The United Nations has declared the access to affordable, clean water to be a human right. Yet around the world billions of people cannot exercise this right. In addition, people in the developing world often face challenges of drought, floods, and degradation of aquatic ecosystem services. This class explores the challenges of water in developing countries, emerging issues, and potential solutions. Issues to be explored include Integrated Water Resource Management, governance, privatization, gender equality, social justice, climate change, water security, and appropriate technology.

Graduate students (4 credits) and undergraduate students (2 credits) will explore these topics during the first session. Undergraduate and graduate students will participate in the weekly classroom sessions, read from weekly assignments, and do a research project which will include a final paper and presentation. Graduate students will also write weekly assignments on the readings, and will do a more in-depth, graduate-level research topic with a more extensive final paper.

2014 Syllabus

Faculty Biography:

Paul Pickett, M.Eng. , has worked in water resources engineering for over three decades. His career focus has been on water quality, hydrology, water supply, watershed functions, and climate change. He received a Bachelor of Science in Renewable Natural Resources from the University of California at Davis in 1984, and a Masters of Engineering in Environmental Civil Engineering from U.C. Davis in 1989. Since 1988 he’s worked for the Washington Department of Ecology as an environmental engineer. From 2001 through 2012 he served as an elected Commissioner for the Thurston Public Utility District, a water utility with about 3,000 customers in five counties. He has taught at Evergreen since 2009, and also occasionally writes feature articles for local publications. He lives with his wife on acreage in rural Thurston County, along with cats, chickens, blueberries, fruit trees, noxious weeds, and mud.