You may have to register before you can download all our books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
This book examines changes and transitions in the way water is managed in urban environments. This book originated from a joint French-Australian initiative on water and land management held in Montpellier, France. The book delivers practical insights into urban water management. It links scientific insights of researchers with the practical experiences of urban water practitioners to understand and respond to key trends in how urban water is supplied, treated and consumed. The 51 contributors to the volume provide a range of insights, case studies, summaries and analyses of urban water and from a global perspective. The first section on water supply and sanitation includes case studies from...
Research results discussed in this book demonstrate that effective water management tools and decision-making practices are needed to support interventions to increase availability and manage demand for scarce water supplies. Furthermore, the book bridges the gap between ideas and actions endorsed in the research-oriented environmental debate and their translation into policymaking structures and programs in developed and developing countries.
Considering sustainability in its economic, environmental and social contexts, the contributors take stock of previous research on large technical systems and discuss their sustainability from three main perspectives: uses, cities, and rules and institutions.
This book describes the impact of modernization on the organization and sustainability of Urban Water Systems in Europe (UWSEs). Bolognesi explains that the modernization of UWSEs was a regulatory shock that began in the 1990s and was put into action with the EU Water Framework Directive in the year 2000. This process sought to reorganize water governance in order to achieve certain sustainability goals, but it fell short of expectations. Modernization and Urban Water Governance provides an update on the organization and sustainability of UWSEs, while drawing from a comparative analysis of German, French, and English water models and an institutionalist explanation of the current situation. With a focus on transaction costs, property rights allocation and institutional environments, this book argues that the modernization of UWSEs tends to depoliticize these systems and make them more resilient but also limits their potential for sustainable management. This book will be relevant to those wishing to understand the real impacts of water reform in Europe according to national contingencies.
Focusing on how to provide clean water for all - one of the key Millennium Development Goals, this book integrates technical and social perspectives. A broad, international range of case studies are provided, from developed, middle income and developing countries, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
In the wake of the monstrous projects of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and others in the twentieth century, the idea of utopia has been discredited. Yet, historian Jay Winter suggests, alongside the “major utopians” who murdered millions in their attempts to transform the world were disparate groups of people trying in their own separate ways to imagine a radically better world. This original book focuses on some of the twentieth-century’s “minor utopias” whose stories, overshadowed by the horrors of the Holocaust and the Gulag, suggest that the future need not be as catastrophic as the past. The book is organized around six key moments when utopian ideas and projects flourished in Europe: ...
What is the one thing that no one can do without? Water. Where water crosses boundaries – be they economic, legal, political or cultural – the stage is set for disputes between different users trying to safeguard access to a vital resource, while protecting the natural environment. Without strategies to anticipate, address, and mediate between competing users, intractable water conflicts are likely to become more frequent, more intense, and more disruptive around the world. In this book, Delli Priscoli and Wolf investigate the dynamics of water conflict and conflict resolution, from the local to the international. They explore the inexorable links between three facets of conflict management and transformation: Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), public participation, and institutional capacity. This practical guide will be invaluable to water management professionals, as well as to researchers and students in engineering, economics, geography, geology, and political science who are involved in any aspects of water management.
The Connected City explores how thinking about networks helps make sense of modern cities: what they are, how they work, and where they are headed. Cities and urban life can be examined as networks, and these urban networks can be examined at many different levels. The book focuses on three levels of urban networks: micro, meso, and macro. These levels build upon one another, and require distinctive analytical approaches that make it possible to consider different types of questions. At one extreme, micro-urban networks focus on the networks that exist within cities, like the social relationships among neighbors that generate a sense of community and belonging. At the opposite extreme, macro...
Clean, fresh drinking water is essential to human and animal life. It’s equally important to the world economy: it functions as a universal solvent, makes possible industrial cooling and transportation, and is necessary for all kinds of agriculture. Antoine Frérot, CEO of Veolia Water, takes us on a tour of the world’s waters, of our water. Lack of clean water kills 2.2 million people every year, and nearly 1 billion people do not have reliable access to clean drinking water. Using examples that transform theory into close-to-home reality, Frérot issues a serious challenge while showing us how to ensure that all the fast-growing cities of Asia, Africa, and Latin America have enough water. He considers how climate change will cause water shortages and explains what we can do now to prevent them. We have the political, economic, and scientific means to ensure the future of water on earth: we need only the will to take action.
Building resilience to the world’s increasingly damaging environmental hazards has become a priority. This book considers the scientific advances which have been made around the world to enhance this resilience. Although resilience is not new, it is through the idea of resilience that governments, organisations, and communities around the world are now seeking to address the rapidly increasing losses that environmental hazards cause so that fewer lives are lost, and damage is reduced. Alternative ideas and approaches have been helpful in reducing loss, but resilience offers a fresh and potentially effective means of reducing it further. Adopting a scientific approach and scientific evidenc...