Fazilda Nabeel

Doctoral Researcher, Centre for Water Informatics and Technology, University of Sussex

Ms. Fazilda Nabeel is a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Sussex (UK) and currently working with the Centre for Water Informatics and Technology (WIT) as a Visiting Researcher for her fieldwork year. Fazilda has had 6 years of experience working with the South Asian Human Development Reports by the Mahbub ul Haq Centre for Human Development, as well as the recent National Human Development Report (2016) by the UNDP. Fazilda’s research on transboundary water issues was published in the Mahbub ul Haq Centre’s Human Development Report (2013) titled ‘Water for Human Development’ She has also conducted background research for the last Track II Water-Dialogue held by the Atlantic Council USA (South Asia Centre) in Lahore in September 2012. Fazilda was also selected as a Lead Pakistan Fellow on Transboundary Water Resources South Asia for 2014-2015. She also underwent training at the Water Diplomacy Workshop, Harvard Law School, where she presented a case on the Indus Basin and contributed to the Aquapaedia Case Database maintained by the Water Diplomacy Network of MIT, Harvard and Tufts.

Fazilda’s doctoral research, funded by Economic and Social Research Council (UK), analyses the nature and underlying causes of problem of groundwater (non) governance in the Indus Basin of Pakistan, particularly the marginalisation of groundwater governance in comparison to the technical, legal, institutional development of surface water. Her research explores the historical contingency and path dependence as one possible explaination of groundwater apathy in the Indus Basin of Pakistan by tracing the contemporary problem groundwater non-governance to its colonial roots. She is also interested in how state and non-state actors, have shaped the development and management of groundwater in the region. Her fieldwork on local governance of municipal, industrial and agricultural water use in the Sheikhupura district of Punjab explores the competing uses of water in one of the critically exploited areas with high industrial and agricultural water footprints in the Rechna Doab, as well as the effect of deteriorating groundwater quality and diminishing quantity on livelihoods.