Co-sponsored session w/workshop: DevEng/InFEWS program, UC Berkeley Blum Center for Developing Economies, and Arava Institute for Environmental Studies
Several innovative technologies for food, energy and water systems offer
sustainable solutions to the challenges of sustaining human life in arid areas.
However, the development of these solutions often ignores Indigenous concerns
and values. To make indigenous communities more resilient and to help them
flourish, research has shown that it is critical to incorporate participatory
design and culturally-sensitive approaches to the innovation process. The goal
of this session is to articulate guidelines and training for co- innovation of
food, energy and water systems with Indigenous communities in the Negev as a
follow-up to a parallel workshop offered with the Navajo Nation in the USA in
June 2020.
Pre-session field trip: In this fieldtrip, participants will visit a
Negev community that has implemented an innovative system encompassing food,
energy and water. Through the visit, participants will get familiarized with a
food-energy-water problems in its local context, will explore the solutions
offered, and will hear from community representatives about current challenges
that are still unresolved.
The working session that will follow the fieldtrip, will include 3-5
presentations (10 minutes each) of case-studies of co-innovation with
indigenous communities from Israel and around the world, after-which a workshop
will be facilitated to brainstorm and co-design solutions for the challenges
presented in the fieldtrip (30 minutes).
The last part of the working session (50 minutes) will include a reflection on the co-design process and identification of methodologies for co-innovation with Indigenous communities. A framework for case-studies of co-innovation with Indigenous communities will be defined and refined to be disseminated through the participants in the workshop.