Political Waters
Political Waters

Author: Eric Jay Dolin

Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Press

Published: 2008-04

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781558496415

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Boston Harbor served as a colonial gateway to the world, witnessed the Boston Tea Party, and helped the community transform itself from an outpost of a few hardy settlers into a bustling metropolis and self-proclaimed hub of the universe. Yet for hundreds of years Boston Harbor was also a cesspool. Long before Bostonians dumped tea into the harbor to protest English taxes, they dumped sewage there. As the Boston area grew and prospered, its sewage problems worsened, as did the harbor's health, to the point where in the 1980s it was considered the most polluted harbor in the country and ridiculed as the harbor of shame. Then, in one of the most impressive environmental comebacks in American history, Boston Harbor was dramatically cleaned up. All it took was two lawsuits, two courts, dozens of lawyers, the creation of a powerful sewage authority, thousands of workers, millions of labor hours, and billions of dollars. Sewage management is rarely as compelling and exciting as higher profile environmental issues such as global climate change, preserving endangered species, or protecting tropical rainforests. But it can be, as Eric Jay Dolin shows in this engaging narrative account. Boston's struggle to deal with its sewage is an epic story of failure and success, replete with colorful characters, political, bureaucratic, and legal twists and turns, engineering feats, and massive amounts of money. In the end, success hinged on the often overlooked yet monumentally important act of responsibly disposing of the waste people produce every day.

Political Waters
Political Waters

Author: Anne-Sophie Beckedorf

Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 3643902166

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Political Waters examines how recent reforms of decentralization, privatization, and commercialization are initiated and implemented with regard to water management in Khartoum. In so doing, it uses the prism of water to gain insights into Sudanese (water) politics, power strategies, and state-society relationships. Drawing on detailed, actor-oriented, and ethnographic analyses based on political ecology and on organization sociology, the main findings develop important aspects of rule and emphasize the relevance of studying local micropolitical contexts in order to understand macropolitical dynamics. This work obtained the DAVO (German Middle East Studies Association) Dissertation Award 2012. Dissertation. (Series: Forum Political Geography / Forum Politische Geographie - Vol. 7)

The Struggle for Water
The Struggle for Water

Author: Wendy Nelson Espeland

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1998-09

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 9780226217932

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Nearly fifty years ago, the Bureau of Reclamation proposed building a dam at the confluence of two rivers in Central Arizona. While the dam would bring valuable water to this arid plain, it would also destroy a wildlife habitat, flood archaeological sites, and force the Yavapai Indians off their ancestral home. The Struggle for Water is not only the fascinating story of this controversial and ultimately thwarted public works project but also a study of rationality as a cultural, organizational, and political construct. In the 1970s, the three groups most intimately involved in the Orme Dam—younger Bureau of Reclamation employees committed to "rational choice" decision making, older Bureau engineers committed to the dam, and the Yavapai community—all found themselves and their values transformed by their struggles. Wendy Nelson Espeland lays bare the relations between interests and identities that emerged during the conflict, creating a contemporary tale of power and colonization, bureaucracies and democratic practice, that asks the crucial question of what it means to be "rational."

Bad Water
Bad Water

Author: Robert Stolz

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2014-03-12

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 0822376504

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Bad Water is a sophisticated theoretical analysis of Japanese thinkers and activists' efforts to reintegrate the natural environment into Japan's social and political thought in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth. The need to incorporate nature into politics was revealed by a series of large-scale industrial disasters in the 1890s. The Ashio Copper Mine unleashed massive amounts of copper, arsenic, mercury, and other pollutants into surrounding watersheds. Robert Stolz argues that by forcefully demonstrating the mutual penetration of humans and nature, industrial pollution biologically and politically compromised the autonomous liberal subject underlying the political philosophy of the modernizing Meiji state. In the following decades, socialism, anarchism, fascism, and Confucian benevolence and moral economy were marshaled in the search for new theories of a modern political subject and a social organization adequate to the environmental crisis. With detailed considerations of several key environmental activists, including Tanaka Shōzō, Bad Water is a nuanced account of Japan's environmental turn, a historical moment when, for the first time, Japanese thinkers and activists experienced nature as alienated from themselves and were forced to rebuild the connections.

