Subnational Hydropolitics

"It's often claimed that future wars will be fought over water. But while international water conflict is rare, it's common between sub-national jurisdictions like states and provinces. Drawing on cases in the United States, China, India, and France, this book explains why these sub-national water conflicts occur - and how they can be prevented"--

The prospect of international conflict over water has long been the subject of academic and popular concern, but subnational political conflict is considerably more common, and almost certainly imposes greater economic and environmental costs. Indeed, subnational hydropolitics are an important feature of several large countries, including the United States, India, and China. Moreover, disputes between water users in shared river basins have often persisted despite repeated attempts by central governments to resolve them through both persuasion and coercion. Yet despite the growing threat of water scarcity around the world, little research exists on sub-national politics of shared water resources. This book attempts to fill the gap by explaining how and why hydropolitics play out within countries, as well as between them. Subnational Hydropolitics re-examines the issue of water conflict by examining conflicts at the subnational rather than international level. By examining several in-depth case studies of both conflict and cooperation, Scott Moore argues that increasing sub-national water conflict is driven by two inter-linked forces, identity politics, which gives subnational politicians a reason to compete over shared water resources; and political decentralization, which provides them with the tools to do so. To understand politics at the subnational level, the book blends insights from both the environmental governance and comparative politics literatures. By examining the challenges many countries face in achieving cooperation over shared water resources, the book helps to shed light on different mechanisms and processes for solving cooperation problems at the regional scale lessons relevant to tackling a wide range of transboundary environmental problems, including air pollution, urbanization, and ecosystem protection. But at its core, this book promises a definitive contribution to the growing sub-field of environmental politics, centered on understanding how different countries attempt to solve the problems inherent in governing water resources in shared river basins.

Water-related conflicts have a long history and will continue to be a global and regional problem. Asia, with 1.5 billion of its people living in shared river basins, and with very few transboundary rivers governed by treaties, is especially prone to such conflicts. The key to mitigating transboundary water conflicts and advancing cooperation in Asia is largely in the hands of China, the upstream country for most of Asia’s major transboundary rivers. To avert the looming water crisis, apart from spending billions of dollars on domestic water transfer projects such as the South–North Water Diversion Megaproject, as well as on water conservancy and pollution abatement, China has sought to utilize the water resources of the major rivers that run across borders with neighbouring countries. On these transboundary rivers, China has built or plans to build large dams for hydroelectricity and major water diversion facilities, which has triggered anxiety and complaints from downstream countries and criticism from the international society. This book aims to systematically examine the complex reality of water contestations between China and its neighbouring countries. It provides a discussion on transboundary hydropolitics beyond the state-centric geopolitical perspective to dig into various political, institutional, legal, historical, geographical, and demographic factors that affect China’s policies and practices towards transboundary water issues. This book also provides a collection of comparative case studies on China’s water resources management on the Mekong River with other five riparian states in the Lower Mekong region: the Salween River with Myanmar, the Brahmaputra River with India, the Amur River with Russia and Mongolia, the Illy and Irtysh Rivers with Kazakhstann, and the Yalu and Tumen Rivers with North Korea. Furthermore, this book sheds light on China’s future role in global water governance.

Tens of millions of Americans are at risk from sea level rise, increased tidal flooding, and intensifying storms. A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation identifies a bold new research and policy agenda and provides implementable options for coastal communities responding to these threats. In this book, coastal adaptation experts present a range of climate adaptation policies that could protect coastal communities against increasing risk, including concrete financing recommendations. Coastal adaptation will not be easy, but it is achievable using varied approaches. A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation will inspire innovative and cross-disciplinary thinking about coastal policy at the state and local level while providing actionable, realistic policy and planning options for adaptation professionals and policymakers.

As well as a major overview of the global situation and problems involved, there are authoritative case studies of particular river systems in three continents, including the Nile Valley, the Tigris and Euphrates, the River Jordan, the Mekong and several cases from South Asia.

Contested Waters provides an in-depth analysis of trans-boundary water conflict involving the Indus Basin in Pakistan. The book focuses on both national scale and local scale case studies to illustrate how these water conflicts are both discursively and materially driven by human institutions and politics. Through case studies of controversy over large dams, local flooding and irrigation methods, Daanish Mustafa highlights the various deeply political and institutional factors driving water conflict – specifically the disparity between national scale strategies of water politics and local scale water politics – and calls for engagement with water conflict in political terms.

This book examines cooperation on shared environmental concerns across national boundaries in the Southern Cone region of South America, specifically Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. It covers regional environmental cooperation in the Southern Cone since the early 1990s. By using the marginalised issues of ecological and socio-environmental concerns as an analytical lens, the author makes a significant contribution to the study of regional cooperation in Latin America. Her book also presents the first detailed study of how environmental cooperation across national boundaries takes place in a region of the South, and thus fills a lacuna in global environmental governance. This innovative work is geared toward students and scholars of environmental politics, regional cooperation in Latin America, and transboundary environmental governance.

Bringing contributions by a variety of authors together in one volume is part of an attempt to show that hydropolitics is a growing discipline in its own right. The prevailing definition of hydropolitics is widened to include the elements of scale and range. This is illustrated through a focus on theoretical and legal issues, case studies from Southern Africa and a proposed research agenda. The book is an important addition to the literature on hydropolitics.