REES Department Seminar | Leila Harris – Joint seminar with Sociology

Seminar with Leila M. Harris, Professor, Institute for Resources Environment and Sustainability, Professor, Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, University of British Columbia.

“Human right to water and ongoing challenges: equity, uneven implementation, and shifting state-society relations”

NOTE: the seminar (joint with sociology) will be held in the sociology department

Abstract: The human right to water is a focus on ongoing promise, and considerable challenges. Focusing on the realities of underserved communities in Cape Town, South Africa and Accra, Ghana this talk considers key issues of equity, politics of the uneven implementation of the HRW and shifting state-society relations as important considerations to understand some the contestation and potential of the HRW with respect to everyday narratives and lived realities.

Bio: Leila Harris is a Professor at the Institute for Resources Environment and Sustainability (IRES) and the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice (GRSJ) at the University of British Columbia. She also serves as Co-Director for UBC’s Program on Water Governance (www.watergovernance.ca), is a member of the EDGES research collaborative (Environment and Development: Gender, Equity, and Sustainability Perspectives, www.edges.ubc.ca), and is an Associate of the Department of Geography, and the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at UBC. Dr. Harris’s work examines social, cultural, political-economic, institutional and equity dimensions of environmental and resource issues. Her current research focuses on the intersection of environmental issues and inequality / social difference, water governance shifts (e.g. marketization, participatory governance), in addition to a range of water governance challenges important for the Canadian context (e.g. First Nations water governance). Current projects include a SSHRC funded project on everyday access and governance of water in underserved areas of Cape Town, South Africa and Accra, Ghana. Dr. Harris is also principal investigator for the SSHRC funded International WaTERS Research and Training Network focused on water governance, equity and resilience in the global South