James L. Wescoat, Jr – författare

Successful water management is crucial for the proper operation of natural environmental systems and for the support of human society. These two aspects are interdependent, but decisions about one are often made without regard to effects upon the other. A persistent challenge is to consider them together. This book fully analyzes the relationship between water management, environmental conditions and public policy. It combines a careful review of the character and evolution of water management and evaluates management from the standpoint of the quality of the natural environment. Topics covered include domestic and industrial water supply and waste disposal, groundwater use, river channel and floodplain management, and integrated river basins. The processes of social decision-making are examined against a backdrop of plant-soil-water-ecosystem relationships and ecosystem change. Examples are drawn from around the world, from local watershed management to international river basin planning, with emphasis on integrative approaches.

Successful water management is crucial for the proper operation of natural environmental systems and for the support of human society. These two aspects are interdependent, but decisions about one are often made without regard to effects upon the other. A persistent challenge is to consider them together. This book fully analyzes the relationship between water management, environmental conditions and public policy. It combines a careful review of the character and evolution of water management and evaluates management from the standpoint of the quality of the natural environment. Topics covered include domestic and industrial water supply and waste disposal, groundwater use, river channel and floodplain management, and integrated river basins. The processes of social decision-making are examined against a backdrop of plant-soil-water-ecosystem relationships and ecosystem change. Examples are drawn from around the world, from local watershed management to international river basin planning, with emphasis on integrative approaches.

This innovative collected work offers a new way of understanding history, society, and climate change by placing water at the center of human life. Focusing on monsoon Asia-home to nearly half the world's population-it explores how oceans, rivers, monsoons, and even humidity have shaped cultures, economies, politics, and everyday survival for centuries. Bringing together historians, anthropologists, geographers, and environmental scholars, the volume connects local waterscapes to global Earth systems, showing how human actions now reshape the hydrological cycle with planetary consequences. Through vivid case studies ranging from river basins and coastal cities to bodies, beliefs, and technologies, the book reveals water as both a life-giving force and a source of risk, power, and conflict. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.