In a world facing a growing water crisis, conflicts regarding water sharing and environmental issues are expected to grow, especially in transboundary river basins, where 40% of the world's population lives. This book represents one of the first attempts to bring together methodologies and analytical tools from socio-economic, international policy, engineering, and water management specialists dealing with transboundary water resources. The book is divided into three parts. Part I introduces state--of-the-art concepts in institutional policy and conflict analysis. Part II presents engineering approaches and models for transboundary water management and conflict resolution. Part III analyzes cases in international river basins and enclosed seas.

Based on analysis of the evidence for climate change and the vulnerability of poor people, develops a framework for action and examines the link between consumer and political choices in the North, and impacts in the South on the most vulnerable people on the planet.

Human societies are influencing nature in such a way that their independent analysis is no longer suitable. Fortunately, social-ecological systems provide a conceptual framework for the interconnected analysis of societies and ecosystems. However, in the case of Latin America, the complexity of social-ecological processes undermined a much-needed compilation of theoretical concepts, methods and case studies. Increasing readers’ understanding of such systems using a postnormal approach, the book discusses current concepts and methods with examples of studies from eight countries. It is a useful resource for social actors, government decision makers and scholars.

Technocratic Visions examines the context and societal consequences of technologies, technocratic governance, and development in Mexico, home of the first professional engineering school in the Americas. Contributors focus on the influential role of engineers, especially civil engineers, but also mining engineers, military engineers, architects, and other infrastructural and mechanical technicians. During the mid-nineteenth century, a period of immense upheaval and change domestically and globally, troubled governments attempted to expand and modernize Mexico’s engineering programs while resisting foreign invasion and adapting new Western technologies to existing precolonial and colonial foundations. The Mexican Revolution in 1910 greatly expanded technocratic practices as state agents attempted to control popular unrest and unify disparate communities via science, education, and infrastructure. Within this backdrop of political unrest, Technocratic Visions describes engineering sites as places both praised and protested, where personal, local, national, and global interests combined into new forms of societal creation; and as places that became centers of contests over representation, health, identity, and power. With an eye on contextualizing current problems stemming from Mexico’s historical development, this volume reveals how these transformations were uniquely Mexican and thoroughly global.