- The Oxford Handbook of Water Politics and Policy
- Preface
- List of Contributors
- The Political Dimensions of Water
- Water and Poverty: Pathways of Escape and Descent
- Knowing Equity When We See It: Water Equity in Contemporary Global Contexts
- Gender and Water
- Monitoring the Progressive Realization of the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation: Frontier Analysis as a Basis to Enhance Human Rights Accountability
- Indigenous Peoples and Water Justice in a Globalizing World
- Re-Imagined Communities: The Transformational Potential of Interspecies Ethnography in Water Policy Development
- The Water-Energy-Food Nexus in Arid Regions: The Politics of Problemsheds
- The Nexus of Energy and Water Quality
- What Is Food-water and Why Do We not Account for It?
- Unintended Water Allocation: Gaining Share from Indirect Action and Inaction
- Why Scale Matters: Borderless Water and Bordered Thinking
- Local Water Politics
- Rethinking Urban Water (In)formality
- Innovation and Trends in Water Law
- Economics of Water
- The Political Economy of Water Markets: 40 Years of Debates, Experiments and Lessons Learned
- The Business of Water
- China’s Water Pricing Policies
- Managing Transboundary Rivers to Avert Conflict and Facilitate Cooperation
- Transboundary Unbound: Redefining Water Conflict and Cooperation for Contemporary Challenges that Extend beyond Watersheds, Regions, and Water
- “Something Has to Yield”: Climate Change Transforming Transboundary Water Governance (as We Know It)
- River Basin Organizations and the Governance of Transboundary Watercourses
- The Absence of Water Conflicts in the Developing World: Evidence from Africa
- Integrated Water Resources Management
- Transfer, Diffusion, Adaptation, and Translation of Water Policy Models
- Climate Information and Water Management: Building Adaptive Capacity or Business as Usual?
- Author Index
- Subject Index
Abstract and Keywords
The debate concerning how water access, availability, and change will impact conflict is bolstered by growing evidence that some influence exists, however inconsistent. Clear conclusions are obscured by the variety of water issues in developing countries, the difference between direct and indirect effects on conflict, and the additional uncertainty of what future climate changes may do to water availability and rights. This chapter summarizes how the conflict literature has integrated water issues into analyses of violence. In contrast, water researchers are mainly concerned with how little and how poorly water resources are used and managed across Africa. Resource management and politics emerge as the most serious contributors to water stress. Initial conclusions suggest that climate change and associated water shortages are far less of a problem than access and scarcity, and that water politics is leading to new contests, possibly violent, embedded in patterns of marginalization, exclusion, and poor governance.
Keywords: water, Africa, conflict, governance, climate change
Clionadh Raleigh, Professor of Human Geography, University of Sussex, United Kingdom
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- The Oxford Handbook of Water Politics and Policy
- Preface
- List of Contributors
- The Political Dimensions of Water
- Water and Poverty: Pathways of Escape and Descent
- Knowing Equity When We See It: Water Equity in Contemporary Global Contexts
- Gender and Water
- Monitoring the Progressive Realization of the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation: Frontier Analysis as a Basis to Enhance Human Rights Accountability
- Indigenous Peoples and Water Justice in a Globalizing World
- Re-Imagined Communities: The Transformational Potential of Interspecies Ethnography in Water Policy Development
- The Water-Energy-Food Nexus in Arid Regions: The Politics of Problemsheds
- The Nexus of Energy and Water Quality
- What Is Food-water and Why Do We not Account for It?
- Unintended Water Allocation: Gaining Share from Indirect Action and Inaction
- Why Scale Matters: Borderless Water and Bordered Thinking
- Local Water Politics
- Rethinking Urban Water (In)formality
- Innovation and Trends in Water Law
- Economics of Water
- The Political Economy of Water Markets: 40 Years of Debates, Experiments and Lessons Learned
- The Business of Water
- China’s Water Pricing Policies
- Managing Transboundary Rivers to Avert Conflict and Facilitate Cooperation
- Transboundary Unbound: Redefining Water Conflict and Cooperation for Contemporary Challenges that Extend beyond Watersheds, Regions, and Water
- “Something Has to Yield”: Climate Change Transforming Transboundary Water Governance (as We Know It)
- River Basin Organizations and the Governance of Transboundary Watercourses
- The Absence of Water Conflicts in the Developing World: Evidence from Africa
- Integrated Water Resources Management
- Transfer, Diffusion, Adaptation, and Translation of Water Policy Models
- Climate Information and Water Management: Building Adaptive Capacity or Business as Usual?
- Author Index
- Subject Index