Healthy Waterways: Connecting communities locally and globally
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Cambridge
Department Name: Faculty of Education
Abstract
This project stems from a current research project: AHRC Pathways to Understanding the Changing Climate: time and place in cultural learning about the environment. It takes what we have learnt about children's relationships with their dwelling places and how intercultural interchange influences that as a starting point for facilitating an ongoing pilot project in South Africa namely the Aller River Pilot Project (ARPP).
The goal of the ARPP is to engage local communities in the rehabilitation of a local waterway that is crucial to the livelihoods of these communities. The project's main strategy for delivering this rehabilitation and sustained maintenance is to recruit, train and stipend a group of young people from communities along the river (the 'Eco Champs'). These young people will lead the rehabilitation through engaging the local community and the schools in the local community.
Our input (PUCC FOF) will begin at the end of the first phase of the ARPP when the main rehabilitation work of the river will already have been completed. We will continue the work with the Eco Champ team and the eco clubs that they will have set up in schools in the community. We will use our method of child-led walking interviews to develop a cartogram of the communities and to identify what sorts of relationships the children in these urban settings along waterways have with their dwelling places. We will use this as the basis for the interchange element of our project. The interchange partner in the UK will be a group of young people in the Norfolk Broads called the Youth Rangers who will be working with the Broads Authority (BA) to reconnect with their local waterways. The participant-led walking interviews alongside a stakeholder consultation conference will be used to identify small scale infrastructure support to facilitate the sustainability of the rehabilitation work.
The projected outcome of this project for the community in South Africa will be an explicit and consolidated sense of personal connection to dwelling places including local waterways and an enhancement of commitment to maintaining these in a state that will contribute to the health and wellbeing of the local communities that rely on it for sanitation. Similar (if less extensive) outcomes are projected for the Youth Rangers in the Norfolk Broads.
We will measure our impact through the data gathered during the walks that will be completed at the beginning and the end of the project and we will also use the data gathered by the ARPP and BA to elaborate our understanding of how our intervention has impacted on the local community.
Our work has the potential to contribute to the following Sustainable Development Goals: Goal 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing), Goal 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), Goal 10 (reduced Inequality), Goal 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and Goal 17 (Partnerships for the Goals). Examples of how this will be achieved are the improvement in health and sanitation and through the stronger social cohesion, enhanced commitment to community responsibility, effective local agency and a deepened sense of an explicit connection to place. This project will instigate collaboration between people in similar circumstances with regard to the role of water in their dwelling places. The partnerships created will have significant potential for the way in which locally affected communities respond to globally determined consequences of changing climates, in both the meteorological and socio-political sense. Moreover, this project extends the interdisciplinary collaboration between Education and Social Anthropology which will further the aims of the network for the Living with Environmental Change Initiative.
Whilst this is not intended to be a research project we will be able to use the impacts of the project to elaborate our understanding of the relationships that children have with place and how global interchange affects that.
The goal of the ARPP is to engage local communities in the rehabilitation of a local waterway that is crucial to the livelihoods of these communities. The project's main strategy for delivering this rehabilitation and sustained maintenance is to recruit, train and stipend a group of young people from communities along the river (the 'Eco Champs'). These young people will lead the rehabilitation through engaging the local community and the schools in the local community.
Our input (PUCC FOF) will begin at the end of the first phase of the ARPP when the main rehabilitation work of the river will already have been completed. We will continue the work with the Eco Champ team and the eco clubs that they will have set up in schools in the community. We will use our method of child-led walking interviews to develop a cartogram of the communities and to identify what sorts of relationships the children in these urban settings along waterways have with their dwelling places. We will use this as the basis for the interchange element of our project. The interchange partner in the UK will be a group of young people in the Norfolk Broads called the Youth Rangers who will be working with the Broads Authority (BA) to reconnect with their local waterways. The participant-led walking interviews alongside a stakeholder consultation conference will be used to identify small scale infrastructure support to facilitate the sustainability of the rehabilitation work.
The projected outcome of this project for the community in South Africa will be an explicit and consolidated sense of personal connection to dwelling places including local waterways and an enhancement of commitment to maintaining these in a state that will contribute to the health and wellbeing of the local communities that rely on it for sanitation. Similar (if less extensive) outcomes are projected for the Youth Rangers in the Norfolk Broads.
We will measure our impact through the data gathered during the walks that will be completed at the beginning and the end of the project and we will also use the data gathered by the ARPP and BA to elaborate our understanding of how our intervention has impacted on the local community.
Our work has the potential to contribute to the following Sustainable Development Goals: Goal 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing), Goal 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), Goal 10 (reduced Inequality), Goal 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and Goal 17 (Partnerships for the Goals). Examples of how this will be achieved are the improvement in health and sanitation and through the stronger social cohesion, enhanced commitment to community responsibility, effective local agency and a deepened sense of an explicit connection to place. This project will instigate collaboration between people in similar circumstances with regard to the role of water in their dwelling places. The partnerships created will have significant potential for the way in which locally affected communities respond to globally determined consequences of changing climates, in both the meteorological and socio-political sense. Moreover, this project extends the interdisciplinary collaboration between Education and Social Anthropology which will further the aims of the network for the Living with Environmental Change Initiative.
