This book provides an overview of facts, theories and methods from hydrology, geology, geophysics, law, ethics, economics, ecology, engineering, sociology, diplomacy and many other disciplines with relevance for concepts and practice of water resources management. It provides comprehensive, but also critical reading material for all communities involved in the ongoing water discourses and debates. The book refers to case studies in the form of boxes, sections, or as entire chapters. They illustrate success stories, but also lessons to be remembered, to avoid repeating the same mistakes. Based on consolidated state-of-the-art knowledge, it has been conceived and written to attract a multidisciplinary audience. The aim of this handbook is to facilitate understanding between the participants of the international water discourse and multi-level decision making processes. Knowing more about water, but also about concepts, methods and aspirations of different professional, disciplinary communities and stakeholders professionalizes the debate and enhances the decision making.

The past few decades have seen special and changing emphasis in policy frameworks of rural financial intermediation in developing countries, varying from the distribution of cheap credit via specialized farm credit institutions, to the building of linkages between banks and savings groups, to attempts to use traders or NGOs as new conduits of lending. The destructive impact of cheap credit programs on rural financial markets has been the subject of two conferences organized by the Ohio State University in the USA in 1976 and 1981, in conjunction with the Agency for International Development and the World Bank. They resulted in a collection of readings edited by J.D. Von Pischke, Dale W Adams and Gordon Donald, Rural Financial Markets in Developing Countries (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press 1983), followed by Undermining Rural Development With Cheap Credit, edited by Dale W Adams, Douglas H. Graham and J.D. Von Pischke (Boulder: Westview Press 1984). Acknowledging the increasing interest of researchers and policymakers in the roles and uses of informal financial intermediaries, the Ohio State University subsequently organized a Seminar in Washington, D.C., in 1989 that produced Informal Finance in LowIncome Countries, edited by Dale W Adams and Delbert A. Fitchett (Boulder: Westview Press 1992).