F1ES 4205 - Desalination : (Mal)adaptation to Climate Change and Water Shortage?

Water desalination is becoming a fast-growing technological response to the increasing problem of water scarcity. Especially in the Middle East - North Africa (MENA) region, which is amongst the driest zones in the world and home to approx. 10% of the world population, addressing the issue of water supply will constitute one of the major challenges in the future. Population growth and rapid urbanization constitute two factors that seem to aggravate the situation. To meet the region's fresh water demand, many countries such as Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Qatar, Libya, Morocco, Israel, etc., have invested in desalination plants. While this solution seems to be a fast developing technical solution to the « water problem », it also poses a wide range of problems. While desalination can certainly anticipate and reduce shortages in freshwater, the necessary infrastructure for desalination plants represents a real burden on the environment, but also bears hidden consequences on the societal equilibrium. Indeed, while quenching the thirst of a few, desalination plants also widen the gap of socio-economic and socio-ecological inequalities. First, because poor countries, like Yemen, cannot afford this type of expensive technology and second, because some desalination plants are highly energy-consuming, while others use chlorine to kill bacteria, a chemical that is then rejected at sea with adverse consequences for the marine fauna and flora. In addition to this, the rejection of brine, a desalination residue twice as salty as seawater, poses severe environmental concerns.
Drawing on a diverse range of theoretical and ontological approaches, our course tries to promote a nexus framework thinking which goes beyond the technology-focussed interpretations that currently pervade the discourse on desalination, to one that is both technical and social, material and political.
Building on the political ecology perspective, this course proposes to mobilise science and technology studies (STS) and assemblage thinking as complementary approaches to understanding the emergence of nexus structures as fundamentally processual and socio-technically heterogeneous. More specifically still, the course aims are three-fold :
1/ To provide a comprehensive understanding of the desalination techniques for addressing water scarcity;
2/ To demonstrate the urgent need for more critical, theoretically informed perspectives on desalination and its socio-ecological and socio-economic impact;
3/ Finally, the course will also address the question of technology transfert and its contribution (or not) to democratization.

Please note that this course is a simulation-based course. Students will participate in a simulation exercise as part of the course evaluation.
Learning Outcomes:
1. Identify and discuss socio-technical controversies;
2. Identify alternative solutions to combating climate change;
3. Evaluate the long-term impacts of technical solutions on societies and democratic regimes;
4. Learn to navigate in controversies and situations of scientific uncertainty.
5. Acquire a complex thinking method.

Professional Skills:
Problem-solving & research-based approach to learning
Team spirit and team work
Complex thinking
Actor mapping
Importance of listing to others.

Isabel RUCK

Séminaire

English