Download or read book Liquid Power written by Erik Swyngedouw and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2015-05-08 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of the central role of water politics and engineering in Spain's modernization, illustrating water's part in forging, maintaining, and transforming social power. In this book, Erik Swyngedouw explores how water becomes part of the tumultuous processes of modernization and development. Using the experience of Spain as a lens to view the interplay of modernity and environmental transformation, Swyngedouw shows that every political project is also an environmental project. In 1898, Spain lost its last overseas colony, triggering a period of post-imperialist turmoil still referred to as El Disastre. Turning inward, the nation embarked on “regeneration” and modernization. Water played a central role in this; during a turbulent period from the twentieth century into the twenty-first—through the Franco years and into the new era of liberal democracy—Spain's waterscapes were completely transformed, with large-scale projects that ranged from dam construction to irrigation to desalinization. Swyngedouw describes the contested political-ecological process that marked this transformation, showing that the Spain's diverse and contested paths to modernization were predicated on particular trajectories of environmental transformation. After laying out his theoretical perspectives, Swyngedouw analyzes three periods of Spain's political-ecological modernization: the aspirations and stalled modernization of the early twentieth century; the accelerated efforts under the authoritarian Franco regime—which included six hundred dams, expanded hydroelectricity, and massive irrigation; and the changing hydro-social landscape under social democracy. Offering an innovative perspective on the relationship of nature and society, Liquid Power illuminates the political nature of nature.

Download or read book Virtuous Waters written by Casey Walsh and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2018-03-09 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Virtuous Waters is a pathbreaking and innovative study of bathing, drinking and other everyday engagements with a wide range of waters across five centuries in Mexico. Casey Walsh uses political ecology to bring together an analysis of shifting scientific, religious and political understandings of waters and a material history of social formations, environments, and infrastructures. The book shows that while modern concepts and infrastructures have come to dominate both the hydrosphere and the scholarly literature on water, longstanding popular understandings and engagements with these heterogeneous liquids have been reproduced as part of the same process. Attention to these dynamics can help us comprehend and confront the water crisis that is coming to a head in the twenty-first century.

Download or read book Regional Water System Management written by Enrique Cabrera and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The spectacular industrial and economic development of the twentieth century was achieved at a considerable environmental cost. The increasingly precarious position of water, the most valuable of natural resources, reflects this trend. Today we have come to realise that concepts of sustainable development need to

Download or read book Siren Song written by Carl J. Bauer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-09-30 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Increasing scarcity, conflict, and environmental damage are critical features of the global water crisis. As governments, international organizations, NGOs, and corporations have tried to respond, Chilean water law has seemed an attractive alternative to older legislative and regulatory approaches. Boldly introduced in 1981, the Chilean model is the worlds leading example of a free market approach to water law, water rights, and water resource management. Despite more than a decade of international debate, however, a comprehensive, balanced account of the Chilean experience has been unavailable. Siren Song is an interdisciplinary analysis combining law, political economy, and geography. Carl Bauer places the Chilean model of water law in international context by reviewing the contemporary debate about water economics and policy reform. He follows with an account of the Chilean experience, drawing on primary and secondary sources in Spanish and English, including interviews with key people in Chile. He presents the debate about reforming the law after Chile‘s 1990 return to democratic government, as well as emerging views about how water markets have worked in practice. The resulting book provides insights about law, economics, and public policy within Chile and lessons for the countries around the world that are wrestling with the challenges of water policy reform.

Download or read book Ecological Crisis and Water Supply written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-11-27 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses the origin and evolution of the water supply service in Andalusia (southern Spain) between 1800 and 2020 from several perspectives. It does so from a historical perspective, to understand the evolution of the service over the years; from an economic perspective, as it is very useful to obtain an overview of the level of efficiency of the service; from a legislative perspective, as the regulatory framework of each era determines the models of management and provision of the service; and, finally, from an ecological and environmental perspective, of great importance in the New Water Culture and the protection of this resource. The volume's main objective is to contribute to the extension of knowledge and analysis of the processes of municipalisation and/or privatisation of this service in Andalusia, with the aim of providing those responsible for local governments and administrations, both political and technical, with useful reflection and illustrative information on the use of municipalisation and/or privatisation as instruments for the reform of the local public sector. Contributors are: María Ana Bernardo, Ana Cardoso de Matos, José Escalante Jiménez, Antonio Rafael Fernández-Paradas, Mercedes Fernández-Paradas, Leticia Gallego Valero, Víctor Manuel Heredia-Flores, Carlos Larrinaga, Nuria Magaldi, Alberte Martínez-López, Juan Manuel Matés-Barco, Jesús Mirás Araujo, Encarnación Moral Pajares, Jesús Raúl Navarro García, Nuria Rodríguez Martín, and María Vázquez-Fariñas.

