Liquid Relations

Contested Water Rights and Legal Complexity
None Auflage
ISBN: 978-0-8135-3675-0
Verlag: Rutgers University Press

Buch, Englisch, 352 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 172 mm x 224 mm, Gewicht: 508 g

Water management plays an increasingly critical role in national and international policy agendas. Growing scarcity, overuse, and pollution, combined with burgeoning demand, have made socio-political and economic conflicts almost unavoidable. Proposals to address water shortages are usually based on two key assumptions: (1) water is a commodity that can be bought and sold and (2) ""states,"" or other centralized entities, should control access to water. Liquid Relations criticizes these assumptions from a socio-legal perspective. Eleven case studies examine laws, distribution, and irrigation in regions around the world, including the United States, Nepal, Indonesia, Chile, Ecuador, India, and South Africa. In each case, problems are shown to be both ecological and human-made-the locally specific outcomes of social, political, and environmental histories. The essays also consider the ways that gender, ethnicity, and class differences influence water rights and control. In the concluding chapter, the editors draw on the essays' findings to offer an alternative approach to water rights and water governance issues. By showing how issues like water scarcity and competition are embedded in specific resource use and management histories, this volume highlights the need for analyses and solutions that are context-specific rather than universal.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Roth, Dik

Boelens, Rutgerd

Zwarteveen, Margreet

Über Autor(innen)

Dik Roth is a researcher and lecturer on legal anthropology, natural resources management, and development in the department of social sciences, law, and governance group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Rutgerd Boelens and Margreet Zwarteveen are researchers and lecturers on water rights, water management and development policies in the department of environmental sciences, also at Wageningen University.