Water, Environmental Security and Sustainable Rural Development: Conflict and Cooperation in Central Eurasia [Hardcover]

This co-edited volume provides a unified scholarly treatment of intensifying debates on the relationship between water scarcity and environmental security in Central Eurasia. Using discussions of sustainable rural development as its conceptual backdrop, the chapters in this volume combine solid empirical investigation with critical analysis of key concepts such as scarcity, expert knowledge, and efficiency. The central theme emerging from the contributions emphasizes the need to reevaluate accepted wisdom in resource studies that considers distributional conflicts over water usage as inherently zero-sum outcomes in which one players gains inevitably correspond to another players losses. Instead, the empirical and critical analyses in this book demonstrate that effective management of water resources can be re-conceptualized as the basis for regional cooperation and sustainable rural development.

Part I 1. Follow the Water Murat Arsel and Max Spoor Part II: Transformation Of Water Regimes 2. Water, War And Reconstruction Irrigation Management In The Kunduz Region, Afghanistan Iskandar Abdullayev, Katja Mielke, Peter P. Mollinga, Jan Monsees, Conrad Schetter, Usman Shah, and Bernie Ter Steege 3. Political Ecology Of Marshland Restoration In Iraq Joshua Ellis and Murat Arsel 4. Wells, Water Rights and Sustainability: New Politics And Practices Mongolias Pastoral Commons Caroline Upton 5. Adapting to Demands: Allocation, Scheduling and Delivery of Irrigation Water in Khorezm, Uzbekistan Gert Jan Veldwisch Part III: Waterscapes of Conflict and Cooperation 6. Water and Geopolitics in Central Asia Iskandar Abdullayev, Herath Manthrithilake and Jusipbek Kazbekov 7. Conflict and Cooperation In The South Caucasus: The Kura-Araks lãQ