Challenging the Public/Private Dichotomy of Water Management Cochabamba, Bolivia is famous for its 2000 “Water Wars”, in which a popular revolt successfully fought to throw out Bechtel Corporation and rejected the World Bank’s privatization scheme for urban water systems in the country. The Bechtel subsidiary had imposed dramatic price increases overnight that led to […]
This article is the second installment of the series Water Diplomacy: Issues of Complexity Science and Negotiation Theory — Water disputes are difficult to resolve because they are complex. These disputes occur in open and changing systems with numerous stakeholders, interactions, and interdependencies that make it difficult to anticipate or manage complex systems. One aspect of complexity has to do with uncertainty in how the networks and systems involved are likely to respond to stresses, such as
This year marked the 25th anniversary of the World Water Week organized by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) in Sweden. The event lived up to its past reputation as a key event for gathering water practitioners, scientists, global experts, financiers, diplomats and politicians from around the world. From transboundary water perspective, this year also saw […]
This article is the first installment of the series Water Diplomacy: Issues of Complexity Science and Negotiation Theory — Farmers in California’s Central Valley prominently display signs along the highway reading “Congress created this dustbowl,” while, in Los Angeles, the water conservation mascot “Lawn Dude”, prominently displayed on billboards in and around the city, reminds residents to stick within regulated limits for watering their lawns. Though the drought itself is not record-breaking, a combination of severe groundwater depletion, water shortages along the Colorado River, and rising heat (and thus evaporation) have created a critical water supply problem for the state
Water access, demand, usage and management become complex due to the crossing of multiple boundaries: political, social and jurisdictional, as well as physical, ecological and biogeochemical. The complexity of many water issues lie in the interconnections and feedbacks among variables, processes, actors and institutions operating in the knowledge and political communities. Consequently, many water management […]
I have just returned after a two-day engaging interdisciplinary conversation with more than 70 scientists, practitioners, faculty, and students from data science, machine learning, climate science, water science, agricultural sciences, and remote sensing representing both the academic and practice community at the 5th Annual Expeditions in Computing Workshop on “Understanding Climate Change from Data”. Vipin Kumar – a […]
Shafik Islam was recently featured in The Daily Star (Bangladesh) discussing the recent renewed interest in India’s ambitious river linking project, which seeks to build extensive and costly interbasin transfer infrastructure to provide additional water to regions that need it most. This project was envisioned and planning was initiated more than 30 years ago, but […]
The question of whether and how to harness rivers for irrigation, hydropower generation, urban development and sustainability of ecosystems continues to be an issue of great concern, conflict, and cooperation for this region. While pessimistic speculation on the endemic nature of water stress within and between countries in South Asia occurs commonly, there is a […]
This past April, Harvard’s South Asia Institute hosted a workshop on Water and Poverty in Urban Slums as a component of its annual symposium. Video of this event will be available from their website later this summer, but we have a detailed summary of the discussion among the panelists. In an attempt to better understand the […]
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