Career opportunities - Global Water Policy and Management
Graduates from this option find employment with:
- central & local government
- regulatory bodies, such as the Environment Agency in England & Wales
- NGOs, agencies and consultants
- the water industry and business
"The course covered many aspects of water management that get overlooked or are assumed to the remit of ... well, somebody else!"
Paul Rhodes (Water Management MSc, 2002/3) was awarded first prize for his paper on "An Analysis of Public Participation: A Case Study of the River Dee Basin", which was based on his MSc thesis. The competition is sponsored by the North West and North Wales Branch of the Chartered Institute of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM) to recognise particular achievement in a research project undertaken by a student as part of a taught degree course.
According to one water sector manager this option is 'excellent and overdue'. Others say that:
"There is a great need for professionals in the water field to understand the social aspects of water management"
"We are looking for technical people with good communication skills who have a social and political awareness that enables them to bridge between the science and technology and public perception. Everything we do in water today has a public perception angle."
"…we are having to develop new appraisal methods, which integrate economic, social and physical science."
Key water sector players such as the Environment Agency in their 2001 vision for the future emphasise the importance of public education, consultation and participation in their work, which includes water resource allocation, conservation and pollution control) - they talk in terms of:
"mobilising consumer behaviour";
"engaging communities in planning for and delivering change";
"learning from and working better with communities";
"developing social awareness and understanding peoples needs and concerns";
"changing attitudes and behaviour".
"In the water industry more than almost any other sector you care to name, we have a responsibility to our customers, which goes beyond the actual service we provide for them. We have a responsibility to protect their environment. One of the effects of this upheaval (privatisation) was to make the companies very conscious indeed of their customers..… they found that their customers were not the single undifferentiated mass they had previously taken them for. They had a range of needs and priorities. There was the individual water customer, concerned about water and sewerage charges; the environmentally-aware consumer, concerned also about such things as leaking pipes and low river levels; major commercial customers, interested in price of course, but also watching their environmental credentials; and pressure groups, concerned with green issues."
New legislation will further drive the demand to address these issues. The new EC Water Framework Directive, which came into force in July 2000, specifically requires member states to adopt public participation (Article 14) in water management. The Directive will have to be implemented over the next 15 years. The EC is also proposing a new Directive on 'Public Participation in Certain Plans and Programmes Relating to the Environment' - as a step towards the ratification of the June 1998 Aarhus Convention (UN/ECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters). This is the beginning of a process of the integration water and society in environmental legislation
The aim of the Water and Society option is to equip managers with the technical and social skills to address perception and participation in the water sector.
