Kent E. Portney
* Urban Water Systems and Policies
* Water-Energy-Food Nexus Policies
* Transboundary Water Governance
Introduction
This is my newest research area, becoming defined out of a convergence of work on sustainable cities and on “water diplomacy.” I began the latter as a collaborative effort with colleagues at Tufts, including Shafik Islam, Rich Vogel, Bill Moomaw, and Kelly Sims Gallagher. It got a large boost when we collectively applied for and received an NSF IGERT grant to define a doctoral program called “Water Across Boundaries,” now referred to as the “Water Diplomacy” graduate program at Tufts, to promote analysis of water conflicts and conflict management and resolution around the world. My water diplomacy work is now subsumed under the Transboundary Water Governance Project, focusing mainly on analysis of U.S.-Mexico shared water resource governance. Also, since moving to the Bush School, my work on water issues has focused on analyzing the National Water Survey, a national public opinion sample that focused on a wide range of water and drought experiences and policies. It has also lead to the definition of a new national public opinion survey on the “Water-Energy-Food Security Nexus,” which provides an extensive treatment of explicit connections not heretofore explored in a national survey. I have also worked with the “Resilience and Climate Change Cooperative Project,” headed by Phil Berke, as it has elaborated a multi-disciplinary community-engaged research initiative to look at two under-served communities in the city of Houston. There are a number of papers in the works on urban water systems and policies, and these will be posted here as appropriate.
Articles, Book Chapters, and Papers
2020 - Bassel Daher, Bryce Hannibal, Rabi H. Mohtar, and Kent Portney, "Toward Understanding the Convergence of Researcher and Stakeholder Perspectives related to Water-Energy-Food (WEF) Challenges: The Case of San Antonio, Texas," Environmental Science and Policy, 104, 20-35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2019.10.020
2019 -- Kent E. Portney, J. Michael Reed, Amanda C. Repella, “Reflections on the Tufts Experiment with Interdisciplinary Water Diplomacy Research,” Chapter 14 in Shafiqul Islam and Kevin M. Smith, eds. Interdisciplinary Collaboration for Water Diplomacy: A Principled and Pragmatic Approach. CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group.
2018 -- Kent E. Portney, Robert A, Greer, and Bryce Hannibal, "Environmental Governance in the Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Implications for Collaboration and Sustainability in the Drought-Prone Metropolitan San Antonio Region." Paper delivered at the 2018 Conference of the American Political Science Association, Boston, MA, August 30.
2018 -- Kent E. Portney, Robert A. Greer, and Bryce Hannibal, “Fragmentation of Food-Energy-Water Nexus Governance: Implications for Collaboration, Co-Benefits, and Sustainability in the Metropolitan San Antonio Region.” Paper delivered at the 2018 Association for Public Policy and Management International Conference, Mexico City, July 20. Co-authored with Robert Greer and Bryce Hannibal.
2017 – Kent E. Portney, Bryce Hannibal, Carol Goldsmith, Peyton McGee, Xinsheng Liu, and Arnold Vedlitz, “Awareness of the Food-Energy-Water Nexus and Public Policy Support in the United States: Public Attitudes Among the American People,” Environment and Behavior, 1-26.
2017 -- Mathew Kurian, Kent E. Portney, Gerhard Rappold, Bryce Hannibal, and Soloman H. Gebrechorkos, "Governance of the Water-Energy-Food Nexus: A Social Network Analysis Approach," Position paper prepared for the Dresden Water, Soil, and Waste Nexus Conference, May 17-19. paper is available in the conference proceedings.
2016 -- Kent E. Portney, "Soil-Water-Food Nexus: A Public Opinion and Policy Perspective," Chapter 33 in Alex McBratney, Cristine Morgan, and Damien Field, eds. Global Soil Security, New York: Springer "Progress in Soil Science Series."
2016 --Kent E. Portney, Bryce Hannibal, Carol Goldsmith, Peyton McGee, Xinsheng Liu, and Arnold Vedlitz, “Cognitive Awareness of the Water-Energy-Food Nexus in the US: Public Attitudes among the American People,” Paper presented at the 2016 Meetings of the American Sociological Association, Seattle, WA, August 20-23.
2016 -- Kent E. Portney, Bryce Hannibal, Carol Goldsmith, Peyton McGee, Xinsheng Liu, and Arnold Vedlitz, “Cognitive Awareness of the Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Ideological and Policy Perspectives,” Paper presented at the 2016 Meetings of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, September 3.
2014 -- Margaret Garcia, Shafiqul Islam, and Kent E Portney, “Sociohydrology of an Arid City: Development of a Coupled Model of Water Management in Las Vegas” paper presented at the American Geophysical Union Conference, December.
2013 -- Tania Alarcon, Margaret Garcia, Shafik Islam, Kent Portney, and David Small, “Water Supply Adequacy in Megacities: Effects of Population Growth and Changes in Water Availability” poster presented at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco, December.
Other Accomplishments and Information
The Institute for Science, Technology and Public Policy "Water-Energy-Food Nexus National Public Opinion Survey."
Presentation on "U.S.-Mexico Water Cooperation and Conflict: The Transboundary Water Interaction NexuS (TWINS) Approach," prepared by Lindsay Sansom for the 2017 World Water Congress, Cancun, Mexico, May 30.
Project Web Site
Presentation on "Water Diplomacy in Action: Some Thoughts and Lessons for Scholarship, Practice, and Education," prepared for the 2017 Water Diplomacy Roundtable, Tufts University, May 13.
Presentation on "Water and the Nexus in the U.S. and Texas: Citizen Perspectives" for the TAMU-Resource Nexus: Water Forum (the Area 41) Kickoff, San Antonio, November 17, 2015. With Arnold Vedlitz and Peyton McGee.
Presentation on the Water-Energy-Soil Nexus at the 2015 Global Soil Security Symposium, May 19-21, Texas A&M University.
Founder and Organizer, Workshop on “Civic Engagement and Water Diplomacy,” co-sponsored by Tufts Institute of the Environment, the Water Diplomacy Doctoral Program, the Water Systems Science and Society program, and Tisch College for Citizenship and Public Service (Peter Levine), Tufts University. Four meetings during the fall semester of 2013 focused on:
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“Water, Civic Engagement, and Common Pool Resource Challenges;”
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“Civic Engagement Components of Integrated Water Resource Management;”
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“Collaborative Approaches to Watershed Management;” and
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“Mutual Gains Approaches to Stakeholder Engagement in Water Decisions.”
Guests included Lawrence Susskind (MIT), Carmen Sirianni (Brandeis), Archon Fung (Kennedy School), Josh Secunda (US EPA Region 1), and Jerome Delli Priscoli (US Army Corps of Engineers), among others.
Core faculty member and member of the Executive Committee of the Water Diplomacy Ph.D. program, Tufts University (with Shafik Islam, Rich Vogel, Tim Griffin, Michael Reed, and Bill Moomaw)