Student testimonial
Student Meike – MSc International Land and Water Management
“What I like most about the Master’s programme in International Land and Water Management is that you learn to approach land and water issues from multiple angles and ask critical questions about certain working methods. There is no blueprint that works always and everywhere. You have to take into account not only technical and physical aspects, but also socio-cultural aspects. And still you often encounter surprising dynamics. It is like a puzzle with many elements and possibilities that have to be placed a little differently each time.”
It is like a puzzle with many elements and possibilities
Local power dynamics
“Because I am particularly interested in local power dynamics concerning water, I chose the Water, Society and Technology specialisation. Political Ecology of Water was one of my favourite courses, because it gives you more insight into power relations and how to map them. No one is going to immediately tell you that they are the most powerful actor in an area; that message is often very implicitly packaged, for example in certain word usage and narratives.
The insights that I gained in that course proved to be really helpful once I started my thesis research in Ecuador. There, I spent six months to find out how access to water is defined in a river that completely runs dry in certain periods. The suspicion was that in reality, water scarcity did not occur naturally, but resulted from the fact that more water rights were being issued than that there was water in the river. I found that differences in power determined which actors could ensure their access to water, and which actors could not, and thus lost the opportunity to sustain their livelihoods in times of water scarcity. In cooperation with the Riverhoods and River Commons projects, we tried to visualise these usually untold realities into maps, in an attempt to draw attention to such local water injustices.”
Research or activist approach?
“Thanks to this research, I have learned what role I can play in analysing and addressing land and water issues. What I find important is to enter into conversations with local population groups and try to make their voices heard more widely. After my studies, I want to either delve deeper, by doing scientific research, or take a more activist approach and see how you can set up campaigns to enhance the voice of local communities.
That is why I am now doing an internship at an activist organisation, the Friends of the Earth network in the Philippines, where I am looking at the local consequences of the energy transition. For example, what consequences does the increasing demand for certain minerals and their mining have for nature and human rights? I hope to learn here how to convert a problem analysis into a concrete action or campaign.”