Drought, Water, Health and Economics
Project Update | Issue #19
What is this update about?
We’re excited to share about our research and engagement efforts since our last update in September. It’s been an exceptionally busy time filled with travel to different events and many exciting opportunities for engagement. Details about these events, links to a couple of new multimedia products created by the team, along with a workshop announcement and planned activities are shared in this update. Your comments and feedback are always highly appreciated. We’d love to engage with you about mutual interests.

What we've done since our last update:
  • We’re fully back in the international, domestic, and local event travel & in-person engagement mode, which recently has included presenting different research projects about improving drought and groundwater management policy at the Sustain Valencia 2022 conference (Spain), the Heartland Environmental and Resource Economics Workshop (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), the Platte River Basin Conference (Kearney, Nebraska).
  • Lessons learned from conversations with agricultural lenders, appraisers, and loan underwriters around agricultural water risk and sustainability-linked finance were shared at the Conservation Finance Roundtable (Durham, North Carolina). The team is excited to apply the received feedback and continue collaborating with existing and new partners.
  • We’ve recorded a podcast about incentive-based water management, which can be accessed here.
  • We’ve continued engaging with Nebraska public health experts and groundwater contamination specialists to better understand the data needs and availability as well as local context-specific details to inform our analysis of the health and economic impacts of nitrate contamination of Nebraska’s groundwater.
Highlight:·
As part of our team’s work on incentive-based water management tools, we created a graphic illustrating three major steps in the agricultural groundwater transfer process, which is available here or click the graphic below to enlarge. Each step in the decision-making process comprises main entities, institutional support structures, or procedures that need to be considered to make well-informed decisions. This graphic emphasizes that knowing the local context for each step is critical. It was created using a Nebraska-specific context. We’d love to hear your feedback.
Appreciation and announcement:·
  • We’d like to thank Amy Kremen, Associate Director at the Irrigation Innovation Consortium for a great partnership in co-organizing a virtual workshop about agricultural water risk and sustainable water management. The event seeks to address challenges affecting different groups of stakeholders (e.g., irrigators, lenders, investors), explore potential solutions and build new partnerships.
  • The virtual workshop will be on November 9, from noon-2 pm CST. Send a note to Renata at rrimsaite@nebraska.edu if you’re interested in participating in this conversation. Lessons learned from this workshop will be shared with key stakeholders soon after the event.

What’s next:·
  • We’ll make final edits to the graphic illustrating private wells managers’ decisions and associated barriers.
  • We’ll co-host a virtual workshop about agricultural water risk and sustainable water management.
  • We’ll continue organizing and participating in the events and planning multimedia products to learn, engage with stakeholders, and help move the conversation around mutual interests forward.
 
We'd love to hear from you and get your feedback and suggestions. Please let us know what you're curious about or any exciting initiatives – rrimsaite@nebraska.edu (Renata Rimšaitė).


Best wishes!