Professor Cosens specializes in water law and water politics. She co-chaired the Adaptive Water Governance Project the objective of which was to examine how law, policy and ecological dynamics influence the governance of regional-scale, social and ecological systems.

The lecture addresses the challenges that emerged during the Adaptive Water Governance project. The first challenge is to consider the role of law in removing barriers to adaptive governance. The second one is to assure that the new approaches to governance do not destabilize nor come at the expense of accountability and justice. The third challenge is to identify when government is authorized to participate in adaptive governance.

The public lecture is part of the BlueAdapt project aiming at developing a comprehensive methodological framework supporting sustainable blue growth by combining multidisciplinary research and the knowledge and experience of public and private sector actors into guidelines for adaptive governance to inform decision-making.

The BlueAdapt project is funded by the Strategic Research Council (SRC) at the Academy of Finland.