HESS Hydrology and Earth System Sciences HESS Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 1607-7938 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/hess-16-4225-2012 A regional and multi-faceted approach to postgraduate water education – the WaterNet experience in Southern Africa Jonker L. 1 van der Zaag P. 2 3 Gumbo B. 4 Rockström J. 5 Love D. 6 Savenije H. H. G. 3 University of the Western Cape, Belville, South Africa UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, Delft, The Netherlands Water Resources section, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands Cap-Net UNDP, Pretoria, South Africa Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden WaterNet, Harare, Zimbabwe 14 11 2012 16 11 4225 4232 Copyright: © 2012 L. Jonker et al. 2012 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article is available from https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/16/4225/2012/hess-16-4225-2012.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/16/4225/2012/hess-16-4225-2012.pdf

This paper reports the experience of a regional network of academic departments involved in water education that started as a project and evolved, over a period of 12 yr, into an independent network organisation. The paper pursues three objectives. First, it argues that it makes good sense to organise postgraduate education and research on water resources on a regional scale and presents the WaterNet experience as an example that a regional approach can work. Second, it presents preliminary findings and conclusions that the regional approach presented by WaterNet did make a contribution to the capacity needs of the region both in terms of management and research capacity. Third, it draws two generalised lessons from the WaterNet experience. Lesson one pertains to the importance of legitimate ownership and an accountability structure for network effectiveness. Lesson two is related to the financial and intellectual resources required to jointly developing educational programmes through shared experience.

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