Download or read book Hydrosocial Territories and Water Equity written by Rutgerd Boelens and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-06-01 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together a multidisciplinary set of scholars and diverse case studies from across the globe, this book explores the management, governance, and understandings around water, a key element in the assemblage of hydrosocial territories. Hydrosocial territories are spatial configurations of people, institutions, water flows, hydraulic technology and the biophysical environment that revolve around the control of water. Territorial politics finds expression in encounters of diverse actors with divergent spatial and political–geographical interests; as a result, water (in)justice and (in)equity are embedded in these socio-ecological contexts. The territory-building projections and strategies compete, superimpose and align to strengthen specific water-control claims of various interests. As a result, actors continuously recompose the territory’s hydraulic grid, cultural reference frames, and political–economic relationships. Using a political ecology focus, the different contributions to this book explore territorial struggles, demonstrating that these contestations are not merely skirmishes over natural resources, but battles over meaning, norms, knowledge, identity, authority and discourses. The articles in this book were originally published in the journal Water International.

Download or read book Water and Sanitation Services written by Jose Esteban Castro and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-05-04 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Substantially reducing the number of human beings who lack access to clean water and safe sanitation is one of the key Millennium Development Goals. This book argues and demonstrates that this can only be achieved by a better integration of the technical and social science approaches in the search for improved organization and delivery of these essential services. It presents a historical analysis of the development of water and sanitation services in both developed and developing countries, which provides valuable lessons for overcoming the obstacles facing the universalization of these services. Among the key lessons emerging from the historical analysis are the organizational and institutional diversity characterizing the development of water and sanitation internationally, and the central role played by the public sector, particularly local authorities, in such development. It also explores the historical role played by cooperatives and other non-profit institutions in reaching rural and peri-urban areas, as well as the emergence of new forms of organization and provision, particularly in poor countries, where aid and development agencies have been promoting the self-organization of water systems by local communities. The book provides a critical exploration of these different institutional options, including the interaction between the public and private sectors, and the irreplaceable role of public funding as a condition for success. The book is divided into two parts: the first reviews theoretical and conceptual issues such as the political economy of water services, financing, the interfaces between water and sanitation services and public health, and the systemic conditions that influence the provision of these services, including the diversity of organizational and institutional options characterizing the governance and management of water and sanitation services. The second section presents a number of country or regional case studies, each one chosen to highlight a particular problem, approach or strategy. These case studies are drawn from Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe, covering a wide range of socio-economic and political contexts. The book will be of great interest to advanced students, researchers, professionals and NGOs in many disciplines, including public policy and planning, environmental sciences, environmental sociology, history of technology, civil and environmental engineering, public health and development studies.

Download or read book River Basin Management X written by S. Mambretti and published by WIT Press. This book was released on 2019-07-16 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Papers presented at the 10th in a series of conferences on River Basin Management are contained in this book. The included works mark a growing global interest in the planning, design and management of river basin systems and take in to account all aspects of Hydrology, Ecology, Environmental Management, Flood Plains and Wetlands.

Download or read book The Private Sector and Water Pricing in Efficient Urban Water Management written by Cecilia Tortajada and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-01-08 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on participation of the public and private sectors in urban water management and on the role of water pricing. It discusses in-depth topics such as public choices of urban water service management; dynamics of privatization and regulation of water services; adoption of water demand instruments; impacts of price and non-price policies on residential water demand; quality of water services; lessons from not-for-profit public-private partnerships; and critical examinations of models and projections of demands in water utility resource planning in England and Wales. Appropriateness of water prices and tariffs in achieving socially desirable outcomes is also analyzed and a global survey of urban water tariffs is approached with a focus on sustainability, efficiency and fairness. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Water Resources Management.

