VU Amsterdam environmental scientist Johanna Koehler is to be awarded a Veni grant of 280,000 euros from The Dutch Research Council (NWO). She will use this personal grant for research into innovative ways of managing water supply.
Global challenges such as climate change urgently require innovation in the way water is delivered. One quarter of the world population is still without safe drinking water. In response, institutional innovation is happening on a large scale through the emergence of hybrid institutions, which share risks between private, public and community actors. By investigating how risks and responsibilities can be reallocated in these hybrid governance arrangements, this project provides insight into the choices that collaborating parties make. By doing so, Koehler will advance institutional theory of risk. Due to the global set-up of this project (with a global survey and planned case studies in Kenya, Nepal, USA and Germany), the attention for the urgent transition to a more sustainable society and the focus on joint learning, the project provides new insights into the design of the water supply of the future.
Since 2021, Johanna Koehler, Assistant Professor at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), has been a member of the Amsterdam Young Academy (AYA), a network of promising, young Amsterdam scientists whose research extends beyond their own discipline. Through her focus on the design of the water utilities of the future she aims to contribute to the urgent transition towards more sustainable societies.
Veni funding
Together with Vidi and Vici, Veni is part of the NWO Talent Programme. Researchers in the Talent Programme are free to submit their own subject for funding. NWO thus encourages curiosity-driven and innovative research. A total of 78 scientists from the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) and Applied and Engineering Sciences (AES) domains received Veni funding in the Netherlands.