News

On November 17, 2018, Udall Center researchers, Andrea Gerlak and Adriana Zuniga, in collaboration with their partners Joaquin Murrieta from Watershed Management Group and Claudio Rodriguez and Nelda Ruiz from Tierra y Libertad Organization, led a team of volunteers in the implementation of green infrastructure at Star Academic High School. More than 80 volunteers that included high school students and teachers, Joint Technological Education District students and instructors, and University of Arizona students worked together to dig basins, plant trees, build benches, and beautify the school front and back yards. The aim of this project is to help the school reduce heat and flooding and serve as a demonstration project for the community. It also aims to bring communities together to enhance resilience and address social injustice.

Tucson Verde Para Todos, spearheaded by Andrea Gerlak and her research partner Adriana Zuniga at the University of Arizona was featured in High Country News. The group won a grant from the university and partnered with Tierra y Libertad and other local nonprofits including the Watershed Management Group, who designed the basin, to create the project.

The Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy and El Colegio de Sonora hosted the workshop, “Binational Water Relations at 75 Years,” held October 15-16, 2018 at the University of Arizona. In attendance were the U.S. and Mexican commissioners of the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), referred to as the Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas (CILA) in Spanish; Prof. Stephen Mumme (who presented the keynote address); Ambassador Alberto Székely; the Mexican Consul in Tucson; as well as University of Arizona leadership, researchers, students, governmental and civil-society participants from both sides of the border.

Four University of Arizona faculty were welcomed as Udall Center Fellows at a reception on September 17th attended by faculty colleagues, University leadership, and Udall Center staff. The Fellows program — the longest standing such program at the University — selects only a handful of University of Arizona faculty each year, ranging from many different disciplines around campus. During this time, the Fellows will be conducting research on various topics including co-production of environmental knowledge in Guatemala, using novel social scientific methods to address health disparities, developing a model of diet-sensitive disease prevention for food insecure populations, and authoritarianism, populism, and the partisan policy divide. The Udall Center Fellows program also offers a semester off from normal teaching, thus allowing for creative scholarship and pursuit of funds.

Conflicts around energy development are becoming common place across the United States, especially in wake of hydraulic fracking. Dr. Andrea K. Gerlak (School of Geography and Development and Udall Center, University of Arizona) recently collaborated with colleagues Tanya Heikkila and Chris Weible, of the University of Colorado-Denver School of Public Affairs, in presenting research on the role of science and learning to change policy positions and ultimately, resolve conflict.

The Udall Center Fellows Program is in its 28th year! It is a genuinely unique enterprise on this campus and has served as a model for similar programs elsewhere. Here’s why you should consider applying for 2018-19.

Increasingly, intensifying competition for water resources, changes in the hydro-climatic cycle, and degrading water quality are threatening both humans and ecosystems. These risks are of increasing concern for transboundary river basins, where coordination across international political boundaries adds a dimension of complexity to already challenging governance issues. The effective production of scientific knowledge and incorporation of that knowledge into decision-making is seen as a critical factor influencing how water-related risks are mitigated, and river basins are effectively governed.

Please join us in welcoming our new cohort: Corey Abramson, (Sociology); Melanie Hingle, (Nutritional Sciences); Kevin Anchukaitis, (Geography and Development); Christopher Weber, (Government and Public Policy).

The National Academies of Science of both the US and Mexico hosted a workshop regarding sustainability in transboundary arid lands in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, chaired by Christopher Scott, Director of the Udall Center (University of Arizona).

Researchers from the University of Arizona, and affiliates to the AQUASEC network from Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, and decision-makers met in a workshop in Guaymas to share experiences and devise solutions to water-security challenges.