Testing water, fighting back?

Date: 7 May (3-5.30pm) in the Charles Thackrah Seminar Room 1/2 (1.01/1.02) University of Leeds Hosted by the Global Political Economy and Water Humanities Groups.

As water utility companies and regulators battle over technical details and legal loopholes, rivers and seas remain polluted around the UK. A broadening constituency of protestors advocate for new relationships with nature, but traditional political channels are frustrated by oligarchic power relations and Westminster based politics. We need to understand what resources are available for water advocates in the highly technical debates regulating water quality.

So what kinds of technology are available to support community surveillance of water quality? How do they relate to the organisation of local economic and social need?  How well do these technologies empower people to fight for better water quality?

In this workshop, we discuss the strategic relationship between modern mechanisms for valuing water quality (hand held devices and labs) and non-modern, indigenous relationships with water, which emphasise community, reciprocity and kinship with water. What opportunities do these technologies present and how do these technologies present new opportunities for organising around water politics?

In our session we will explore some of the technologies that are available to local groups and citizen scientists in water quality surveillance and ask what chance these have of challenging modern (eg OFWAT based) models of water regulation. In doing so we invite speakers with practical experience in training and practising water quality measurement and advocates for entirely different ways of understanding our relation with both water bodies and the communities that live with them.

The structure will be short 20-minute presentations from our speakers and an open discussion. So please come with ideas and questions!  

Speakers:

• Jamie Linton: water researcher
• Julie Froud: the Foundational Economy
• Madison Ward: water trainer, PhD researcher  and activist
• Charlie Dannreuther: political economist and water quality monitor

If you would like to attend, please register via Eventbrite. 

We hope to see many of you there!