ABSTRACT
The Academy - founded by Plato and transformed into the modern university - is an ideal institution to cultivate, create, and disseminate universal knowledge. However, many contemporary water problems arise from an intrinsic complexity that does not yield generalizable solutions or universal knowledge. Water Diplomacy is an idea - conceived by a group of reflective water scholars and professionals in Boston in 2006 - with an ambitious goal to explore new ways to “think and do” water scholarship on complex water issues and improve societal outcomes. In this closing chapter, we recall key lessons learned over a decade of implementing an interdisciplinary graduate Water Diplomacy Program at Tufts University. In closing, we remind our readers: to recognize that the complexity of coupled natural and human systems requires a synthesis of knowledge representations rather than an either-or framing; to embrace problem-driven opportunities for collaboration facilitated by shared frameworks; and that arriving at actionable, sustainable, and equitable outcomes requires a principled and pragmatic approach to engaging in inclusive stakeholder-centered processes (e.g., fact-value deliberation, joint fact finding, collective decision making, and adaptive management). In many ways, our experiment is just beginning, but we share our gratitude for this opportunity to reflect on the progress we have made so far.
