Christopher A. Scott – författare

The border region shared by the United States and Mexico is currently experiencing multiple crises on both sides that present challenges to safeguarding the region''s sustainable natural resources and to ensuring the livelihoods of its residents. These challenges are exacerbated by stressors including global climate change, increasing urbanization and industrialization and attendant air and water-quality degradation, and rapid population growth. Navigating these challenges and preserving the area''s cultural richness, economy, and ecology will require building strategic partnerships that engage a broad range of stakeholders from both countries.

To navigate these challenges, the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, together with the Mexican Academy of Sciences (Academia Mexicana de Ciencias), Mexican Academy of Engineering (Academia de Ingeniería de México), and Mexican National Academy of Medicine (Academia Nacional de Medicina de México), appointed a committee of experts from the United States and Mexico to conduct a consensus study.

Advancing United States-Mexico Binational Sustainability Partnerships incorporates features of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in particular, Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 17. SDG 17 calls for revitalizing global partnerships for sustainable development. It is specifically focused on the advancement of multi-stakeholder partnerships that require coordination and collaboration among diverse stakeholders in pursuit of a common and mutually beneficial vision. With attention to SDG 17, this report draws on social science theory and applied research on partnerships to explore potential strategies and mechanisms to increase coordination between relevant government agencies, the private sector, and civil society in the United States and Mexico.

Over the last decade, water security has replaced sustainability as the key optic for thinking about how we manage water. This reframing has offered benefits (including clear recognition of the link between humans, the environment and the right to water) and also posed challenges (the tendency in some quarters to interpret “security” solely in terms of geopolitical or economic “securitisation”).

In this collection, the authors offer a radical repositioning of these debates updated to reflect the concerns of our post-pandemic world. The chapters in this volume examine several different themes including how water security articulates with locality and culture, how it operates across spatial scales and its moral/ethical resonances.

The chapters in this book were originally published in the journals Water International and International Journal of Water Resources Development.

Over the last decade, water security has replaced sustainability as the key optic for thinking about how we manage water. This reframing has offered benefits (including clear recognition of the link between humans, the environment and the right to water) and also posed challenges (the tendency in some quarters to interpret “security” solely in terms of geopolitical or economic “securitisation”).

In this collection, the authors offer a radical repositioning of these debates updated to reflect the concerns of our post-pandemic world. The chapters in this volume examine several different themes including how water security articulates with locality and culture, how it operates across spatial scales and its moral/ethical resonances.

The chapters in this book were originally published in the journals Water International and International Journal of Water Resources Development.

The privatization of water supply and wastewater systems, together with institutional restructuring of governance – through decentralization and the penetration of global firms in local and regional markets – have been promoted as solutions to increase economic efficiency and achieve universal water supply and sanitation coverage. Yet a significant share of service provision and water resources development remains the responsibility of public authorities. The chapters in this book – with case evidence from Argentina, Chile, France, the USA, and other countries – address critical questions that dominate the international agenda on public versus private utilities, service provision, regulations, and resource development. This book presents varied perspectives – largely complementary but at times contrasting – on public and private governance of water. Public authority in general is being reasserted over service provision, while resource development and investments in infrastructure continue as a mix of public and private initiatives. But more important, increased oversight and regulation of market-based initiatives that until recently were touted as panaceas for water supply and sanitation are increasingly being reconsidered on the basis of social equity, environmental, and public health concerns.

This book was based on the special issue of Water International.

The privatization of water supply and wastewater systems, together with institutional restructuring of governance – through decentralization and the penetration of global firms in local and regional markets – have been promoted as solutions to increase economic efficiency and achieve universal water supply and sanitation coverage. Yet a significant share of service provision and water resources development remains the responsibility of public authorities. The chapters in this book – with case evidence from Argentina, Chile, France, the USA, and other countries – address critical questions that dominate the international agenda on public versus private utilities, service provision, regulations, and resource development. This book presents varied perspectives – largely complementary but at times contrasting – on public and private governance of water. Public authority in general is being reasserted over service provision, while resource development and investments in infrastructure continue as a mix of public and private initiatives. But more important, increased oversight and regulation of market-based initiatives that until recently were touted as panaceas for water supply and sanitation are increasingly being reconsidered on the basis of social equity, environmental, and public health concerns.

This book was based on the special issue of Water International.