In collaboration with the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme (SSRP) Centre of Excellence, researchers from across campus are excited to announce a Spring workshop series, looking into ’wicked sustainability problems’ in the context of education and research. Incorporating transdisciplinary perspectives from the School of Global Studies, School of Education and Social Work, School of Life Sciences, and the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), this research workshop series will delve into global and local issues surrounding food systems, water, nature conservation and education.

In our second of the 'Wicked Sustainability Challenges' workshops, Professorial Fellow Prof Lyla Mehta (Institute of Development Studies) and Professor of Environmental Systems Science and SSRP Director Joseph Alcamo (School of Global Studies, University of Sussex) delve into water-related issues, following on from and closely linked to the discussions on food systems explored in our previous workshop.

Some of Lyla Mehta’s research has been to critically examine current water management policies in the Global South where despite decades of water reform and water management policies, poor women and men have often dismal access to water. This causes systematic harm to different aspects of their lives. It demonstrates that water management policies are often framed in technical and apolitical ways that tend to be disconnected from local people’s lived realities. Lyla will address the need to improve policy coherence across water, land, and food, with the aim to make a case for strengthening the relationship between the human rights to water and food.

Closer to home, Joseph Alcamo will discuss local agriculture and how important it is to the people of Sussex and the quality of the Sussex landscape. Local agriculture provides livelihoods and creates short food supply chains that often have lower costs and environmental impacts than the long supply chains involved with importing agricultural products. On the other hand, rainfall causes manure, artificial fertiliser, and pesticides to wash off from agricultural land and contaminate local streams. This pollution undermines the diversity of plants and animals that live in these streams and limits their recreational use. But pollution from agricultural areas is very diffuse and therefore very difficult and expensive to control. What is the solution then? Is it a choice between either clean streams or the benefits of local agriculture, or is there a way around this trade-off?

Come and help us unpeel this ‘wicked problem’, discuss how this relates to sustainability in local streams and freshwater ecosystems in the Sussex region, and explore what potential pathways might help tackle specific water pollution challenges across the South Coast and ultimately help move us towards a more sustainable and healthy future across the South Coast, UK, and our planet.