Transforming Rural Water Governance
Transforming Rural Water Governance

Author: Sarah T Romano

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2019-11-05

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0816538077

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The most acute water crises occur in everyday contexts in impoverished rural and urban areas across the Global South. While they rarely make headlines, these crises, characterized by inequitable access to sufficient and clean water, affect over one billion people globally. What is less known, though, is that millions of these same global citizens are at the forefront of responding to the challenges of water privatization, climate change, deforestation, mega-hydraulic projects, and other threats to accessing water as a critical resource. In Transforming Rural Water Governance Sarah T. Romano explains the bottom-up development and political impact of community-based water and sanitation committees (CAPS) in Nicaragua. Romano traces the evolution of CAPS from rural resource management associations into a national political force through grassroots organizing and strategic alliances. Resource management and service provision is inherently political: charging residents fees for service, determining rules for household water shutoffs and reconnections, and negotiating access to water sources with local property owners constitute just a few of the highly political endeavors resource management associations like CAPS undertake as part of their day-to-day work in their communities. Yet, for decades in Nicaragua, this local work did not reflect political activism. In the mid-2000s CAPS’ collective push for social change propelled them onto a national stage and into new roles as they demanded recognition from the government. Romano argues that the transformation of Nicaragua’s CAPS into political actors is a promising example of the pursuit of sustainable and equitable water governance, particularly in Latin America. Transforming Rural Water Governance demonstrates that when activism informs public policy processes, the outcome is more inclusive governance and the potential for greater social and environmental justice.

Economical, Political, and Social Issues in Water Resources
Economical, Political, and Social Issues in Water Resources

Author: Omid Bozorg-Haddad

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 2021-07-14

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 0323906923

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Economical, Political, and Social Issues in Water Resources provides a fully comprehensive and interdisciplinary overview of all three factors in their relation to water resources. Economic issues consist of Water accounting, Water economy, Water pricing, Water market, Water bank and bourse. Political issues consist of Water power and hydrogemistry, Water diplomacy and hydropolitics, Water rights and water laws, Water governance and policy, Shared water resources management, Water management systems, and social issues consist of Water and culture, civilization and history, Water quality, hygiene, and health, Water and society. This book familiarizes researchers with all aspects of the field, which can lead to optimized and multidimensional water resources management. Some of abovementioned issues are new, so the other aim of this book is to identify them in order to researchers can easily find them and use them in their studies. - Includes diverse case studies from around the world - Presents contributions from global and diverse contributors with interdisciplinary backgrounds, including water engineers, scientists, planners the economic, political and social issues surrounding water - Contains in-depth definitions and concepts of each topic

Flint Fights Back
Flint Fights Back

Author: Benjamin J. Pauli

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2019-05-14

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 0262039850

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An account of the Flint water crisis shows that Flint's struggle for safe and affordable water is part of a broader struggle for democracy. When Flint, Michigan, changed its source of municipal water from Lake Huron to the Flint River, Flint residents were repeatedly assured that the water was of the highest quality. At the switchover ceremony, the mayor and other officials performed a celebratory toast, declaring “Here's to Flint!” and downing glasses of freshly treated water. But as we now know, the water coming out of residents' taps harbored a variety of contaminants, including high levels of lead. In Flint Fights Back, Benjamin Pauli examines the water crisis and the political activism that it inspired, arguing that Flint's struggle for safe and affordable water was part of a broader struggle for democracy. Pauli connects Flint's water activism with the ongoing movement protesting the state of Michigan's policy of replacing elected officials in financially troubled cities like Flint and Detroit with appointed “emergency managers.” Pauli distinguishes the political narrative of the water crisis from the historical and technical narratives, showing that Flint activists' emphasis on democracy helped them to overcome some of the limitations of standard environmental justice frameworks. He discusses the pro-democracy (anti–emergency manager) movement and traces the rise of the “water warriors”; describes the uncompromising activist culture that developed out of the experience of being dismissed and disparaged by officials; and examines the interplay of activism and scientific expertise. Finally, he explores efforts by activists to expand the struggle for water justice and to organize newly mobilized residents into a movement for a radically democratic Flint.

