DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17945729
title: JustWATER
title: Water Decision Making Tools For Informed Hydropolitics in Italy

description: This is the zip file of the results of the Marie Curie Action Call: HORIZON-MSCA-2022-PF-01 (MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2022).Topic: HORIZON-MSCA-2022-PF-01-01 — Type of Action: HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF (HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships – European Fellowships).Project number: SEP-210874497. Project acronym: JustWATER.A more detailed form of archive and files will be deployed in this repository within December 2025.
description: https://justwater-0cb8db74bf24.herokuapp.com/temp/

 

Official website containing information regarding the project.



Methodology

Virtual water is by nature an interdisciplinary domain ; the research has built upon and expanded its horizons in human geography, political ecology and international political economy to establish a novel theoretical framework for the study of virtual water. The connection between virtual water theories and political ecology has been neglected, as virtual water literature has focused mainly on the global scale of analysis and its relation to the national scale. This has sometimes disconnected virtual water analysis from the local scale, which is where very often political action is taken and power relations are played out.JustWater politicises the concept of virtual water by exploring the dynamics at the regional and district level of irrigation water and water footprint ( Mialik et al. 2024 dataset) . The research politicises the environmental issue of water scarcity in vulnerable aquifers and water-scarce areas by establishing a precise geo-location of where it occurs, and analysing the relationships between political, economic and social factors linked to virtual water and crop exports. The research merges the methods of statistics and econometric analysis of virtual water to test specific concepts in critical hydro politics in the broader field of human geography and political ecology, including an analysis of the female/male ratio of farmers, agricultural workers and water community of Italy, documenting their overall imbalance. JustWater thus integrates Gender Studies with Virtual Water.

JustWater is completely mainstreamed for gender, covering alongside diversity and minority issues, such as migrant issues and human rights of migrant workers. The project provides an analysis of the gender dimension of the Italian water community alongside sex-disaggregated data on farm ownership and the agricultural workforce. While global virtual water datasets are gender-blind – as they exclusively refer to water embedded in crop production without discussing social aspects – this research will address the social dimension in a gendered way, given the significant gender imbalances in land ownership and water management roles (WWDR 2018). This is an absolute novelty in the virtual water literature. The research covers minority issues, migrant issues, human rights of migrant workers and the lack of decent work conditions20 within the analysis of the socio-economic aspects.

The gender dimension of this project is extremely innovative and transformative, especially as the final workshop would be the first sex-disaggregated workshop ever performed within the Italian water community. This action will provide sex-disaggregated data on water-decision making and water managers in Italy. The workshop will expose the Italian water community, which has historically been male-dominated, to the results of JustWater through a gender-transformative technique.This gender-transformative activity addresses the issue of unconscious bias and systemic structural barriers faced by women in the sector of water expertise in Italy. The workshop will therefore expose Italy's water decision-makers not only to the results of this research but also to their own gender-role imbalance. This is coherent with the use of sex-disaggregated indicators recommended by the United Nations regarding SDG5 (gender equality) and SDG6 (water) and the European Commission’s Gender Equality Strategy for 2020-2025 and in line with the Gender Equality in Research and Innovation.




Objectives

Theoretical goals: JustWATER  draws upon insights from Human Geography, Political Economy and Political Ecology. Introducing the sub-national scale of analysis constitutes a substantial theoretical innovation in the virtual water literature, which has so far concentrated on the global and national scale.Practical goals: JustWATER will provide policy-oriented tools and end-users data to serve citizen science and open science practices, allowing not only interoperability of research outputs, but also replicability in other countries.Overall goals: to construct a theoretical and analytical framework, create a set of information and policy tools and to involve the Italian water community of experts.

Main Sources:Mialyk, O., Schyns, J. F., Booij, M. J., Su, H., Hogeboom, R. J., & Berger, M. (2024). Water footprints and crop water use of 175 individual crops for 1990–2019 simulated with a global crop model. Scientific data, 11(1), 206.and Kuzma, S., Bierkens, M. F., Lakshman, S., Luo, T., Saccoccia, L., Sutanudjaja, E. H., & Van Beek, R. (2023). Aqueduct 4.0: Updated decision-relevant global water risk indicators.




References



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Hamdy, A., Quagliariello, R., & Venezian-Scarascia, M. E. (2004). “Integration of gender dimension in water management in the Mediterranean region: Bari's workshop review.” In A. Hamdy, J. A. Sagardoy, M. El Kady, R. Quagliariello, & C. Bogliotti (Eds.), Training of trainers in Integration of Gender Dimension in water management in the Mediterranean region. Bari: CIHEAM, Options Méditerranéennes, Série A. n. 64, pp. 7–10.

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