Whilst this is not intended to be a research project we will be able to use the impacts of the project to elaborate our understanding of the relationships that children have with place and how global interchange affects that.
Planned Impact
This proposal stems from incidental connections made during the course of the AHRC Pathways to Understanding the Changing Climate project. Through it we seek funding for a project which takes some of what we have learnt about children's relationship to place to make it useful in the context of a non-academic setting. We aim to do this through partnering with two organisations (eThekweni Conservancies Forum in South Africa and the Broads Authority in the United Kingdom) who are implementing the first stages of projects designed to reconnect young people to waterways in their local communities. The projected outcomes of these projects vary according to their contexts. The so-called 'Eco Champs' project in Durban in South Africa has both tangible, structural goals about river rehabilitation and improved sanitation as well as aims about community engagement, social cohesion and improvements in the lifestyles and employment prospects of the participants. The so-called 'Youth Rangers' project in the Norfolk Broads focuses more specifically on the social goals of reconnection with waterways in dwelling places and the entailed improvements in community engagement, social cohesion, improvements in the lifestyle and employment prospects of the participants.
What our engagement with these projects will do is strengthen, consolidate and enhance each of these different goals. We will do this by bringing new methods adapted from the Pathways to Understanding the Changing Climate project (PUCC) to the Eco Champs and Youth Rangers projects. We will use our participant-led walking interviews to gather baseline data in each region that will both produce a cartogram of the dwelling places from the perspective of the participants and provide the basis for the intercultural interchanges and small scale infrastructure support that will follow.
We will then initiate interchange between Youth Rangers and Eco Champs using three separate web conferencing events. The content of these events will be determined by the participants but the interchange will be framed by the common purposes of reconnecting with local waterways.
During this period we will also organise a local stakeholder event to determine what sorts of small scale infrastructure support would be useful for improving sanitation. We aim to have this infrastructure in place before the end of the project.
The knowledge we will bring to bear on this project is about the strength of young people's relationships with place and how they articulate this. We have found that walking and talking with children in the context of their dwelling places enables and empowers them to articulate their relationships with place. This sense of empowerment enhances that relationship which is likely to have a concomitant impact on the way they care for and take responsibility for their dwelling places. These outcomes are enhanced by communicating them across cultures to individuals in similar circumstances in different places. In PUCC FOF we aim to take these connected impacts and make them concrete through using them to enhance and influence the work of our partners in non-academic settings.
What we propose here has implications for a number of the Sustainable Development Goals as outlined in the Case for Support. These are: Goal 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing), Goal 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), Goal 10 (Reduced Inequality), Goal 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and Goal 17 (Partnerships for the Goals). For example, the maintenance of the rehabilitation work on Aller River in South Africa will contribute to Goal 6 about clean water whilst the infrastructure support will improve sanitation in the communities. The setting up of the interchange will generate a partnership (Goal 17) between two non-academic organisations. It is also interdisciplinary and initiates a partnership between non-academic and academic institutions; thus contributing to the achievement of Goal 17.
What our engagement with these projects will do is strengthen, consolidate and enhance each of these different goals. We will do this by bringing new methods adapted from the Pathways to Understanding the Changing Climate project (PUCC) to the Eco Champs and Youth Rangers projects. We will use our participant-led walking interviews to gather baseline data in each region that will both produce a cartogram of the dwelling places from the perspective of the participants and provide the basis for the intercultural interchanges and small scale infrastructure support that will follow.
We will then initiate interchange between Youth Rangers and Eco Champs using three separate web conferencing events. The content of these events will be determined by the participants but the interchange will be framed by the common purposes of reconnecting with local waterways.
During this period we will also organise a local stakeholder event to determine what sorts of small scale infrastructure support would be useful for improving sanitation. We aim to have this infrastructure in place before the end of the project.
The knowledge we will bring to bear on this project is about the strength of young people's relationships with place and how they articulate this. We have found that walking and talking with children in the context of their dwelling places enables and empowers them to articulate their relationships with place. This sense of empowerment enhances that relationship which is likely to have a concomitant impact on the way they care for and take responsibility for their dwelling places. These outcomes are enhanced by communicating them across cultures to individuals in similar circumstances in different places. In PUCC FOF we aim to take these connected impacts and make them concrete through using them to enhance and influence the work of our partners in non-academic settings.
What we propose here has implications for a number of the Sustainable Development Goals as outlined in the Case for Support. These are: Goal 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing), Goal 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), Goal 10 (Reduced Inequality), Goal 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and Goal 17 (Partnerships for the Goals). For example, the maintenance of the rehabilitation work on Aller River in South Africa will contribute to Goal 6 about clean water whilst the infrastructure support will improve sanitation in the communities. The setting up of the interchange will generate a partnership (Goal 17) between two non-academic organisations. It is also interdisciplinary and initiates a partnership between non-academic and academic institutions; thus contributing to the achievement of Goal 17.
