UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The link between climate change and water is often neglected and not well understood. This ambiguous relationship, combined with climate chang- induced extremities and uncertainties, exacerbate the propensity for conflicts over shared waters.

Srinivas Chokkakula, Ministry of Jal Shakti Research Chair with the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, will give the talk “Conflicts and Complicit Climate Change: Transboundary Water Governance in South Asia” as part of the Department of Geography’s Coffee Hour lecture series.

The talk, which is co-sponsored by Penn State’s Department of Asian Studies, is free and open to the public. Talk will be held at 3:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 2, in 112 Walker Building on the University Park campus and via Zoom.

Foregrounded by this complicit nature of climate change, his talk will discuss the transboundary governance challenges in South Asia — focusing on India, within and with its neighboring countries.

“I also share some recent work of the Centre for Policy Research to propose that climate change can also be an equalizer to mobilize collective action and address emerging governance challenges,” said Chokkakula, who currently is the Fulbright-Nehru Visiting Chair in Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Chokkakula leads the Transboundary Rivers, Ecologies, and Development studies program at the Centre for Policy Research. His interests extend to the broader area of politics of infrastructure development, including inland waterways, smart cities and rural roads.

Chokkakula has an interdisciplinary training in geography, planning and engineering and earned his doctorate in geography from the University of Washington.

To learn more, visit the Coffee Hour webpage.