Download or read book Water Technology and the Nation State written by Filippo Menga and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just as space, territory and society can be socially and politically co-constructed, so can water, and thus the construction of hydraulic infrastructures can be mobilised by politicians to consolidate their grip on power while nurturing their own vision of what the nation is or should become. This book delves into the complex and often hidden connection between water, technological advancement and the nation-state, addressing two major questions. First, the arguments deployed consider how water as a resource can be ideologically constructed, imagined and framed to create and reinforce a national identity, and secondly, how the idea of a nation-state can and is materially co-constituted out of the material infrastructure through which water is harnessed and channelled. The book consists of 13 theoretical and empirical interdisciplinary chapters covering four continents. The case studies cover a diverse range of geographical areas and countries, including China, Cyprus, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Nepal and Thailand, and together illustrate that the meaning and rationale behind water infrastructures goes well beyond the control and regulation of water resources, as it becomes central in the unfolding of power dynamics across time and space.

Download or read book Agricultural Use of Groundwater written by Cesare Dosi and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-09 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Groundwater is endangered and polluted in several ways. Conservation and better management of this invisible resource should be a key ingredient of sustainable water policies. This is especially true in areas, such as many Mediterranean regions, which are already exposed to scarcity problems and which are likely to experience increasing competition between freshwater uses and users. Agriculture is an important user of groundwater not only in terms of abstractions, but also in terms of generation and release of pollutants. Agricultural policies, traditionally directed towards other objectives, are beginning to pay more attention to environmental considerations. However more effective initiatives are required to reduce the pressure upon groundwater resources and to achieve a better integration between agricultural and environmental policies. This book has been developed from three workshops held as part of the EU Concerted Action SAGA, "Sustainable Agricultural Use of Aquifers in Southern Europe: Integration between Agricultural and Water Management Policies" (FAIR5-CT97-3673). The Concerted Action and the workshops brought together researchers working in different but complementary fields, in order to get a picture of the state-of-the art about interlinkages between agriculture and groundwater, as well a critical review of alternative regulatory approaches and policy instruments aimed at improving groundwater management.

Download or read book The Future of Public Water Governance written by Christopher A. Scott and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-11-01 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The privatization of water supply and wastewater systems, together with institutional restructuring of governance – through decentralization and the penetration of global firms in local and regional markets – have been promoted as solutions to increase economic efficiency and achieve universal water supply and sanitation coverage. Yet a significant share of service provision and water resources development remains the responsibility of public authorities. The chapters in this book – with case evidence from Argentina, Chile, France, the USA, and other countries – address critical questions that dominate the international agenda on public versus private utilities, service provision, regulations, and resource development. This book presents varied perspectives – largely complementary but at times contrasting – on public and private governance of water. Public authority in general is being reasserted over service provision, while resource development and investments in infrastructure continue as a mix of public and private initiatives. But more important, increased oversight and regulation of market-based initiatives that until recently were touted as panaceas for water supply and sanitation are increasingly being reconsidered on the basis of social equity, environmental, and public health concerns. This book was based on the special issue of Water International.

Download or read book Water Engineering and Management through Time written by Enrique Cabrera and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2010-08-06 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Water Engineering and Management - Learning from History explores the pair technology / water use (an indivisible pair, since the first member of the binomial determines the second) which, in the light of the knowledge available in the 21st century and with a conception focused on the near future, goes beyond the limits set by nature itself. T

Download or read book Urban Growth and the Circular Economy written by S. Syngellakis and published by WIT Press. This book was released on 2018-08-29 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presented at the 1st International Conference on Urban Growth and the Circular Economy that was held in Alicante, Spain the papers included in this book focus on the continuing and rapid growth of cities and their regions of influence and how that has led to the need to find new solutions which allow for promoting their sustainable development. The quest for the Sustainable City has until recently focused on the efficient use of resources with the application of technical advances giving rise to the definition of SMART Cities. The economic model emphasised however is still “linear” in the sense that the design and consumption follows the pattern of extraction of natural resources, manufacturing, product usage and waste disposal. The continuous growth of urban population has recently given rise to the emergence of a new model which responds better to the challenges of natural resource depletion as well as waste management. This model has been called the “circular economy”. The circular economy is a recent concept based on the reuse of what up to now has been considered wastes, reintroducing them into the productive cycle. The objective of the circular economy is to reduce consumption and achieve savings in terms of raw materials, water and energy, thus contributing to the preservation of resources in order to reach sustainable development. One of the most important of these resources is water which is becoming a scarce commodity in an ever expanding world whose population demands a better standard of living. Water is required for agricultural purposes as well as by industry, in addition to its use by the general population. The recycling of water is an essential component of the circular economy. There is no possibility for the success of a long term economic policy without addressing the problems of natural resources and environmental pollution, which will affect the reuse of materials and products. The current market economy based on a linear model from resource extraction, manufacturing, consumption and waste disposal, has not proved a long term suitable solution, in spite of the substantial efforts made in reducing its environmental impacts. This is largely due to the continuous population growth, in a society that demands high standards of living, thus requiring an ever increasing share of natural resources.