Publications
Irvine R
(2017)
Over and under: children navigating terrain in the East Anglian fenlands
in Children's Geographies
| Description | The distinctive design of the project was to enable local users both to take ownership of the environmental problem and to provide them with means to exert influence in relation to it. So in this case, the project set out to engage the community in rehabilitation of the local river, which was highly polluted by both solid waste and effluent from overburdened sewage systems. The finding (at the end of the second phase) then was that, if applied in a contextually sensitive and culturally appropriate manner, this produces improved dialogue across institutional boundaries (between local government employees and locally elected resident group leaders, for example), real educational gains (in terms of heightened awareness among community members and in schools, for example) and raises the threshold of hope and expectation in terms of what can be achieved. Alongside facilitating the efforts of locally-based groups to enable local users to take ownership of a specific environmental problem, the project also facilitated cross-national communication between young people in different parts of the world (in this case between the UK and South Africa) to discuss the challenges they face, respectively. The finding from this cross-cultural interchange is that educational aims of locally-based interventions to solve environmental issues can be heightened and extended to encompass issues of relevance at a global level, through cross-cultural interchange. . |
| Exploitation Route | The project in South Africa (the Aller River Pilot Project or ARPP), with whom we have been collaborating in the AHRC Healthy Waterways project, has been successful in its bid for further funding from national funding bodies in South Africa. This will allow the project to continue its work on engaging the community and educating local users. As originally planned by the South African partners, the ARPP has also been very important as a basis for bids for funding for rehabilitating stretches of other rivers in the region. The collaboration between the team in SA and the research team has led to the development of a model for rehabilitating local waterways that will be used in a number of different funding proposals which are currently being constructed and submitted to local funding bodies. The work has also led to the development of task teams, bringing together local policy implementation officers and local policy makers with residents to try and overcome challenges with strategies for waste management, for waste management, that cause environmental problems. This approach to understanding a problem through community-based research, running events to encourage discussion of the issues from resident, environmental activist and policy implementation perspectives, and then creating task teams to solve the problems has the potential to be useful in different settings, with different environmental problems. Finally, the approach to working with local schools adopted in the ARPP also has the potential to act as a model for other organisations seeking to engage local communities in the solution of local environmental issues. Through the plans for dissemination of these activities in publications in local practice-based journals and in academic publications, this work has the potential for wider impact. |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Education |
| Description | The impacts of this award are still emerging so what we report on here is likely to change over the coming years. The AHRC Healthy Waterways project was designed to work directly with end users, providing funding to an existing project in South Africa, the Aller River Pilot Project (ARPP) that had been conceived by a conservancies forum as a way of improving river health, and was funded by local government there. Thus the whole project has been designed to have impact beyond academia and it has been very successful in this endeavour. It has had economic impact in the way that it has supported and extended the capacitation of a group of young people to become ambassadors for river health, both through engaging them in the practical task of physically clearing the river and through regular monitoring of its healthiness. The project has also developed the leadership capabilities of the young people involved, who were responsible for inspiring community efforts to keep their local waterway clean and healthy. It has had social impact in the way that it has enabled local community leaders to communicate their challenges with regard to issues such as waste management to local government officials, and to seek ways of solving these problems through mutual engagement and negotiation around issues which have implications for local policy. Healthy Waterways has been instrumental in instigating meetings between conservation groups, local government officials, community leaders and representatives of firms responsible for the production of disposable nappies, initiating discussions about how industry can encourage the safe disposal of such products. One aim of the project was to support local communities to improve infrastructure that would help to rehabilitate the local river. This proved to be challenging as there were questions about where infrastructure funding could be allocated that would not create conflict between community members because it could not be replicated in all areas of the community. A solution to this problem was to use these funds to instigate vegetable gardens in local schools and to put rainwater harvesting facilities in place in the schools to irrigate these gardens. This has successfully carried out and the gardens are now being used to teach children about water security. Indeed, a further economic benefit is that the gardens are now producing food that will be used in the schools. Whilst Healthy Waterways has been instrumental in all of these impacts, this has been made possible by the collaboration between Healthy Waterways, the conservancies and local government in Durban, South Africa, as described in the collaboration section. Many of these impacts can be linked to the Sustainable Development Goals, as was intended in the proposal. For example, the links created through a Skype-based interchange between the Eco-champ team and the Broads Authority in the UK (which are still developing) had a significant impact on both sides, as revealed in focus group discussions held after the sessions. These discussions revealed an impact on both understanding of other cultures and responses to issues of water security, in both local contexts and in terms of wider, global implications. Thus this interchange contributes to Goal 17 (Partnerships for the Goals) and Goal 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation). In terms of Goal 6, the impact of the Eco-champs work has been to raise awareness amongst local residents about how to |
| First Year Of Impact | 2017 |
