Oxford welcomes back Dustin Garrick

Water expert, Dr Dustin Garrick, returns to Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment to establish a programme on the commons and enterprise.

Dr Dustin Evan Garrick returned to Oxford in July 2016 to start a new post as Departmental Research Lecturer of Environmental Management based in the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment.

Dr Garrick will establish a programme to develop the next wave of research on collective action and the commons, assessing how and why the private sector engages in water allocation reform to mitigate the risks of resource competition and shocks.

His research examines property rights and incentives to allocate freshwater across uses, users and political borders, building on longstanding programmes and partnerships in Australia and Western North America, as well as growing international work, on water allocation reform, water markets, fiscal decentralisation and drought resilience.

Dr Garrick will work closely with the Oxford Water Network, the MSc programmes in SoGE and the Water Security Initiative to chart pathways to water security, bridging natural and social science expertise and methods and strengthening international networks of science, policy and enterprise.

Prior to his return to Oxford this summer, Dr. Garrick was Philomathia Chair of Water Policy at McMaster University, a Postdoctoral Fellow in Water Security at Oxford and founding member of the Oxford Water Network (2011-13) and a Fulbright Scholar in Australia, where he remains an associate of the Centre of Water Economics, Environment and Policy at the Australian National University.

He maintains  www.waterwonk.org, a website that tackles the political economy of water allocation reform, building on his 2015 book, Water Allocation in Rivers under Pressure, which will be released in paperback in January 2017