Water management

La importancia de las aguas subterráneas en el desarrollo social y económico suele ser ignorada debido a que es un recurso oculto. Decisores de los gobiernos, inversionistas o productores locales on frecuencia subestiman el valor de las aguas subterráneas en la economía y para el desarrollo económico, ya que asumen que los manantiales y pozos, de los cuales dependen, continuarán abasteciéndolos con agua dulce de alta calidad para siempre.

Water management and water infrastructure are preconditions for civilization, and demands on our water resources are increasing. In some regions these demands are exceeding capacities to supply water. Our old water institutions, laws, regulations, treaties and agreements are straining to meet the new demographic realities.

Management of transboundary waters in increasingly becoming more challenging, and climate change is likely to exacerbate these pressures. Not least because climate change is a global issue, adaptation will require an international response. This book aims to identify issues, both theoretical and practical, that States face in establishing cooperative transboundary mechanisms to effectively adapt water management to climate change.

The world increasingly relies on groundwater resources for drinking water and the provision of food for a growing population. The utilization of aquifer systems also extends beyond freshwater supply to include other resources such as heat extraction and the storage and disposal of substances. This volume is unique in focusing exclusively on conflicts over groundwater and aquifers.

Issues of women’s participation and gender equality in the governance of shared waters have received insufficient attention to date in both the research and practice literature, yet action is happening on the ground. Women play key roles in generating change in the way water is used, shared, and allocated, from local to transnational levels and in spite of legal, regulatory and institutional frameworks that provide little space for their participation in planning and decisionmaking.

Some two dozen countries are already classified as water-scarce, and this-as areas as diverse as Israel, southern California and even the Netherlands know - is not a problem confined to the South. Already, as this book shows, fresh-water shortages are becoming a major cause of conflict both domestically and between states. In the future, the growing world population, further spread of irrigated agriculture and industrialization will all make increasing demands on scarce water resources.