Thomas Hilker is a student of the joint Master’s program of International Relations at the Free University of Berlin, the Humboldt University of Berlin and Potsdam University. His areas of interest include Sustainable Development, the eco-social Management of Natural Resources and Global Communication.
As part of the German-Indian Sustainability and Climate Change Dialogue, his research will be focused on how far water systems based on local contexts, community beliefs, participation and processes of communal norm formation ensure a sustainable management of water resources. Highlighting the social dimension of environment and development, innovative cases of participatory, community-based and decentralized models of water supply will be examined.
The learning and action-oriented research will include conducting interviews with various experts of the public, private and particularly civil society sector and visiting sites that provide alternative approaches in view of the looming global water crisis, such as undertaken by TERI and the Delhi-based NGO ‘Development Alternatives’.