Introduction
Dr Johanna Koehler is Assistant Professor of Environmental Policy and Governance in the Department of Environmental Policy Analysis at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her research interests include sustainable water services and net-zero energy transitions. She investigates how risks and responsibilities can be re-conceptualised and re-allocated in pluralist governance arrangements between the state, market, and communities. To date, she has focused on the interplay of water risks and institutional change as well as new professional water service delivery models emerging across sub-Saharan Africa. Theoretically, her work advances institutional theory of risk; methodologically, she uses qualitative and quantitative methods, including experiments, to understand social and institutional behaviours with regard to environmental governance, working with governments, the private sector, and end users. Johanna is also Honorary Research Associate at the School of Geography and the Environment and the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford.
She is co-founder of a business model for maintaining drinking water infrastructure in marginalised areas of Kenya, FundiFix Ltd., which serves over 80,000 people with reliable water services. Her research on sharing water-related risks between the public and private sectors and communities was taken up in Kenya’s Water Act 2016. The model has since been scaled up by UNICEF in Bangladesh and is part of the wider Uptime consortium of service providers maintaining rural water infrastructure across Africa.
Expert
Johanna holds a DPhil (PhD) in Geography and the Environment, an MSc in Water Science, Policy and Management, both from the University of Oxford, and a BA in History and International Relations from Royal Holloway, University of London.
In 2018 she was joint winner of the inaugural University of Oxford's Vice Chancellor's Innovation Award, and in 2019 she was appointed water and sustainable development expert on the World Economic Forum Expert Network. She is part of the Bosch Academy for Transformational Leadership (2020-22) focused on sustainability and transformation research, especially with regard to land use practices in a globalised world.
Fields of expertise: Environmental policy / climate change, Policy design and delivery, Water and sanitation