Water Crisis Myth Or Reality

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.

California faces enormous challenges in establishing a sustainable path for water resource management. One challenge is the rhetoric surrounding major water issues in the state. This study highlights eight common water myths, focusing on water supply, ecosystems, and legal and governance issues. In combating these myths, the report sets the stage for a more informed approach to water policy and management.

This book is a product of Brazilian Academy of Sciences Study Group about water issue. The water cycle was addressed based on an integrated point of view, aiming at joining technological and ecological solutions and integrating quantitative and qualitative aspects of this important environmental asset. Issues such as the water resources management and irrigated agriculture, water and health, water and economy, conservation and reuse as management tools, water in the Brazilian semi arid, water in Amazon, urbanization and water resources, education for the sustainability of water resources, groundwater, availability, pollution and eutrophication of water and science, technology and innovation are of the utmost importance for this exact moment in Brazil, and particularly to the State of Sao Paulo. Addressing these issues will undoubtedly contribute towards a sustainable management of water resources trough the coordinated work of different fields of science, progressing a systemic view about water, that would then finally allow management professionals the possibility of an integral action in anticipating problems and thus anticipate solutions.

This book provides an overview, by leading world experts, on key issues in global water and food security. The book is divided in a series of over-arching themes and sections. The first part of the book provides an overview of water and food security. The second and third sections look at global trade and virtual water trade, and provide some

"The world water problems are a due to bad governance, not to physical water scarcity." This book is inspired by this statement and explores whether it holds in a specific country, Spain, where climatic conditions – Spain is one of the most arid countries of the European Union - would fully justify saying that water problems are due to physical water scarcity. The metrification of water uses and their monetary value is a first important step in understanding how reallocation of water among users could help mitigating many of current water problems in Spain. However, water reallocation among users or from users to nature is far from simple. Initiatives portrayed as the solution to the water governance ‘jigsaw’ – e.g. water trade, improved water use efficiency, users collective action, public participation – are not free of difficulties and shortcomings. The book explores the growing need for maintaining Spain’s natural capital and the human component of water governance – people’s needs, wishes, (vested) interests, aspirations – that often determine the result of decisions and, sometimes, lead water management to a deadlock. This book takes a step forward in showing a more complex - and also closer to reality - picture of water governance in Spain.

In the context of the current financial crisis, and at a time of deep global change, growing attention is paid to the global norms and ethical values that could underpin future global policy. Water is a key global resource. At the 3rd Marcelino Botin Foundation Water Workshop, held in Santander, Spain, June 12-14, 2007, the role of ethics in the de

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.