Download or read book Contemporary Water Governance in the Global South written by Leila M. Harris and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-03-24 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The litany of alarming observations about water use and misuse is now familiar—over a billion people without access to safe drinking water; almost every major river dammed and diverted; increasing conflicts over the delivery of water in urban areas; continuing threats to water quality from agricultural inputs and industrial wastes; and the increasing variability of climate, including threats of severe droughts and flooding across locales and regions. These issues present tremendous challenges for water governance. This book focuses on three major concepts and approaches that have gained currency in policy and governance circles, both globally and regionally—scarcity and crisis, marketization and privatization, and participation. It provides a historical and contextual overview of each of these ideas as they have emerged in global and regional policy and governance circles and pairs these with in-depth case studies that examine manifestations and contestations of water governance internationally. The book interrogates ideas of water crisis and scarcity in the context of bio-physical, political, social and environmental landscapes to better understand how ideas and practices linked to scarcity and crisis take hold, and become entrenched in policy and practice. The book also investigates ideas of marketization and privatization, increasingly prominent features of water governance throughout the global South, with particular attention to the varied implementation and effects of these governance practices. The final section of the volume analyzes participatory water governance, querying the disconnects between global discourses and local realities, particularly as they intersect with the other themes of interest to the volume. Promoting a view of changing water governance that links across these themes and in relation to contemporary realities, the book is invaluable for students, researchers, advocates, and policy makers interested in water governance challenges facing the developing world.

Download or read book Water Crisis Myth or Reality written by Peter P. Rogers and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2005-12-22 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Always considered a classic renewable resource, after a hundred thousand years of farming and industry, rivers in many parts of the world are running dry and the groundwater is over pumped. In addition, the rate at which water sources are becoming contaminated with waste from humans, industry, and agriculture is truly alarming. Do these factors add up to a water crisis that merits drastic, large-scale action? Not necessarily say the editors of Water Crisis: Myth or Reality. They challenge this pessimism, concluding that while there are serious global water issues to be considered, the concept of a global water crisis is largely overstated. The book examines the issues and explores which conditions are permanent and unchangeable and which are remediable and changeable. The chapters explore when and where severe regional and local water problems occur and make suggestions about how they may be solved in a deliberate, non-crisis manner. The book covers recent breakthroughs in desalination technologies, the eco-sanitation revolution, international trade in agricultural products, methods of governance and negotiation in water allocation, and pricing and devolution of property rights and the roles they play in solving water issues. The editors, along with a panel of world-renowned experts, suggest that water issues can be solved over the next few decades using new technologies and processes.

Download or read book Facing Hydrometeorological Extreme Events written by Isabelle La Jeunesse and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-10-04 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides an understanding of the relationship between social-ecological systems and multilevel governance so that readers can properly deal with hydrometeorological extreme events and hazards Based on field investigations from EU research projects, this book is the first to devote itself to scientific and policy-related knowledge concerning climate change-induced extreme events. It depicts national and international strategies, as well as tools used to improve multilevel governance for the management of hydrometeorological risks. It also demonstrates how these strategies play out over different scales of the decision-making processes. Facing Hydrometeorological Extreme Events: A Governance Issue offers comprehensive coverage of such events as floods, droughts, coastal storms, and wind storms. It showcases real-life success stories of multilevel governance and highlights the individuals involved and the resources mobilized in the decision-making processes. The book starts by presenting a synthesis of hydrometeorological extreme events and their impacts on society. It then demonstrates how societies are organizing themselves to face these extreme events, focusing on the strategies of integration of risk management in governance and public policy. In addition, it includes the results of several EU-funded projects such as CLIMB, STARFLOOD, and INTERREG IVB project DROP. The first book dedicated to hydrometeorological extreme events governance based on field investigations from EU research projects Offers a “multi-hazards” approach—mixing policy, governance, and field investigations’ main outputs Features the results of EU-funded projects addressing hydrometeorological extreme events Part of the Hydrometeorological Extreme Events series Facing Hydrometeorological Extreme Events is an ideal book for upper-graduate students, postgraduates, researchers, scientists, and policy-makers working in the field.