Using named examples, assess the potential for water supply to become a source of conflict. (15)
The South-to-North Water Diversion Project in China, established by Moa Zedong in 1952, is a water diversion project that would divert 44.8 billion cubic meters of water annually to the drier north of China ("South-to-North Water"). The project would link China’s four main rivers the Yangtze, Yellow River, Huaihe and Haihe. China plans on doing this by constructing three diversion routes moving through the south to north ("South-to-North Water"). It would stretch across the central, eastern and western parts of the country ("South-to-North Water"). This project is expected to cost around $62 billion dollars and take around 50 more years to complete ("South-to-North Water"). By trying to divert the rivers and create an equal distribution of water, the project raises many environmental concerns but has many positives. This paper will evaluate the different perspectives of the ecomodernist and resilience theory. This will be shown by analyzing each perspective, evaluating the different concerns and analyzing how each perspective would respond to the water diversion project.
project of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), located at www.waterlawandstandards.org. This is a searchable database of specific water laws by individual country or by region, with the ability to tailor search results to varying degrees of detail, including direct quotations from parliamentary and constitutional frameworks.
Many populations, the majority being in Africa, face many water-borne diseases mainly due to pollution of water resources. The option then becomes to either drink polluted water or not have anything at all. Continual Human development such as population growth and industrial growth have further drained water resources, causing a shortage of drinking water. As a result, there are many conflicts over ownership of water resources and these lead to injuries or fatalities.(2) As mentioned before, this shows why it is so important to find a solution to the issue of water shortage.
Resilience is a term that is often applied to those who have faced hardship and viewed the experience in a positive light as an opportunity to grow and change for the better (Wagnild & Collins, 2009). The definition however seems to vary from place to place. Ungar et al. (2008) stated “definitions of resilience are ambiguous when viewed across cultures" (p.174) which is why the understanding of resilience may be difficult to capture (as cited in Windle, Bennett & Noyes, 2011). Although the literature agrees on several common themes about resilience there are many varying opinions on how to define the concept or the attributing factors. Earvolino-Ramirez (2007) and
Water, like food, is a necessity for human life that is used for many purposes such as agricultural, industrial, and domestic systems. While water is a common element around the world not all of it is clean and able to be consumed or used by humans. With only a percentage of the world’s water being clean and the use of water increasing, the availability of water around the world has become a common issue in the developing and even the developed world. This may be a smaller problem in areas close to clean water sources compared to areas far from a clean water source but, the availability of water is not strictly based on location, it also depends on the specific political and social needs and issues of the area as well. These all become issues that must be accounted for when deciphering whether water is a basic human right or a commodity and what action must be taken to aid the developing water systems in community’s that lack them.
Resilience is the notation is withstanding the onset disaster prior and after it has happened. In regards to the long term data collected, there are projects and organizations set to help spread knowledge of weather events and to strengthen this population greatly. Afghanistan working extensively with the Strategic National Action Plan (SNAP) and HYOGO Frame Work for Action (HFA) has provided response, planning and mitigation for future extreme weather events. It was documented that policy planning and looking into vulnerable populations are one way to develop community responses. By understanding how the majority operates and what their needs are, then only can officials cater to them as well as if they are
Many people know that water is essential for human-being and it is not only valuable for health and life, but water is also important for industry and agriculture. Furthermore, use of water has a spiritual, cultural and recreational dimension. However, water resources are not infinite. Wide and inefficient use of water resources can lead to irreversible consequences, such as water shortage. This essay will firstly discuss the problem of water shortage on examples of developed and developing countries and include the diversification of the same issue in the different parts of the world. It will also identify causes and effects of this environmental problem on society and other spheres of life. Moreover, in this essay I am going to propose
Although the role of disasters such as the 2010 earthquake in Haiti did act as a catalyst for transformation, it was somewhat limited. To some extent, the question of scale comes in place when transformation at one particular level or a sector of operations support resilience at another scale (Pelling & Manuel-Navarrete 2011). Put it differently, the problems associated with being scale-dependent is the issue of linking the discrete levels down from formal institutional hierarchies to informal systems like community activism and contemporary social networks (Prager 2010). In some cases, resilience can also result to the desire of only reinforcing status quo by responding to disruptions outside of the social ladder (Cretney 2014). Similarly,
With the exposure to the global and local climate change issues, I have analyzed the challenges of climate change in different sectors and the importance of adaptation to develop a resilient community. The research study has been proposed by me based on experienced related to climate change and disaster management. For this I incorporated the knowledge and skills I have gained from various countries by being participated in academic and training programmes for last 14 years. This will help me to continue and gain a recognized research output in my proposed research
It is also very evident through literature that resilience is a process and not an outcome. A community must take steps in order to build and ensure their resilience in the event of a disaster. Throughout all of the research it is also evident that the eight levers found in the review by Chandra et al. all the tools that set the framework for a community’s
Priscoli, J. D. & Wolf, A. T. (2009). Managing and Transforming Water Conflicts: USA: Cambridge University Press.
Many countries are also highly dependent on water that originates outside their borders; the water diversion provided by dams for countries that are downstream exacerbates an already serious problem. The diversion of river systems is an area of international concern, the nature and extent of such interdependency is already extensive: 145 countries share over 261 international river basin. As demand increases, and as indigenous sources of water become fully utilized or exhausted, the only alternatives are likely to be international (Dolatyar, 2006). Ironically, the very solution of one country's scarcity, plunges another into water shortage, this is the reason why water security is one of the most crucial foreign policy considerations of a globally connected economic and political atmosphere.
As the Marxist approach puts it, “underlying states of human marginalisation are conceived as the principle cause of disaster.” (Pelling, 2001, p. 179). This resource exclusion to particular categories of people within society creates their vulnerability to risk, and in turn disaster. McLaughlin and Dietz (2007) suggest there are three dimensions that make up vulnerability including exposure, sensitivity and resilience. An example displaying the vulnerability of lower classed social categories is in North Bihar, India, where floods have been managed through engineering works to create embankments. While the Government appears to be reducing the hazard, this has increased the vulnerability of the local people. Soil fertility has decreased reducing agricultural success, dangerous flash floods are occurring due to embankment walls collapsing and communities have settled on apparently safe embankments and are now highly exposed (Pelling, 2001). The natural flood hazard was dangerous, but these works by society have created a natural disaster (Pelling, 2001). Power inequalities have created this disastrous situation where lower classes are at high exposure to floods due to profit hungry management bodies. This technological approach is clearly failing but the Government and other managing groups make large profits off flood engineering works and have the power to decide how to control the issue (Pelling, 2001). This has resulted in creating
Global cooperation in water is necessary in the AMU countries due to unfavorable water situation in conjunction with the existence of common resources and a number of experiences to share.