| Sector | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Education,Environment,Government, Democracy and Justice |
| Impact Types | Societal,Economic,Policy & public services |
| Description | Aller River Pilot Project: connecting communities locally and globally |
| Organisation | Krantzkloof Nature Reserve |
| Country | South Africa |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | The research team on this project (constituting David Whitley as PI, David Sneath as Co-I, and Elsa Lee as RA) aimed to collaborate with two partners, Ethekwini Conservancies Forum and the Broads Authority, to support their community-based efforts to rehabilitate local waterways through engaging with local communities and between local communities in distant places. To this end the RA worked with an existing project called the Aller River Pilot Project (ARPP), based in South Africa, that was being delivered by a team constituting the ARPP2 Operational Team ARPPOT and the ARPP2 Steering Group (ARPPSG). The ARPPOT included a group of young people, a project manager, and a community liaison officer who were stipended through the sponsorship of the AHRC Healthy Waterways fund. This fund thus sponsored a group of young people and their management team; enabling them to continue their work of engaging the local community living along the Aller River near Durban, South Africa, in rehabilitating the river, directed by a Steering Group of volunteers from local conservancies. The work that the ARPP2 team did included: weekly river monitoring walks; clean-up events;, community workshops involving community members and leaders and local municipality representatives; participation in local academic conferences; environment clubs in local schools; water-based infrastructure support in local schools; community research to understand the issues faced by local residents in supporting the river rehabilitation efforts; and accredited training of young people in environmental work. The ARPP2 team also participated in an intercultural interchange with young people in the Norfolk Broads using Skype during a three-phase virtual exchange event. The research team from the University of Cambridge contributed to this work through providing expertise and intellectual input via virtual participation in weekly ARPP2OT team meetings, including offering training sessions on carrying out community and ethnographic research. The RA participated in monthly virtual steering group meetings, and through three separate week-long visits to the site in South Africa to participate in, advise on and learn from community research, community workshops, in team meetings and river monitoring walks. During these engagements, the RA drew on and developed the knowledge and expertise gained from the AHRC Pathways Project to facilitate the work of the ARPP2 team. The RA also planned and co-ordinated the intercultural interchange (drawing on similar approaches in the AHRC Pathways Project) between the team in South Africa and a team of young people working with the Broads Authority in the UK, and had preliminary meetings with schools in each region to set up intercultural interchanges between schools. ARPP2 was evaluated by a team of researchers from the University of KwaZulu Natal, and the research team liaised with the evaluation team to support the planning and delivery of the evaluation. Finally, the research team participated in knowledge mobilisation events such as seminars, reading groups, policy (for example, the English Learning for Sustainability Alliance, linking the work to the UN Sustainable Development Goals) and practice groups (for example, the National Association of Environmental Education) and conferences (for example the European Conference on Educational Research) to raise awareness of the work of AHRC Healthy Waterways and its connections to the outputs of the AHRC Pathways to Understanding the Changing Climate project. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The partners in this project (the Kloof Conservancy) were already engaged in the action for Take Back Our Rivers (TBOR), a strategy developed by Ethekwini Conservancies Forum (the Kloof Conservancy is a member of and the implementing agency for this group) and the Aller River Pilot Project Phase 1 (ARPP1) had been completed. The overarching aim of the TBOR is to engage and empower communities to take co-ownership with the authorities for river health. They delivered the work described above through their existing team of a Steering Group (constituting volunteers from the conservancies local to the Aller river in South Africa, local government officials and members of other local conservation groups) and an operational team. The ARPPOT constitutes the young people (the Eco-champs), a Project Manager and Community Liaison Officer; and an external evaluation team. ARPP2 followed on from ARPP1 which was funded by the EThekwini Municipality in Durban, so the Steering Group also included local government employees who were following the progress of the project (ARPP1) for which they had provided initial funding. The overarching aim of the Aller River Pilot Project is to develop a viable model for developing and operationalising the Take Back Our River strategy for engaging local residents, local industry and local government in rehabilitating waterways across South Africa. The work that this partner (the Kloof Conservancy) did to rehabilitate the local river through engaging the local community was largely achieved through the work of the Eco-Champs and their management team (ARPPOT). This group participated in weekly river monitoring walks to check the sewerage systems that often leaked into the river, reporting any problems to the local municipality. ARPPOT met weekly to discuss such problems and the problem of solid waste in the river, and to seek appropriate solutions, which often included setting up meetings with local resident committees (such as meeting with the local area elected Ward Committees) and local government employees. They also planned and delivered community research and clean-up events, liaised with local resident groups to participate in clean-ups, and made regular visits to local schools, setting up school vegetable gardens and arranging and overseeing the installation of rainwater harvesting facilities to serve the gardens, and support schools' efforts to educate about the efficient use of water and appropriate waste management approaches. The work in local schools included engaging with other organisations such as the Africa Conservation Trust (who volunteered their time) to learn about water efficient gardening techniques, and to share this knowledge with the schools. The Eco-champs also accompanied groups of children and teachers from the schools on a trip to a local wildlife park (sponsored by the park) as part of their engagement with the six local schools. In all of this it is important to note that whilst this section reports on the collaboration between RA and the ARPP2 team, the work of the ARPP2 team is underpinned by a fundamental commitment to collaborating with groups and individuals in communities and in government