Deep River
Deep River

Author: Karl Marlantes

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press

Published: 2019-07-02

Total Pages: 786

ISBN-13: 0802146198

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Three Finnish siblings head for the logging fields of nineteenth-century America in the New York Times–bestselling author’s “commanding historical epic” (Washington Post). Born into a farm family, the three Koski siblings—Ilmari, Matti, and Aino—are raised to maintain their grit and resiliency in the face of hardship. This lesson in sisu takes on special meaning when their father is arrested by imperial Russian authorities, never to be seen again. Lured by the prospects of the Homestead Act, Ilmari and Matti set sail for America, while young Aino, feeling betrayed and adrift after her Marxist cell is exposed, follows soon after. The brothers establish themselves among a logging community in southern Washington, not far from the Columbia River. In this New World, they each find themselves—Ilmari as the family’s spiritual rock; Matti as a fearless logger and entrepreneur; and Aino as a fiercely independent woman and union activist who is willing to make any sacrifice for the cause that sustains her. Layered with fascinating historical detail, this novel bears witness to the stump-ridden fields that the loggers—and the first waves of modernity—leave behind. At its heart, Deep River explores the place of the individual, and of the immigrant, in an America still in the process of defining its own identity.

Empire of Water
Empire of Water

Author: David Soll

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2013-03-26

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 080146806X

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Supplying water to millions is not simply an engineering and logistical challenge. As David Soll shows in his finely observed history of the nation’s largest municipal water system, the task of providing water to New Yorkers transformed the natural and built environment of the city, its suburbs, and distant rural watersheds. Almost as soon as New York City completed its first municipal water system in 1842, it began to expand the network, eventually reaching far into the Catskill Mountains, more than one hundred miles from the city. Empire of Water explores the history of New York City’s water system from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century, focusing on the geographical, environmental, and political repercussions of the city’s search for more water. Soll vividly recounts the profound environmental implications for both city and countryside. Some of the region’s most prominent landmarks, such as the High Bridge across the Harlem River, Central Park’s Great Lawn, and the Ashokan Reservoir in Ulster County, have their origins in the city’s water system. By tracing the evolution of the city’s water conservation efforts and watershed management regime, Soll reveals the tremendous shifts in environmental practices and consciousness that occurred during the twentieth century. Few episodes better capture the long-standing upstate-downstate divide in New York than the story of how mountain water came to flow from spigots in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Soll concludes by focusing on the landmark watershed protection agreement signed in 1997 between the city, watershed residents, environmental organizations, and the state and federal governments. After decades of rancor between the city and Catskill residents, the two sides set aside their differences to forge a new model of environmental stewardship. His account of this unlikely environmental success story offers a behind the scenes perspective on the nation’s most ambitious and wide-ranging watershed protection program.

A Political Ecology of Women, Water and Global Environmental Change
A Political Ecology of Women, Water and Global Environmental Change

Author: Stephanie Buechler

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-03-02

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 1317749820

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This edited volume explores how a feminist political ecology framework can bring fresh insights to the study of rural and urban livelihoods dependent on vulnerable rivers, lakes, watersheds, wetlands and coastal environments. Bringing together political ecologists and feminist scholars from multiple disciplines, the book develops solution-oriented advances to theory, policy and planning to tackle the complexity of these global environmental changes. Using applied research on the contemporary management of groundwater, springs, rivers, lakes, watersheds and coastal wetlands in Central and South Asia, Northern, Central and Southern Africa, and South and North America, the authors draw on a variety of methodological perspectives and new theoretical approaches to demonstrate the importance of considering multiple layers of social difference as produced by and central to the effective governance and local management of water resources. This unique collection employs a unifying feminist political ecology framework that emphasizes the ways that gender interacts with other social and geographical locations of water resource users. In doing so, the book further questions the normative gender discourses that underlie policies and practices surrounding rural and urban water management and climate change, water pollution, large-scale development and dams, water for crop and livestock production and processing, resource knowledge and expertise, and critical livelihood studies. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of environmental studies, development studies, feminist and environmental geography, anthropology, sociology, environmental philosophy, public policy, planning, media studies, Latin American and other area studies, as well as women’s and gender studies.