
Robert LuetkemeierInstitute for Social-Ecological Research | ISOE · Water Resources and Land Use
Robert Luetkemeier
Dr.
Head of Research Unit Water and Land Use and co-heading the Junior Research Group 'regulate'
About
36
Publications
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Introduction
I'm a researcher at ISOE - Institute for Social-Ecological Research in Frankfurt, Germany and heading the research unit 'Water and Land Use' while also co-heading the junior research group 'regulate' - Regulation of Groundwater in Telecoupled Social-Ecological Systems. I focus on socio-hydrology as a new way to understand human-nature (water) interactions from a theoretical and modelling point of view.
Additional affiliations
June 2011 - present
Education
April 2013 - October 2018
April 2006 - December 2011
Publications
Publications (36)
The Global South is facing severe challenges in ensuring livelihood security due to climate change impacts, environmental degradation and population growth as well as changing lifestyles. These complex problems cannot be solely solved by single scientific disciplines – they require transdisciplinary research (TDR). Stakeholders from civil society,...
Precautionary measures and governmental regulations during the COVID-19 pandemic’s first wave have drastically altered daily activities and hence water consumption patterns. Many people had to change their working routines, the organization of childcare and hygiene practices. While first evidence appears on the impacts of COVID-19 on, e.g., carbon...
Groundwater sustains human well-being and ecosystems functioning. Many regions in Europe have experienced declining groundwater levels caused by decreasing groundwater recharge (GWR) or increasing groundwater abstractions (GWAs). These changes can lead to groundwater-related stress, threatening ecosystems and water supplies. Existing groundwater st...
Der Grundwasserschutz steht auch im Landkreis Mansfeld-Südharz vor Herausforderungen: Im Zuge des Klimawandels verändert sich die Verteilung von Niederschlägen im Jahr. Die Veränderungen erhöhen die Unsicherheit über das zukünftige Grundwasserdargebot sowie seine räumliche und zeitliche Verteilung in Menge und Qualität. Das verändert ökologische Fu...
Germany plans to expand water transfers over long distances in the light of numerous and pressing challenges for drinking water supply. Research on inter-and intrabasin water transfers warns, however, that major investments in large-scale infrastructure systems accompanied by institutional logics and political interests often lead to a so-called lo...
This case study report presents the outcomes of a co-design process focused onsustainable water management amidst rising demand driven by tourism on the Adriatic Coast, with a specific focus on Krk Island. Under the umbrella term “Water-Tourism-Nexus”, the regulate project team together with engaged stakeholders from water management, tourism, gove...
SDG goal 17 seeks to strengthen global partnerships, especially between Global North and South. However, in research and development, experiences indicate a mismatch in expectations with perceived power, funding and workload imbalances, a situation derogated as ‘parachute science’ or ‘helicopter research’. The research programme SPACES seeks to enh...
Wildlife numbers are declining globally due to anthropogenic pressures. In Namibia, however, wildlife populations increased with policy instruments that allow private ownership and incentivize their sustainable use. Antithetically, this resulted in increased resource competition between humans and wildlife and triggered conflicts among various stak...
Groundwater is essential for drinking water supply, food production and ecosystem functioning. At the same time, human-groundwater interactions often critically lead to overexploitation and quality degradation. In this chapter, we explore anthropogenic activities and their direct consequences for quality and quantity in the agricultural, domestic a...
Groundwater is essential for drinking water provision and food production while hosting
unique biodiversity and delivering key ecosystem services. However, overexploitation and contamination are prevailing threats in many regions worldwide. Even integrated governance schemes like the European Union Water Framework Directive often fail to ensure goo...
With the Earth system being about to leave Holocene conditions and thus the known safe operating space for humanity, frameworks such as the Planetary Boundaries (PBs) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide quantitative metrics to guide sustainability transformations. In order to strive, not only for compliance with the PBs but also fo...
Am Umgang mit Biodiversität entzünden sich weltweit Konflikte, die bisher nicht umfassend erforscht und systematisiert wurden, da die Zusammenhänge zwischen Biodiversitätsverlust und gesellschaftlichen Konflikten vielfältig sind (Fickel und Hummel 2019; Scheffran 2018). Der jüngste Bericht des Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem S...
