Managing Water Under Uncertainty and Risk: United Nations World Water Development Report #4 (3 Vols.)


Book Description

Released every three years since March 2003, the United Nations World Water Development Report (WWDR), a flagship UN-Water report published by UNESCO, has become the voice of the United Nations system in terms of the state, use and management of the world's freshwater resources. The report is primarily targeted at national decision-makers and water resource managers, but is also aimed at educating and informing a broader audience, from governments to the private sector and civil society. It underlines the important roles water plays in all social, economic and environmental decisions, highlighting policy implications across various sectors, from local and municipal to regional and international levels. Similarly to the first two editions, this report includes a comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of several key challenge areas, such as water for food, energy and human health, and governance challenges such as institutional reform, knowledge and capacity-building, and financing, each produced by individual UN agencies.




An Unfinished Foundation


Book Description

The UN treats the global environment as a problem for international law and economic development-but not as part of its mandate to promote peace and champion human rights. In this pathbreaking book, a leading scholar of global environmental governance suggests reforms to mobilize peacebuilding, conflict sensitivity, and rights-based approaches as tools for environmental protection.




Natural Resources and the Green Economy


Book Description

Considering that natural resources or green capital are the drivers of globalisation, this book focuses on the link between investment, trade and natural resource management in the context of the growing economic inequalities between states.




Meeting the Water Reform Challenge


Book Description

Water policies around the world are in urgent need of reform. Despite improvements in some sectors and countries, progress on meeting national, regional and international goals for managing and securing access to water for all has been uneven. Rallying policymakers around a positive water reform agenda needs to be a high priority and calls for strong political commitment and leadership. This report on Meeting the Water Reform Challenge brings together key insights from recent OECD work and identifies the priority areas where governments need to focus their reform efforts. It calls for governments to focus on getting the basics of water policy right. Sustainable financing, effective governance, and coherence between water and sectoral policies are the building blocks of successful reform.




Threats to the Quality of Groundwater Resources


Book Description

This book focuses on scientific and technological aspects of groundwater-resources assessment and surveillance. It describes relevant risks and investigates selected techniques for the monitoring and mitigation of the individuated threats to groundwater quality. The authors discuss the concepts of groundwater-resources protection and offer examples of both geogenic and anthropogenic degradation of groundwater quality, such as heavy metals from mining activities and natural water-rock interactions, as well as risk of contamination due to geological CO2 storage practices etc. The volume also covers non-invasive monitoring techniques and briefly addresses innovative sensor technologies for the online assessment of water quality. Furthermore, the role played by geochemical techniques, the potential of environmental isotopes and the support provided by physical modelling are highlighted. The chapters guide the reader through various viewpoints, according to the diverse disciplines involved, without aiming to be exhaustive, but instead picking representative topics for their relevance in the context of groundwater protection and control. This book will be of interest to advanced students, researchers, policy-makers and stakeholders at various levels.




Investing in Water for a Green Economy


Book Description

In the context of the economies of the world becoming greener, this book provides a global and interdisciplinary overview of the condition of the world’s water resources and the infrastructure used to manage it. It focuses on current social and economic costs of water provision, needs and opportunities for investment and for improving its management. It describes the large array of water policy challenges facing the world, including the Millennium Development Goals for clean water and sanitation, and shows how these might be met. There is a mixture of global overviews, reviews of specific issues and an array of case studies. It is shown how accelerated investment in water-dependent ecosystems, in water infrastructure and in water management can be expected to expedite the transition to a green economy. The book provides a key source of information for people interested in understanding emerging water issues and approaches that are consistent with a world that takes greater responsibility for the environment.




OECD Studies on Water Meeting the Water Reform Challenge


Book Description

Building on the main water challenges identified by the OECD Environment Outlook to 2050, this report examines financing of the water sector; the governance and institutional arrangements that are in place; and coherence between water policies and policies in place in other sectors of the economy.




Re-interpreting the Relationship Between Water and Urban Planning


Book Description

Africa is one of the most dynamic continents. It will play a key role in the coming decades in relation to the growth of cities, and environmental conditions will be of primary importance. The structural lack of water and sanitation infrastructure affects the development of Africa's growing urban environments. This book questions the relation between the wide-ranging fields of water and the urban discipline in the Sub-Saharan African context. In particular, it focuses on Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), a city where rapid urbanisation and high annual growth have led to increasing water demand and strained the water and sanitation systems. It examines the spaces water produces, the actors promoting various choices and solutions, the impact of different applied technologies, and the diverse sanitary conditions, focusing on their significance in the shape of the built environment and the urban planning practices and theory. As water occupies and creates spaces, this work tries to establish a relation among the spaces and the structure of the city itself, using infrastructure in the shape of networks that cross the city and on-site systems such as boreholes and latrines, to be considered a hybrid and potentially resilient system.




The Myth of Development


Book Description

The Myth of Development boldly states that the benefits of development, so long promised over the past sixty years, have not come about for most people. Nor are they going to. State-driven and market-led development models have both failed. Many countries, and their cities in particular, are collapsing into ungovernable chaotic entities. De Rivero shows that the root of this chaos is not simply economic, but stems from a much more profound crisis of our way of life and of our unsustainable global urban civilization. Arguing that the 'wealth of nations' agenda must be replaced by a 'survival of nations' agenda in order to prevent increasing human misery and political disorder, De Riviero explains why many countries must abandon dreams of development and adopt instead a policy of national survival based on providing basic water, food, renewable energy, and stabilizing their populations. Featuring a new introduction by the author, this edition engages with the latest findings on climate change and assesses the prospects for our species in the decades ahead.




Impact Behavior and Pedestrian Protection of Automotive Laminated Windshield


Book Description

This book addresses one of the most important components for pedestrian safety in vehicles – laminated windshields. It includes detailed real-world material characterization results for laminated glass and testing methodologies, constitutive models, and step-by-step numerical simulation modeling and simulation methods. As such, the book provides readers a thorough understanding of the mechanical behaviors of laminated glass and windshields. It also presents fundamental test data, analysis methodologies and essential insights into laminated glass safety design and mechanical behavior prediction. The book addresses the needs of researchers, engineers and postgraduate students in the fields of automotive engineering, mechanical engineering and related areas.