“Oxford MBA students consider long-term solutions to the ongoing crisis”
[press release]
The water crisis in California has highlighted the global issues around water security, as seemingly safe and secure supplies of the commodity are vulnerable to risk, making water security one of the defining global challenges to society in the 21st century. MBA students at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford have been studying these problems as part of the Global Opportunities and Threats: Oxford (GOTO) programme; they were set the challenge of understanding the global water crisis and exploring a water-related issue which was of personal interest to their team. The aim is for students to understand the underlying problem and to identify gaps in current solutions. By thinking through the issues in this way, they can suggest future levers of change and test different scenarios to how global challenges can be tackled.
A number of the student teams chose to focus their attention on the use of water by the agricultural industry in California – which uses 80% of the state’s water. In order to unearth viable options for permanent solutions, teams were required to consider the current response, and test their resolutions in numerous future scenarios.
One group focused specifically on almond farming in the Central Valley. Almonds are a crop which require a huge amount of water to produce, but generate a lot for the local economy. As the industry is very lucrative, the water usage has been unregulated and as a result there are numerous stakeholders have an unfair hold over the water available; this is something that needs to be redressed. The team also realised that the solution needs to be a lasting one due to the area’s drought cycle. They considered an online water brokerage platform, as used in Australia, where commercial water users can buy and sell water rights. Under this system, the government decides on an overall water allocation for the year based on factors such as land size and water availability; these rights are then tradable, and the fixed entitlements also ensure that users are not priced out of the market. The team concluded that this system would be the most effective for providing a systematic solution to the challenge of water conflict in the area.
Another looked at agriculture in the region more generally, concluding that increasing the amount of water available in the area, rather than decreasing the demand for water, would be the most desirable option for the numerous stakeholders involved. In order to achieve this, they believe that desalinisation, a proven, viable and scalable solution that does not cause the same level of environmental degradation as ground water drilling, would be the best, lasting option. The process removes excess salt and other minerals from water in order to obtain fresh water suitable for animal consumption or irrigation. They concluded that this solution, while initially costly, would be effective across the globe in other regions affected by water shortages for farming.
GOTO, launched in 2012/13 to the MBA and EMBA classes, is a unique part of studying at Oxford Saïd. Focusing on a different problem each year, the module challenges the entire MBA cohort to examine current global issues that are far-reaching and increasingly complex, including big data, demographic change, and resource scarcity. The programme is created, convened, curated and moderated by academics at Oxford Saïd and the broader University of Oxford; providing students with the opportunity to work and debate with experts in the field.
‘Water related issues are increasingly putting strains on our political, economic, and social systems, so the challenge for students is to understand how businesses, governments and society will be impacted in the future and ways to mitigate those impacts,’ said Peter Tufano, Dean of Oxford Saïd. ‘By uniting our students with academics, engineers, social scientists, development economists, hydrologists, modellers, and statisticians from across the University of Oxford and beyond, the GOTO project enabled our students to understand the underlying problems and future scenarios in which new business models can manage water for the collective good.’
Visit the GOTO website for more information: http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/school/goto