Contested Waters provides an in-depth analysis of trans-boundary water conflict involving the Indus Basin in Pakistan. The book focuses on both national scale and local scale case studies to illustrate how these water conflicts are both discursively and materially driven by human institutions and politics. Through case studies of controversy over large dams, local flooding and irrigation methods, Daanish Mustafa highlights the various deeply political and institutional factors driving water conflict – specifically the disparity between national scale strategies of water politics and local scale water politics – and calls for engagement with water conflict in political terms.
Access to water, and the threat of climate change, are two of the most challenging issues for our planet. A global population now exceeding 7 billion people, together with growing numbers of countries adopting a more water intensive lifestyle, are placing increased demands upon the world's water resources, whilst global climate change promises rising sea levels and increased flooding in some of the world's most densely populated regions. How are we to address the twin challenge of global water sufficiency and future climate change? Existing attempts to improve the management of local water resources, and to alleviate the hazard of flooding, have often fallen short of the desired result: attempts by governments and NGOs to provide modern solutions, for example, have created unforeseen problems adversely affecting future water resources and leading to increased vulnerability to crises. Daanish Mustafa's important new book outlines the need to develop an integrative approach. He introduces the concept of hydro-hazardscape to show how the diverse social groups affected by a hazard may view it differently, with the result that their view of the potential threat may also differ. It is only by adopting an approach that is attentive to the complexities and multiple values of water in the communities affected, that we may hope for any measure of success. Drawing upon a range of international examples from South Asia, Central America, the Caucuses and the USA, at scales ranging from the local to basin wide, the author shows how the hydro-hazardscape approach will help negotiate not only the existing challenges of equity and environmental quality but also that of long-term sustainability in a future filled with climate change.
Contested Waters provides an in-depth analysis of trans-boundary water conflict involving the Indus Basin in Pakistan. The book focuses on both national scale and local scale case studies to illustrate how these water conflicts are both discursively and materially driven by human institutions and politics. Through case studies of controversy over large dams, local flooding and irrigation methods, Daanish Mustafa highlights the various deeply political and institutional factors driving water conflict – specifically the disparity between national scale strategies of water politics and local scale water politics – and calls for engagement with water conflict in political terms.
The liberatory sentiment that stoked the Arab Spring and saw the ousting of long-time Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak seems a distant memory. Democratically elected president Mohammad Morsi lasted only a year before he was forced from power to be replaced by precisely the kind of authoritarianism protestors had been railing against in January 2011. Paradoxically, this turn of events was encouraged by the same liberal activists and intelligentsia who’d pushed for progressive reform under Mubarak. This volume analyses how such a key contingent of Egyptian liberals came to develop outright illiberal tendencies. Interdisciplinary in scope, it brings together experts in Middle East studies, political science, philosophy, Islamic studies and law to address the failure of Egyptian liberalism in a holistic manner – from liberalism’s relationship with the state, to its role in cultivating civil society, to the role of Islam and secularism in the cultivation of liberalism. A work of impeccable scholarly rigour, Egypt and the Contradictions of Liberalism reveals the contemporary ramifications of the state of liberalism in Egypt.
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