Ashcraft / Mayer The Politics of Fresh Water

Access, Conflict and Identity
Erscheinungsjahr 2015
ISBN: 978-1-317-50997-4
Verlag: CRC Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 260 Seiten

Reihe: Earthscan Studies in Water Resource Management

This volume discusses the politics of the freshwater crisis, specifically access to water in different regions and historical periods. It demonstrates the impact of efforts to control water systems, through development, technologies, and institutions, on identities and communities.

Itself a paradox of fundamental and fluid characteristics, identity is constructed in part around similarities and differences. Unequal access to water contributes to the construction of collective identities, for example when marginalized people see themselves as the oppressed and excluded. These groups mobilize in support of specific responses to mitigate the difference in access. It is shown that these responses are themselves expressions of collective identity that raise questions about power relationships within the social structure.

The book analyzes responses to the water crisis as efforts to mitigate water insecurity and as expressions of collective identity that legitimate, resist, or seek to transform existing inequalities. The chapters focus on different processes that contribute to freshwater scarcity, including land use decisions, pollution, privatization, damming, climate change, discrimination, water management institutions and technology. Case studies are included from North and South America, Africa, Asia, Europe and New Zealand.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ashcraft, Catherine M.

Mayer, Tamar

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik Umwelt- und Gesundheitspolitik
• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Umweltpolitik, Umweltprotokoll

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction 1. When Is A River Not A River? Strange Waters in the Los Angeles Basin Part 1: Water Development and Human-Environment Interactions 2. Creating Ecological Scarcity: The Struggle to Sustain New Zealand’s Water, Watersheds and Pastoral Heritage 3. Resource Mobility and Flow In, Through, and Out of the Russian Far East: Understanding Socionatural Systems in Multi-harvest Resource Spaces 4. The Historically Evolving Impact of the Ogallala Aquifer: Agricultural Adaptation to Groundwater and Drought 5. Rapa Nui and Tenerife: Rethinking Water Management and Privatization through Political Ecology 6. The Era of Big Dam Building: It Ain’t Over ‘til it’s Over 7. An Equitable and Sustainable Water Future Part 2: Institutions and Governance 8. Ancient Roman Water Rights and Commons Theory 9. Can Gardens Teach Us How to Better Use Water? 10. The Long-Term Consequences of Trans-Jurisdictional River Basin Governance: Anti-Democratic Unity, Fragmentation and Failure, or Parceling Out the Watershed 11. Managing Change and Conflict in International River Basins: The Danube and the Nile Rivers 12. Water, Occupation, and the Viability of the Two State Option in Historic Palestine Part 3: Inequality and Resistance 13. West is East? Water, Values and Community in Pakistan and Western United States 14. Legal Mobilization and the Politics of Water Pollution: The Case of the Matanza-Riachuelo Basin in Argentina 15. The Power of Water: Industrial Agriculture, Resource Inequities and Indigenous Farm Worker Resistance 16. The Politics of Muddled Waters in Gujarat, India: Environmental, Economic, Social, and Cultural Influences 17. Theorizing Differences and Inequality in Relation to Water Access and Politics 18. Cultural Water Wars: Power and Hegemony in the Semiotics of Rivers

Über Autor(innen)

Catherine Ashcraft is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of New Hampshire, USA, specializing in international environmental governance, negotiation and dispute resolution, particularly as relates to water. Her PhD research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology focused on adaptive governance of international river basins.

Tamar Mayer is Director of the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs, and for Hebrew Studies and International and Global Studies, at Middlebury College, Vermont, USA.