Droughts threaten millions of people in Sub-Saharan Africa, leading to famines, water shortages, migration and casualties. Climate change will most probably exacerbate the devastating consequences as exceptional droughts are expected to occur more frequently. Conventional drought risk assessments however, do not provide adequate tools, as they ofte...
23. – 24. July 2019, Windhoek, Namibia
Droughts are phenomena that occur worldwide, in humid and arid environments as well as in the Global North and the Global South. They are considered as slow onset hazards that affect more people than any other natural process with an estimated economic damage of USD 135 Billion and 12 Million casualties globally between 1900 and 2013 (Masih et al.,...
Water scarcity is an essential threat to the sustainable development pathways of countries in the Global South. In southern Africa for instance, hydro-climatic conditions are already critical but are likely to become worse as climate change projections indicating more severe droughts, un-certain rainfall conditions and a likely temperature increase...
Documentation of ISOE's Summer School "Brilliant Minds for Social-Ecological Transformations"
Droughts threaten many regions worldwide, in particular semi-arid environments of sub-Saharan Africa such as the Cuvelai-Basin in Angola and Namibia, as the population depends on critical water-related ecosystem services. Since droughts are multi-layered phenomena, risk assessment tools that capture the societal relations to nature and identify tho...
Good quality data on precipitation are a prerequisite for applications like short-term weather forecasts, medium-term humanitarian assistance, and long-term climate modelling. In Sub-Saharan Africa, however, the meteorological station networks are frequently insufficient, as in the Cuvelai-Basin in Namibia and Angola. This paper analyses six rainfa...
Good quality data on precipitation are a prerequisite for applications like short-term weather forecasts, medium-term humanitarian assistance and long-term climate modelling. In Sub-Saharan Africa however, terrestrial climate station networks are frequently insufficient as in the Cuvelai-Basin in Namibia and Angola.
As part of SASSCAL task 16, this...
Current state of the household drought risk research in task16 of SASSCAL.
Drought is one of the major threats to societies in Sub-Saharan Africa, as the majority of the population highly depends on rain-fed subsistence agriculture and traditional water supply systems. Hot-spot areas of potential drought impact need to be identified to reduce risk and adapt a growing population to a changing environment. This paper presen...
The poster examines the qualitative empirical insights on household decision making in northern Namibia concerning livestock management. Continuous and planned grazing is presented as two key strategies.
Blog post at www.scisnack.com (http://www.scisnack.com/2016/04/22/certainly-uncertain-do-satellites-help-to-monitor-food-security-in-africa/)
Satellite data is revolutionising the way we look at our planet. From tracking deforestation and land use changes to identifying built-up areas for monitoring urbanisation, the advantages of this technology...
Drought is a recurring threat to the inhabitants of the Cuvelai watershed in Namibia and Angola. This is especially true for rural households whose livelihood depends on subsistence agriculture. This paper presents the results of a qualitative household survey to understand the impact of drought and identify key parameters that determine households...
Die Verfügbarkeit von Wasser in ausreichender Quantität und guter Qualität für Gesellschaften und Ökosysteme räumlich und zeitlich zu gewährleisten, ist eine der großen globalen Herausforderungen („great challenges“) der Gegenwart und Zukunft. Um die Wasserverfügbarkeit sicherzustellen, grei-fen Gesellschaften als gestaltende Akteure massiv in natü...
Hydrological extreme events like droughts and floods are recurring hazards in central-northern Namibia. In particular smallholders are threatened since their livelihoods highly depend on reliable hydrological conditions. The local social-ecological system, characterized by subsistence farming and livestock herd-ing, is able to deal with change in h...
Global change is challenging communities all over the African continent with varying intensities. In particular, central-northern Namibia is confronted with changing rainfall patterns, land use change, population growth and urbanization, leading to an overuse of scarce land- and water resources. Especially, rural subsistence farmers are threatened...
North-central Namibia is characterized by seasonal alterations of
drought and heavy rainfall, mostly saline groundwater resources and a
lack of perennial rivers. Water scarcity poses a great challenge for
freshwater supply, harvest and food security against the background of
high population growth and climate change. CuveWaters project aims at
pove...
Questions
Question (1)
I try to assess the vulnerability to water scarcity in a semi-arid environment on the household level (smallholders). For analyzing people's capacity to cope, I would like to follow the 'Household Economy Approach'. Does anyone have experience in carrying out HEA surveys in the field?