Research interests and themes

I have worked with and studied agricultural water management since 1983, initially at the field, block and irrigation system level in Swaziland.  I study five interrelated themes of research, grouped here:

Participatory polycentric water governance and allocation including games

• Dynamic irrigation systems and river basins in semi-arid environments via a non-equilibrium lens.
• Polycentric river basin/water management and user participation, critiquing the design of IWRM applied to river basins in Sub-Saharan Africa
• Serious games and deliberative tools in the management and allocation of water (the river basin game, rapid games designing and role-playing spreadsheets for water allocation).
• On being a waterist

Resource efficiency complexity and the paracommons

• Irrigation efficiency and productivity; measurement and theorising
• The paracommons; a commons of (yet to be) conserved resources

Irrigation infrastructure, livelihoods and policy

• Sub-Sahara irrigation policy on the expansion and rehabilitation of irrigation in Sub-Saharan Africa
• Irrigation livelihoods studies including LADDER work and consultancy in Kyrgyzstan on water user associations
• User-centred design of irrigation and basin systems for water apportionment (my doctoral research)
• Irrigationalism and irrigationism. On the ideology of irrigation engineering, expansion and rehabilitation
• Hydromentalities. On fashions in the architecture of existing and new river basin and irrigation infrastructure
• Revisiting and revitalising large-scale irrigation

Ecosystem and vector water studies

• Science of water and ecosystems services within irrigated river basins (NERC- funded ‘ESPA’ project in South Africa examined trade-offs and interfaces between wetlands and irrigated agriculture)
• Environmental demand management of ecological water resources to sustain or increase productivity in that sector
• Agri-vector water. A set of ideas around how blue water might support green water
• Water-energy-food nexus. Interrelationships between different sectors

Performance, equity and justice in water security and allocation

• Incodys Water Security framework
• Transboundary water law, in particular the principle of equitable allocation defined in the UN Watercourses convention, on water allocation