Waterscapes

The city of Leh is located in the high mountain desert of Ladakh in the Indian Himalayas and access to water has always been limited there. In recent years, the town has experienced high rates of urbanisation on the one hand, and tourist numbers have increased exponentially on the other, which has implications for the water supply of the people living there. Through several years of on-site research, challenges on various levels were documented and current governance approaches were analysed. This research forms the basis for future approaches to sustainable development.

The catchment area of the Mekong River and its tributaries extends from China, through Burma/Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and to Vietnam. The water resources of the Mekong region - from the Irrawaddy and Nu-Salween in the west, across the Chao Phraya to the Lancang-Mekong and Red River in the east- are increasingly contested. Governments, companies, and banks are driving new investments in roads, dams, diversions, irrigation schemes, navigation facilities, power plants and other emblems of conventional 'development'. Their plans and interventions should provide some benefits, but also pose multiple burdens and risks to millions of people dependent on wetlands, floodplains and aquatic resources, in particular, the wild capture fisheries of rivers and lakes. This book examines how large-scale projects are being proposed, justified, and built. How are such projects contested and how do specific governance regimes influence decision making? The book also highlights the emergence of new actors, rights and trade-off debates, and the social and environmental consequences of 'water resources development'. This book shows how diverse, and often antagonistic, ideologies and interests are contesting for legitimacy. It argues that the distribution of decision-making, political, and discursive power influences how the waterscapes of the region will ultimately look and how benefits, costs and risks will be distributed. These issues are crucial for the transformation of waterscapes and the prospects for democratizing water governance in the Mekong region. The book is part of the action-research of the M-POWER (Mekong Program on Water, Environment and Resilience) knowledge network. Published with IFAD, CG|AR Challenge Program on Water & Food, M-POWER, Project ECHEL-EAU and HEINRICH BOLL STIFTUNG

This book identifies water as the key element of Virginia Woolf’s modernist poetics. The various forms, movements, and properties of water inspired Woolf’s writing of reality, time, and bodies and offered her an apt medium to reflect on the possibilities as well as on the exhaustion of her art. As a deeply intertextual writer, Woolf recognised how profoundly water has shaped human imagination and the landscape of the literary past. In line with recent ecocritical and ecofeminist assessments of her works, this book also shows Woolf’s attraction to water as part of an indifferent nature that exists prior to and beyond the symbolic. Through close analyses that span the whole of Woolf’s oeuvre, and that centre on the metaphorical and the material voices of water in her works, Modernist Waterscapes offers a fresh perspective on a writing that is as versatile as the element from which it draws. The monograph addresses postgraduate students and scholars working in modernist studies and Woolf studies in particular.

Progressive agricultural and water development in the Krishna Basin in South India has led to a rising over commitment of water resources and signs of basin closure are apparent during dry periods. As human consumptive uses are approaching the limits of water availability, this report focuses on the Lower Krishna Basin that bears the brunt of any intervention upstream. Capturing the process of basin closure requires an understanding of the political dimension of access to water and the scope for change. As basin closure intensifies the interconnectedness of ecosystems and water users, adjustments and management decisions result in spatial re-appropriation of water and basin-wide strategies for water management and development that start with the definition and the implementation of water allocation mechanisms are increasingly needed.

"After decades of being banished from residential areas, water is now becoming an increasingly significant feature in urban design. Whether it is the use of rainwater or the integration of natural water courses into the built environment, the incorporation of water elements in urban areas for climatic purposes or the creation of oases of tranquility or drama such as pools or fountains - all these aspects are not only encountering renewed interest among architects and urban planners, but they are also meeting with appreciation from the general public." "Here the varied aspects of water as an architectural element are considered, with specialists examining its artistic potential, its use outdoors, or its role in environmental technology. Some 35 international projects from many different areas will be a source of inspiration for architects and designers. Amongst the examples documented are the water management for the Potsdamer Platz area, Berlin, the landscaping in Harlemville, near New York, the water feature in Townsquare Kogorah, Sydney, the rainwater concept at the EXPO2000, Hanover, the roof terrace for Chicago City Hall, the water scene at the Opera Center, Warsaw, a water-sound installation in Hann Munden, and the landscape planning for the Solar City near Linz."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Contributed articles; with reference to India.

Illuminating the entangled histories of the people and commodities that circulated across the Atlantic, Sharika D. Crawford assesses the Caribbean as a waterscape where imperial and national governments vied to control the profitability of the sea. Crawford places the green and hawksbill sea turtles and the Caymanian turtlemen who hunted them at the center of this waterscape. The story of the humble turtle and its hunter, she argues, came to play a significant role in shaping the maritime boundaries of the modern Caribbean. Crawford describes the colonial Caribbean as an Atlantic commons where all could compete to control the region's diverse peoples, lands, and waters and exploit the region's raw materials. Focusing on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Crawford traces and connects the expansion and decline of turtle hunting to matters of race, labor, political and economic change, and the natural environment. Like the turtles they chased, the boundary-flouting laborers exposed the limits of states' sovereignty for a time but ultimately they lost their livelihoods, having played a significant role in legislation delimiting maritime boundaries. Still, former turtlemen have found their deep knowledge valued today in efforts to protect sea turtles and recover the region's ecological sustainability.