Page 38 - ALG Issue 1 2016 No social share

General
Do you remember the drought of 1976 or have you got a story about drought or water use?
If you live in one of the following catchment areas then
the DRY team would love to hear from you about your experiences http://dryproject.co.uk/our-uk-river-catchments/: • River Frome
• River Don
• River Fowey
• River Pang
• Afon Ebbw
• River Eden
• Bevills Leam
The DRY project was founded in April 2014 by a team of researchers from Loughborough, Warwick, Exeter, Shef eld, Cardiff, UWE, Harper Adams and Newcastle universities with
an aim to develop an easy-to-use, evidence-based resource to inform decision-making for drought risk management in the UK over a four year period.
A representative from the National Allotment Society has been attending meetings in the South West and we would now like to encourage our members to engage with the project across the UK. Droughts and water shortage can impact on the environment, agriculture, infrastructure, society and culture, thus affecting us all. This is an exciting way
of using the knowledge and experience of
citizens to inform decision makers.
The academic team takes a unique approach because they draw together information from multiple perspectives on drought science, stakeholder engagement, citizen science and narrative storytelling
to better understand drought risks, while other studies have focused on mathematical modelling of drought risk.
A key part of this is using different types of data together to build a better picture of drought risk in the UK. They will use a variety of methods such as storytelling, oral histories, memory work, community archives, visual stories and online forums to gain different perspectives and insight on UK drought. In the project, ‘data’ can mean statistics derived from a hydrological model to stories and images collected from a river catchment area and each of these is equally valuable in helping understand how best to cope with drought.
GET INVOLVED
• Tell your stories and share images of drought and water-use by: o Post:
Lindsey McEwen – DRY project Department of Geography and Environmental Management University of the West of England Frenchay Campus, Coldharbour Lane Bristol, UK, BS16 1QY
o Email: DRY@uwe.ac.uk
• Join in with discussions online via our forum: www.dryproject.
grou.ps./signin/warn/groups
• Tweet your images and memories of past and current
droughts, and local water-use: @Project_DRY
• Contact us if you would like to join our workshops to share
your viewpoints about drought and water-use in one of the 7
UK river catchments Tel: +44 (0)117 32 87024
• Take part in our questionnaire about domestic water-use:
Water Questionnaire http://dryproject.co.uk/
“Climate change itself is one of the greatest global threats facing us and requires collective action”
“Climate change itself is one of the greatest global threats facing us and requires collective action on a massive scale to address it. However, partly because the science behind climate change is so very complex, the public debate has been dominated by discourses
of expertise, thus excluding large parts of
the population from engaging. Storytelling
is the traditional mode of communication by which human beings process, synthesise and make sense of experience and information.
That is as true now as it was thousands of years ago and it is a particularly helpful tool in enabling us to navigate our way through complex and changing situations. Human beings are storytelling animals and by introducing storytelling into the climate change discussion, we potentially open the door for much wider public engagement, capture expertise from beyond the academic community and bring new, fresh, previously unheard voices into the conversation.”
Mike Wilson, Loughborough University
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