to achieve their stated goal of a clean and healthy river. In this regard, another element of the Kloof Conservancy's collaborative work was the training of the young people (the six Eco-champs) in environmental work and they participated in an accredited training programme with the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa organisation (WESSA) during the cycle of the project. The ARPPOT was stipended through the funding from the AHRC Healthy Waterways project but there was also a significant amount of voluntary time associated with the work, particularly on the part of the Community Liaison Officer and the Project Manager. The work of the ARPPSG was also voluntary and involved many levels of engagement. The ARPPSG was attended by representatives of the operational team and the external evaluation group. ARPPSG made decisions about financial issues including the selection of training providers, the delivery of infrastructure support, and employment matters, alongside advising on policy matters and operational issues like how to present the work of the team at local environmental education events. The ARPP2SG also provided high level bridging and networking to senior municipal structures through their interactions with Heads of government offices like the Department for Water and Sanitation, but also keeping the links to EPCPD and other potential stakeholders in industry and government, as well as keeping the conservancies movement informed through regular feedback sessions. In addition, ARPPSG delivered an internal evaluation report to supplement the external evaluation. Alongside the ARPPOT, the ARPPSG also worked with a team who cleared invasive alien plants along the riverbank to support the river rehabilitation efforts. The agency that provided this team was called Duzi Umgeni Conservation Trust (DUCT). This work was not funded by AHRC Healthy Waterways but was essential in supporting the work of ARPP2 and hence also essential to AHRC Healthy Waterways. The external evaluation team from University of Kwazulu Natal (UKZN) were funded to do the evaluation by AHRC Healthy Waterways but also contributed voluntarily to the project as part of their community outreach programme, to enhance the evaluation's remit. Their work involved questionnaires to the various team members, (including ARPPSG and the ARPPOT), some visits to schools to talk to children and evaluate the work done with the environment clubs there, and interviews, including with the researcher; and focus group discussions with the Eco-champ team. Their evaluation report will build on the report that they submitted for ARPP1, completed before ARPP2 began, and before the intervention of Healthy Waterways. Many of problems that cause the river health issues in this region are structural, involving infrastructure, such as overburdened sewerage systems. These required river monitoring walks to check on manholes situated along the river, followed by continuous engagement with the local municipality to get these issues resolved. This resulted in the development of a network of young people, local residents and municipal employees to support rapid responses to problems, as they arose. Other waterway health issues resulted from mismanagement of solid waste which ends up in local waterways. Whilst some of these problems can be attributed to education about appropriate waste disposal, other issues required further empirical research to understand why waste was being dumped rather than disposed of properly. This involved using a research questionnaire to survey local residents about the problems they faced with regard to waste disposal. This research questionnaire was designed in collaboration between the Eco-champs, Community Liaison Officer, and the researcher. The questionnaire was completed using door-to-door surveys, with dissemination at community events like information stands and community clean-up events. The problems uncovered by this research led to the planning of workshops bringing together local resident representatives on local area committees, local government employees with responsibility for waste management, water and sanitation, whose aim was to discover consensual means of overcoming these problems. Another significant collaborative aspect of the work that the ARPP2 did was participation in the intercultural interchange between ARPP team and the representatives of the Broads Authority in the UK. This work was coordinated by the research team but involved all of the ARPPOT and some members of the ARPPSG. The work involved planning three interchange events between experts in each region, and young people, and between the young people themselves. The purpose of this work was to learn about and discuss the issues that the teams in each cultural context were facing, and to develop an intercultural partnership to support the on-going efforts of these teams. Efforts to support a sustainable partnership are still being undertaken by the ARPP team in their third phase (ARPP3), which has recently commenced with funding from a different organisation in South Africa. For example, interchanges between schools in each region are being planned for ARPP3, with initial meetings with schools already undertaken, and plans for interchange events involved the ARPPOT and the Broads Authority in place. |
| Impact | 1. Newspaper articles The partners in this project (based in South Africa) aimed to engage the community in their efforts to clean up the local river and so the local newspaper reports that they published were designed to support this work. The reports were released after community clean up events or after school infrastructure support work had taken place. Whilst no direct evidence of impact is available, conversations with local residents during river monitoring walks undertaken by the Eco-Champ team (the group of young people that were responsible for the work that is being done to rehabilitate the river in South Africa) reported a greater awareness of their work, over the course of the project. 2. Community clean up events The Eco-champ team (the ARPPOT) ran two community clean up events during the course of the Healthy Waterways project. These were designed to raise awareness of the work that the Eco-champ team were doing and to engage the local community in taking responsibility for keeping the river and its banks clean of solid waste. These events were initially not very well attended and the subject of some conflict but they did raise awareness of the project's work and opened up channels for communicating with local resident group leaders which proved to be very valuable in engaging the local community with the project and the local municipality. Another important impact of this work was to improve the physical environment of the waterway so that less plastic waste is now evident along the riverbank. 