Supreme Court rules against Navajo Nation. Justice Kavanaugh wrote the opinion concluding that the United States is not responsible in protecting Water Rights for Indian Country leaving the Navajo Nation still fighting for access to Water. He found that the 1868 Treaty establishing the Navajo Reservation did not require the United States to take affirmative steps to secure Water for the Tribe.
  • An investigation from Troubled Waters exposed “The EU is an agricultural superpower, but the intensive agriculture that feeds us comes at great cost to our waters”. This survey includes a description of the “Access to public information in Europe” method used in several European countries to obtain data.
  • Following large floods in Germany in 2011, Euronews, the World Meteorological Organisation and the Süddeutsche Zeitung, among others, published analyses and investigative reports showing how climate change — by modifying precipitation, heat, and soil moisture in the country — had influenced the event

• Vulnerabilities:

  • For more than a century, the Nord/Pas-de-Calais region of France has been home to intense metallurgical activity. The Noyelles-Godault area is a perfect example. Umicore, the zinc (Zn) smelter located in Auby, is one of Europe’s largest plants, a source of employment and economic growth. Founded in 1869, it still produces around 220,000 tonnes of zinc a year.
  • At the end of the 90s, it was shown that 80% of food production in “developing” countries was carried out using polluted irrigation water. “Hydropolitics in the thrid world: conflict and cooperation in international river basins”, Elhance AP., 1999 & “Comprehensive assessment of fresh water resources of the world” UN Commission for Sustainable Dev. ; World Meteorological Organization, 1997
  • In Peru, climate change uprooted an Indigenous village and affected their access to water
  • Villagers demand answers over Botswana water transfer scheme. Residents of Tsinyane, which is a village tucked away on the outskirts of Malealea, Matelile, fear that if the Lesotho-Botswana Water Transfer Project begins it is going to mean they lose their ancestral homes as well as their livelihoods.
  • The Water Is Eating the Island. Villagers hang onto the last patch of Sierra Leone’s Nyangai Island, knowing that their home may soon disappear.

• Coping capacities:

  • Bangladesh has managed to reduce disaster deaths by implementing a raft of best practices including water issues, found this solution journalism investigation by The New Humanitarian.
  • In 2022, Assam: India floods destroy millions of homes and dreams, 4.7 million people made homeless, In one week, In one region. In India, infrastructure, architecture and public works inherited from the colonial period are at the root of the various episodes of flooding.
  • Water scarcity in Palestine is a top national priority issue. Extensive research has analysed the causes of water scarcity in Palestine, focusing on negotiations, the occupation, climate change, environmental conditions, the role of international donors and funders, and mismanagement.

RESOURCES:

• PublicLab page will help you find resources to explore the waterbodies you care about, and connect with other people who have the same interests
• Disaster Narratives of Flooding Experiences in Cap-Haitien, Haiti, Crystal Andrea Felima
• Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-Quake Chronicle, Haitian-born feminist anthropologist Gina Athena Ulysse.
• Climate change induced water stress and future semiconductor supply chain risk
• ‘We cannot exist if we lose the water’: In Honduras, a community resists a mine polluting the Río Guapinol
• Introductory course: Climate Change: The Science and Global Impact

Starting points – Water Issues Adaptation investigations (Discuss | 20 minutes)

Tools/materials

• Breakout rooms online or separate room areas, tables if off-line.
• Investigating Water Issues Adaptation: Activity Templates

Instructions

• Divide participants into small groups (3-5 people per group) and recommend that each group assigns a note-taker and presenter/speaker for later.

• Each group should take notes in a shared file, to present them to the others after their discussion.

[10 minutes]

• Ask groups to discuss one or two examples of water issues that have made the headlines at any local/national/regional/global level in recent years. For each disaster, they should identify these components:

  • the hazard/exposure,
  • the existing vulnerabilities,
  • the lack of coping capacities that enabled the disaster.

• Ask participants to also think about potential ideas/questions for investigating these water issues.

[10 minutes]

• Once the time is up, a representative of each group takes 1 minute to briefly share their group’s main discussion points with the others in the plenary room, including:
  • What water issues did they focus on?
  • What were their components (hazard/exposure, existing vulnerabilities, lack of coping capacities)?
  • How would they investigate them?

Investigating exposure to water hazards (55 minutes)

Introduction to water hazards (Read Watch Listen | 5 minutes)

Instructions

Prepare and give a presentation, using shared (or projected) slides, focusing on the following points:

• Characteristics of water hazards:

  • Extreme changes: flood, drought, fires, chemical quality, obstruction of water access, landsides etc.
  • Accident or breakdown in supply and treatment infrastructure
  • Meteorological changes: temperature, humidity, sun exposure, clouds, rainfall, snow, etc.
  • Air quality and wind patterns: storms, air pollution, etc.
  • Population changes: Human displacement, changes to fish stocks, algae, mammals, birds, plankton, plants, lichens, etc.
  • Biological risks: contimanitation and poisoning, pest, illnesses, etc.

• Mention that many of these hazards are being monitored and modelled on a near-real time basis by scientists and other experts.

• Therefore, there are many sources of information for investigators to connect water issues to the realities on the ground. See, for example, these lists of water issues in Canada, Copernicus Land Monitoring Service, NASA Global Water Measurements portal, or Aqueduct tools to identify and evaluate water risks around the world, Zoom Earth, ect.
  Or climate monitoring systems in Europe, Africa or global.

• These sources can also help us look at ways in which research and monitoring at expert levels can support or influence how political and administrative decisions are taken or how funds are channelled to different areas.

• Investigating exposure to water hazards then involves mapping out the ways in which water issues and climate change has modified current hazards, and how it will impact future ones – as well as how these hazards are likely to affect different societies, depending on their geography but also, as seen in the previous section, their socio-economic or political characteristics.

Data resources for investigating water issues exposure (Investigate | 50 minutes)

Tools/materials

• Investigating Climate Change Adaptation: Data Resources List provided in the Annex.
• Internet connection, computers or mobile phones/tablets.
• Break-out rooms (online) or separate tables / room areas (if offline).
• Flip-charts and pencils (if offline).
• Tool for making collaborative presentations or taking shared notes, such as a shared file/notepad, or whiteboard tools

Instructions

• Prepare in advance a slide or a large sheet of paper with the task guidelines and questions below.

• Divide participants into groups of equal size, aiming for maximum 4-6 groups to minimise time spent on presentations. If offline, each group should have at least one device with internet connection available for their research.

• Ask each group to start by assigning roles including Facilitator, Note-taker, Timekeeper, Presenter / Artist (if a visual presentation is needed.), etc.

Allocate one resource from the Data Resource list to each group.

• The choice of resource will depend on participants’ interest and background, as well as which hazards you decide to emphasise (e.g. drinking water, drought, floods, worng doing in water supplychain…)
• Make sure to verify that the resource is still available at the provided link before the exercise.
• Clearly define the scope of the resource to participants: should they explore an entire website, one webpage or a dataset of a website, etc.)?
• If relevant, you can ask participants to use their resource on a specific case study, for example to investigate a recent disaster or answer a question related to climate change adaptation (for example: “Which European country is more exposed to floods?” / “Were their more heatwaves in Brazil this year or last year?” etc.)

[20 minutes]

• Ask each group to analyse the provided resource and prepare a brief presentation answering the following questions about their resource:

  • What information does the resource contain?
  • What type of data is it based on?
  • Where does the data come from? Who collects and provides it?
  • What is its geographical coverage?
  • Does the data require a certain level of expertise to use and understand?
  • Is it downloadable and does it allow further processing?

• Participants should approach the presentation as an informal explanation of the tool, its’ advantages and potential limitations, using plain language and visual supports such as screenshots of the tool, a list of key points, or a mindmap.

[20 minutes]

• Following the task, each group takes 2 minutes to present their resource to the other participants.

• Encourage others to ask questions.

Note:
If there are too many groups, you can split the class into two (virtual or physical) rooms. Half of the tools will be presented in one room and the other half in the other room. In this case, make sure that there are enough co-trainers to facilitate each room in parallel and to take notes of the main findings to share with others.

[10 minutes]

• Open the floor to all participants and provide the following questions for their consideration:

• What could these resources be useful for?

• When could they be used during an investigation?

• For what purpose?

• Encourage participants to comment on the potential use of each resource for investigating local exposure to climate change, as well as potential limitations or challenges of each resource.

Info
This exercise also provides an opportunity to discuss the inherent biases and limitations of climate databases and online resources. Encourage participants to be critical and discuss the origins of the data, who is represented in it and who is not, as well as who funds that resource. These factors might influence the reliability of the data when using it in an investigation.

Investigating social vulnerabilities to water issues (40 minutes)

Introduction to “vulnerability investigations” (Read Watch Listen | 10 minutes)

Instructions

Prepare and give a presentation, using shared (or projected) slides, including:

• Define climate vulnerabilities – the (long-term, sometimes historical) factors making a specific context more or less resistant to climate hazards. The vulnerability of Haiti to climate disasters and food insecurity, for instance, stems among other things from colonial legacies, trade liberalisation and deforestation, according to a long-form article by The New Humanitarian.

• Define water vulnerabilities – – the (long-term, sometimes historical) factors making a specific context more or less resistant to water hazards. Mountains are the water towers of the world, supplying a substantial part of both natural and anthropogenic water demands. They are highly sensitive and prone to climate change. Water is a vital element. In just a few decades, human activities, particularly industrial ones, have had dramatic consequences for planetary balances, for all living organisms, and for human living conditions in all forms of water.

• Note that Investigations of climate and water vulnerabilities can explore the factors making a specific context more or less resistant to climate hazards. They also aim to explain the reasons behind this vulnerability.

• Also note that climate vulnerabilities must be triggered by specific hazards, which are often fueled by anthropogenic (human generated / caused) emissions or other human driven factors.

• Characteristics of climate & water vulnerabilities:

  • Historical vs. Emerging
  • Physical / Social / Economic / Environmental
  • Interdependent – while it can be helpful to separate vulnerabilities in different categories, in practice they are rarely totally independent from each other. During Hurricane Katrina, for example, economic vulnerabilities meant that low-income population could not afford to be housed in higher, less physically and environmentally vulnerable grounds, and were therefore more impacted when the levies breached.

• Define disaster resilience - introduce the term “disaster resilience” (also included in the next activity) to illustrate the relationship with water vulnerabilities:

  • Resilience in this context means the capacity of societies to cope with a hazardous event, water or climate event in our scope, or trend by responding or reorganising in ways that maintain their essential function, identity and structure (see for reference this report on relationship between water security, climate and climate adaptation decisions, drawing on research from the REACH Programme, conducted in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.)
  • Depending on your training context, you can also include some criticism of the concept of resilience. For example, a resilient autocratic / unfair society may “maintain their essential function, identity and structure” against the desire of its population, or even use climate change as a pretext for authoritative / unfair measures.

• Provide examples of investigations and potential investigative questions for each water characteristic, so as to make this section more practical and tangible (see No Disaster Is Natural: How investigating climate change adaptation could make a difference for examples).

  • La mine, ses allié·es et ses ennemi·es., Il présente 3 jeux de données et 3 cartes pour envisager les alliances sur le territoire français.
  • G. E. B. Morren expose (1983) les décisions politiques, les doctrines, sur des infrastructures, avec des orientations techniques et méthodologiques, jusque dans leurs conséquences avant et après une catastrophe.

Avenues for investigating water vulnerabilities (Collaborate | 30 minutes)

Tools/Materials

• Breakout rooms online or separate room areas, tables if offline
• Flip-charts and pencils (if offline)
• A tool for making collaborative presentations / brainstorming if online

Instructions

[15 minutes] Group task

• Divide participants into 4 groups of 2-6 (or depending on your overall group size).

• Ask each group to discuss the following question and to illustrate their answers using images, memes, drawings, etc.:

  • Group 1 and 2: What would a water-resilient community (city, village, industrial area, etc.) look like?
  • Group 3 and 4: What would a water-vulnerable community look like?

[15 minutes] Debriefing and discussion

• Once the groups’ time is up, ask each group to present their answers to the other participants (2 minutes per group). If relevant, encourage participants to address / discuss the following questions:

  • What would a world with no water vulnerabilities look like? Is that what we want?
  • Do we actually need some level of vulnerabilities? In what aspect?
  • Are water vulnerabilities different from other vulnerabilities? How?

• How can we reduce water-vulnerabilities? How can we get to the world we want? What can we, as investigators, do?

• How about avoiding water issues altogether?

  • Climate and water vulnerabilities must be triggered by specific hazards, which are fuelled by anthropogenic (human generated / caused) emissions. Reducing emissions is therefore a way to adapt, prevent or ‘slow down’ some risks – this questions can also provide a transition to the next (“exposure”) section. (See also ""Climate change and drought, acidification, evolution of the salt water / fresh water ratio, desertification, extreme weather events, pollution, poisoning, water grabbing and privatization…)

Investigating capacities to cope with water issues (45 minutes)

Introduction to “coping capacities investigations” (Read Watch Listen | 10 minutes)

Instructions

Make a short presentation focusing on essential points:

• Define coping capacities – our ability to withstand and recover from shocks.

• Present the four disaster management phases and relevant investigation questions:

  • 1. Mitigation – Long-term measures to reduce the likelihood or consequence of disasters.
    • Are critical infrastructures (dams, bridges, electric grid, nuclear power plants, etc.) well maintained and prepared for future water issues scenarios?
    • Are farmers adapting their techniques to water issues?
    • Are adequate systems and policies put in place to coordinate disaster management and water issues adaptation?
  • 2. Preparedness – Measures put in place before a disaster hits to help us better cope with it.
    • How many drinking water reserve, radios, medical drugs, etc. are in stock?
    • Are shelters well located and ready to be used?
    • Have organizations prepared for water issues and have these plans been implemented?
    • Are early warning systems in place and functioning?
  • 3. Response – Measures which, implemented directly after a disasters, aim to save lives and limit the damage.
    • Is the response provided inefficient?
    • Are some people or groups left out or given preferential treatment?
    • Is the response generating conditions for a new disaster?
    • How is it impacting long-term physical, environmental, economic or social vulnerabilities?
  • 4. Rehabilitation – Long-term reconstruction and recovery efforts. When developed well, rehabilitation efforts can help mitigating the next disaster.
    • Are climate change and water issues scenarios and emerging risks taken into account when rebuilding?
    • Are procurement and reconstruction contracts awarded in a fair and transparent way?
    • Are we learning from previous disaster and building back better?

Info
Provide examples of investigations and potential investigative questions for each phase, so as to make this section more practical and tangible (see Troubled Waters, The EU is an agricultural superpower, but the intensive agriculture that feeds us comes at great cost to our waters ; The global clean water crisis looms large: Study finds water quality is underrepresented in assessments)

Investigating based on the four disaster management phases (Investigate | 40 minutes)

Tools/Material:

• Breakout rooms online or offline
• Investigating Climate Change Adaptation: Activity Templates provided in Annex, section “Investigating based on the four disaster management phases”

Instructions

[3 minutes] - Individual reflection

• Ask participants to think individually about the following scenario (or a variation of it more relevant to participants’ background / region / topic, etc.):

“You come across a book mentioning the terrible floods that destroyed half of your city 70 years ago – an event you had never heard of before. Intrigued, you start doing more research and talking to local climate experts. They confirm the historical floods and tell you that this type of event – which usually happens every 100 or so years – is likely to become more frequent and intense because of climate change. You decide to investigate whether your city is ready to face the next floods.”

[20 minutes] - Team work

• Divide participants into 4 groups of equal size to reflect the four phases: mitigation, preparedness, response, rehabilitation.

• Allocate one phase of the disaster management to each group, and ask them to:

  • write down 3-5 measures that should be in place in their city, based on the given scenario, to mitigate / prepare for / respond to / recover from the floods.
  • Next to each measure, ask participants to list a potential way to investigate whether this measure is in place or not, how much funding has been allocated, whether it can have negative secondary consequences, etc.

[12 minutes] - Presentation

• Once the time is up, ask each group to take 3 minutes to present their identified measures and how to investigate them to the rest of participants.

[5 minutes] Debriefing

• Following the presentations, encourage participants to ask questions, comment and share their own experience.

• Emphasize some of the key points that emerge from the presentations.

Closure (20 minutes)

Remember: key aspects to investigate (Read Watch Listen | 5 minutes)

Instructions

Make a brief final presentation/talk including:

• Wrap up the workshop and sum up its contents, including main findings or aspects emerging from group exercises and discussions.
• Mention that while investigating water issues can be done in a number of ways, an investigation that does not account for hazard exposure, vulnerabilities and coping capacities is likely to miss significant elements of the story.
• Mention that these types of investigations can be done at different scales (municipality, region, country, etc.), as well as across borders.
• Go over the chat or the ‘resource box’ and mention/discuss any additional tools or resources suggested by the participants. Collect the resources and share them with participants post-workshop.

Wrap-up Activity: Takeaway Poster (Produce | 5 minutes)

Tools/Materials

• Shared drawing pad / slide / whiteboard, such as Miro or Mural (online)
• Whiteboard / flip-chart paper, post-its, markers (offline)

Instructions

• Ask participants to create a takeaway poster by sharing their answers to the following question in the shared whiteboard / drawing board:

  • What is your main takeaway from today’s workshop?
  • Alternatively or in addition, depending on your group’s context, you could ask: “What is the main topic/question you aim to research further after this workshop?”

• Give participants a few minutes to write and/or draw their thoughts and read the thoughts of others.

Debriefing

• Highlight some of the points on the board.

Conclusion (Read Watch Listen | 10 minutes)

Tools/Materials: No materials needed.

Instructions

• Run a quick review of the session. Each participants should say:

• one thing they found very good about the session.

• one thing they would improve for the next time.

• Encourage participants to ask questions or give some final tips

• Share contact information if relevant and any follow-up details.

Success:
To keep participants informed about what is going on at all times, trainers can effectively sum up workshop contents following these steps:

1. [in the introduction] tell participants what is going to happen;

2. [during each part of the session / workshop] remind them what is happening;
3. [at the end of the session/workshop] tell them what just happened. In addition, at the end, trainers need to make sure they point out which expectation have been addressed.

Further resources

General resources:

Climate change

• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Intergovernmental body of the United Nations responsible for advancing knowledge on human-induced climate change.
• Carbon Brief: UK-based website covering the latest developments in climate science, climate policy and energy policy.
• Climate Change: The Science and Global Impact: Free online course covering the science and potential impact of Climate Change.

Water Issues

• Water Risk Atlas
• Global Water Analysis Laboratory (GloWAL) by International Atomic Energy Agency
• Troubled Waters methodology to request information from the European Union.
• View the Water Conflict Chronology by https://www.worldwater.org/
  • An interactive map showing the geographic location where conflicts over water have occurred and information about each conflict.
  • A table listing conflicts over water that can be filtered by region, conflict type, and date range.
• Groundwater Assessment Platform about geogenic contamination
  • GAP Wiki

Research, articles and guides

Water Issues

• Guides & methologies from Europe

  • work on “invisible” pollution linked to agricultural activities in Europe https://troubled-waters.eu/
  • work on other risks to groundwater and the associated crisis in Europe https://europeanwaters.eu/
  • survey work, mapping and sharing of methodology on the presence of PFAS in Europe https://foreverpollution.eu/

• Disaster Upon Disaster. Exploring the Gap Between Knowledge, Policy and Practice. Edited by Susanna M. Hoffman and Roberto E. Barrios Disaster Upon Disaster: Exploring the Gap Between Knowledge, Policy and Practice | BERGHAHN BOOKS

Climate Changes

• Carbon Brief, a website covering the latest developments in climate science, climate policy and energy policy.
• Climate Crisis – Ideas for Investigative Journalists": a guide by the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN).
• Climate Adapt: European platform for Climate Change Adaptation.
• Covering Climate Change: A Workshop for Journalists: hosted by the Nieman Foundation in March 2020 – includes a series of recorded workshop sessions with researchers, activists, journalists and scientists.
• Glossary of useful terms, from the The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
• Inside Climate News: website reporting on climate crises.
• Prevention Web: global knowledge sharing platform for disaster risk reduction and resilience, maintained by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.
• Reporting on Climate Adaptation: reporting guides, news, resources.
• Reporting extreme weather and climate change: a guide for journalists: reporting guide from the World Weather Attribution.
• World Weather Attribution: Provide assessments on the role of climate change in the aftermath of extreme events.

Collaborative Networks and Organisations

Water Issues

• Oʻahu Water Protectors a coalition of organizers and concerned community members fighting for safe, clean water in Hawaï’i
• The Water Protector Legal Collective is an Indigenous-led legal nonprofit that provides support and advocacy for Indigenous peoples and Original Nations, the Earth, and climate justice movements.

Climate Changes

• The ARENA Climate Network
• Climate Tracker
• The Environmental Investigative Forum
• The Earth Journalism Network
• Covering Climate Now
• Oxford Climate Journalism Network

Credits and Licensing

This document is under Free Art License 1.3 Copyleft.

“Investigating Water Issues: Methods and Principles” by XavCC and produced by Petites Singularités ASBL in hack2o.eu project.

This is an adaptation made from :

“Investigating Climate Change Adaptation: Methods and Principles” is produced by Tactical Tech’s Exposing the Invisible project, and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.