3. Workshops for facilitating engagement around waste and sanitation issues between local community groups (the Area Ward Committees) and the local municipality departments with responsibility for waste and sanitation. These workshops arose as a request from local elected representatives of local area committees for the ARPP team to facilitate discussions about waste disposal and water and sanitation problems faced by local residents living within the target area of the project. The ARPP team was able to bring together appropriate representatives from the departments of water and sanitation and the solid waste and were able to mediate between the local resident representatives and these entities. An outcome of these workshop was the setting up of a task team who will meet regularly to discuss the problems around waste disposal and management that were raised, to seek appropriate solutions that will support the aims of all three partners in these discussions (the Aller River Pilot Project team, the local municipality and the local residents). 4. School engagement activities: Eco clubs, water efficient food gardens and rainwater harvesting infrastructure. The purpose of these regular events in schools was to raise awareness of the Aller River Pilot Project and its aims in regard to rehabilitating the waterway that runs through the community served by five primary schools and one secondary school; and to teach the children and the community about issues related to water security. The team of young Eco-champs set up eco-clubs in these six schools of between 15 and 30 children and their teachers during ARPP1. During ARPP2 , the Eco-champs and the eco clubs worked together to set up 'keyhole gardens' in each school to teach about efficient use of water for growing vegetables. These gardens proved highly successful and have mostly now been extended by the schools and have become a part of their approach to food growing and teaching where it is possible to teach about agriculture within the constraints of the curriculum. As part of this work the AHRC Healthy Waterways project sponsored the installation of rainwater harvesting cisterns which are being used to water the gardens. This contributes to a reduction in water bills in the schools. One school requested that they pilot the use of this rainwater harvesting to flush toilets and this has so far proved to be highly successful, although the outcomes are still being monitored. Another activity that these schools did with the ARPP2 team was to visit a local nature reserve (sponsored by the reserve). They were able to take the eco clubs with a larger cohort of the students from each school. These trips proved to be highly successful in raising awareness about the project and in engaging these children in learning about their local habitats. 5. Interchange event - 3-phase communication between a group of young people connected to the BA via their work experience programme (here referred to as the Young Rangers) and the ARPP Eco-champ team involving a research walk with the researcher and the young people; a masterclass, delivered by resident experts in each region, on the human and non-human aspects of the respective habitats (i.e. the ARPP Community Liaison Officer and the Project Manager gave a presentation about the region of the Aller River to the Young Rangers and the Education Officer from the Broads Authority gave a presentation about the Broads to the ARPP Eco-champs and other members of the ARPP team); and an interchange between the two teams of young people where they discussed their motivations for being involved in the project and the challenges that they face in their respective regions. Plans are now in place to carry out an interchange (facilitated by the Young Rangers and the ARPP) between schools in each region. |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | Broads Authority: Connecting communities globally |
| Organisation | Broads Authority |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | The Norfolk and Suffolk Broads is Britain's largest protected wetland and third largest inland waterway, with the status of a national park. It's also home to some of the rarest plants and animals in the UK. The Broads Authority was set up in 1989, with responsibility for conservation, planning, recreation and waterways. The Broads National Park is a unique mosaic of gentle landscape, lakes and rivers covering 303 square kilometres. It has 28 Sites of Special Scientific Interest, many National and Local Nature Reserves and despite comprising only 0.1% of the UK the park is home to a quarter of the UK's rarest species. The Broads Authority looks after this unique waterland with responsibility for conservation, maintaining the waterways, recreation, tourism and planning. Iconic mills and historic landmarks nestle among miles of waterways, fen, woodland and footpaths while idyllic towns and villages dot the wide landscapes. The broad, shallow lakes are man-made rather than natural. They began as pits dug for peat to provide fuel during medieval times and filled over the centuries to become the boating playground we see today. The Broads Authority has the important job of looking after the Broads and the interests of the people who live, work and visit here. In addition, it is a planning authority and has a duty to foster the economic and social well-being of its communities. The BA is a special statutory body established under the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads Act 1988 and its general duty is to manage the Broads for the purposes of: (a) conserving and enhancing the natural beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage of the Broads (b) promoting opportunities for the understanding and enjoyment of the special qualities of the Broads by the public; and (c) protecting the interests of navigation. It must also consider the needs of agriculture and forestry, and the economic and social interests of those who live or work in the Broads. The purpose of this partnership between the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge and the Broads Authority Education Officer was to deliver the aim of the AHRC Healthy Waterways project in respect of creating transnational connections for communities working on waterway rehabilitation projects. In this, the partnership between the research team from the University of Cambridge and the Education Officer from the Broads Authority was essential. The researcher acted as the facilitator for the intercultural interchange between the Broads Authority and the Aller River Pilot Project by introducing the two organisations and then planning and managing the interchange events. This involved preliminary meetings with BA staff and the Young Rangers, participation in the interchange events themselves, and post-event feedback focus group discussions. In so doing, the researcher provided expert advice in methods for intercultural interchange, garnered during her role as a research associate on the AHRC Pathways Project. The time that the researcher spent with the team of young people working with the Broads Authority aimed to support them in their efforts to understand the value of engaging with people based elsewhere, around issues of waterway rehabilitation and global water security. This involved walking along a a stretch of the River Ant in the north of Broads National Park , discussing their engagement with local waterways and their familiarity with the global issue of water security. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The Broads Authority (BA) used these collaborative events to initiate and motivate their project called the Broads Young Rangers. This has been a pre-existing and ongoing plan of the BA to engage young people from communities in and around the Broads National Park with their local waterways and with work done by the BA to maintain and rehabilitate them. The interchanges themselves provided the BA with the opportunity to begin setting up their Young Rangers team, an extension of the BA's work experience programme and established along the lines of the Europarc Junior Rangers model. The BA therefore provided resources to this collaboration in terms of staff time, a physical setting in the UK from which to carry out the interchange, and expertise in the habitat and wildlife of the Broads and the historical development of the Broads Authority and its work on rehabilitating and managing the waterways in this internationally important region. This was delivered as a presentation to the team in South Africa, who were able to provide the same kind of presentation in return, regarding the habitats, community and culture of the region of the Aller River Pilot Project (ARPP). The input from the BA into the AHRC Healthy Waterways project was significant as it provided ARPP2 team with knowledge that the work they are doing can take decades, but that it has real potential to change the lives of human and non-human inhabitants, and the wellbeing of communities. This input came at a crucial time for the ARPP2 team who were experiencing a period where the challenges of rehabilitating the river and engaging the community seemed intractable. The interchange itself (as a collaborative event) was also significant to the Young Rangers who reported that they had learned much about how to communicate across cultural differences, and about the issue of water security as a global problem. The BA itself has been inspired by this work to think more globally about its impact, and representatives from the BA report that this will influence policy going forwards. The BA also provided links to local schools in Norfolk, UK who are willing to engage in an intercultural interchange with the schools that are associated with the Aller River Pilot Project in South Africa. Plans are in place to run an interchange of this kind in April 2018, as follow-on from the work done in the AHRC Healthy Waterways project. |
| Impact | Interchange event - 3 phase communication between the Young Rangers and the ARPP Eco-champ team involving a research walk with the researcher and the young people; a masterclass, delivered by resident experts in each region, on the human and non-human aspects of the respective habitats (i.e. the ARPP Community Liaison Officer and the Project Manager gave a presentation about the region of the Aller River to the Young Rangers and the Education Officer from the Broads Authority gave a presentation about the Broads to the ARPP Eco-champs and other members of the ARPP team); and an interchange between the two teams of young people where they discussed their motivations for being involved in the project and the challenges that they face in their respective regions. Plans are now in place to carry out an interchange (facilitated by the Young Rangers and the ARPP) between schools in each region. |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | Community Clean-up Events |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The Eco-champ team (the ARPPOT) ran three community clean up events during the course of the Healthy Waterways project. These were designed to raise awareness of the work that the Eco-champ team were doing and to encourage the local residents to take responsibility for keeping the river and its banks clean of solid waste. These events were initially not very well attended (attendance improved over the course of the project), but they did raise awareness of the project's work and opened up channels for communicating with local resident group leaders which proved to be very valuable in engaging the local community with the local municipality to discuss challenges around waste disposal and proper waste management procedures (described as a workshop in this section). Another important impact of this work was to improve the physical environment of the waterway so that less plastic waste is now evident along the riverbank which has the potential to impact on the wellbeing on local residents and communities. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017,2018 |
| Description | Interchange between waterway rehabilitation project in South Africa and school in the UK |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | This activity consisted of 3 events: 1) meeting with teachers and school leaders 2) Skype presentation by SA project team members to school children 3) Presentation by school children to SA project The purpose of this event was to support the UK school's work on waterways in their local community and internationally as well as to give the SA team an opportunity to exchange knowledge about the work they are doing in the context of their own community. To complete the work we carried out some detailed planning sessions with both the teachers in the UK school and the SA project team. The UK school did their own topic-based investigation of a local river and as part of that they also investigated what rivers and waterways in South Africa looked like. The SA team then delivered a presentation about their project to the children who then had the opportunity to ask questions about this. Despite the difficulties of communicating and remaining engaged through web-based communication methods, the UK children were highly attentive and interested in the presentation, listening carefully throughout and asking lots of insightful questions at the end. The final stage of this interchange involved presentations by the children to the SA team two months later where they shared what they had learned throughout the topic about waterways and the conservation of water. This final presentation evinced what the children had learned from the SA team's work and how they had incorporated this into their understanding of water as a global resource. This event is a good example of the way in which Healthy Waterways influenced young people who were exposed to the work's developing understanding through knowledge exchange about the project. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Intercultural interchange using web conferencing between young people in the Broads and Durban |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Interchange event - 3 phase communication between the Young Rangers and the ARPP Eco-champ team involving a research walk with the researcher and the young people; a masterclass, delivered by resident experts in each region, on the human and non-human aspects of the respective habitats (i.e. the ARPP Community Liaison Officer and the Project Manager gave a presentation about the region of the Aller River to the Young Rangers and the Education Officer from the Broads Authority gave a presentation about the Broads to the ARPP Eco-champs and other members of the ARPP team); and an interchange between the two teams of young people where they discussed their motivations for being involved in the project and the challenges that they face in their respective regions. Plans are now in place to carry out an interchange (facilitated by the Young Rangers and the ARPP) between schools in each region. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: presentation |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | On 23 January 2019 the project team made a presentation on all three phases of the ARPP to a group of 60 participants to the First Lead Author Meeting for the Working Group II Contribution to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. The aim of the presentation was to provide the Lead Authors with some insights on the local conditions, challenges and actions being taken by the project to address some of the resilience issues faced by the local community. A letter thanking the team for their presentation was sent and it included the following quote: 'On behalf of the Working Group II Bureau, we would like to extend our deepest gratitude for your valuable contribution to the success of the First Lead Author Meeting for the Working Group II Contribution to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. We sincerely thank you for your willingness to take part in the Palmiet excursion, and for taking the time and effort to share your expertise with the authors who participated in the event. The feedback has been overwhelming. The participants deeply appreciated the opportunity to see and hear from local experts about what is happening in this part of the world, in terms of challenges, positive action, and general background information about your project. They went away with fresh perspectives on Africa. We thank you for making this event a great success.' |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| Description | Presentation to audience of practitioners |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The research team was invited to present to a network of water practitioners called CIWEM (Cambridge Institute for Water and Environmental Management). There was an audience of around 40 individuals who were highly engaged throughout the 40 minute presentation and the half hour discussion that followed which involved a number of insightful questions around the impact of the work in the South African context. Of particular interest were the questions focused on the differences between the kind of solid pollution experienced in the SA context and the kinds of pollution typical of waterways in the UK context, for example, microplastic pollution. Discussions of visibility and invisibility in relation to waterway pollution ensued. Communication with this network will be ongoing as it will support new research initiatives in this arena. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| Description | Reports in local newspapers in South Africa |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The partners in this project (based in South Africa) aimed to engage the local community in their efforts to clean up the local river and so the local newspaper reports that they published were designed to support this work. The reports were released after community clean up events or after school infrastructure support work had taken place. Whilst no direct evidence of impact is available, conversations with local residents during river monitoring walks undertaken by the Eco-Champ team (the group of young people that were responsible for the work that is being done to rehabilitate the river in South Africa) reported a greater awareness of their work, over the course of the project. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017,2018 |
| Description | School engagement activities: Eco clubs, water efficient food gardens and rainwater harvesting infrastructure. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | The purpose of these regular events in schools was to raise awareness of the Aller River Pilot Project and its aims in regard to rehabilitating the waterway that runs through the community served by five primary schools and one secondary school; and to teach the children and the community about issues related to water security. The team of young Eco-champs set up eco-clubs in these six schools of between 15 and 30 children and their teachers during ARPP1. During ARPP2 , the Eco-champs and the eco clubs worked together to set up 'keyhole gardens' in each school to teach about efficient use of water for growing vegetables. These gardens proved highly successful and have mostly now been extended by the schools and have become a part of their approach to food growing and teaching where it is possible to teach about agriculture within the constraints of the curriculum. As part of this work the AHRC Healthy Waterways project sponsored the installation of rainwater harvesting cisterns which are being used to water the gardens. This contributes to a reduction in water bills in the schools. One school requested that they pilot the use of this rainwater harvesting to flush toilets and this has so far proved to be highly successful, although the outcomes are still being monitored. Another activity that these schools did with the ARPP2 team was to visit a local nature reserve (sponsored by the reserve). They were able to take the eco clubs with a larger cohort of the students from each school. This trips proved to be highly successful in raising awareness about the project and in engaging these children in learning about their local habitats. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017,2018 |
| Description | facilitating engagement around waste and sanitation issues between local community groups (the Local Area Ward Committees) and the local municiple departments with responsibility for waste and sanitation. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | These two workshops arose as a request from local elected representatives of local area committees for the ARPP team to facilitate discussions about waste disposal and water and sanitation problems faced by local residents living within the target area of the project. The ARPP were able to bring together appropriate representatives from the departments of water and sanitation and solid waste and were able to mediate between the local resident representatives and these entities. An outcome of these workshops was the setting up of a task team who will meet regularly to discuss the problems around waste disposal and management that were raised, to seek appropriate solutions that will support the aims of all three partners in these discussions (the Aller River Pilot Project team, the local municipality and the local residents). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |