Searching Out the Headwaters seeks to address the situation by providing a framework for understanding western water use and the outmoded rules that govern it. Only by understanding the waters of the West and the people whose lives and livelihoods depend on them can concerned citizens comprehend the seriousness of the current situation and help take steps toward reform.

Eschewing punctuation, forgoing every symmetry, the poems hurl themselves forward, driven by an urgent need to speak. Headwaters is a book of wisdom that refuses to be wise, a book of fresh beginnings by an American poet writing at the height of her powers.

In The Sacred Headwaters, a collection of photographs by Carr Clifton and members of the International League of Conservation Photographers - including Claudio Contreras, Paul Colangelo, and Wade Davis - portray the splendour of the region. These photographs are supplemented by images from other professionals who have worked here, including Sarah Leen of the National Geographic.

An interdisciplinary exploration of the tension between traditional and modern approaches to the environment in Pacific Rim countries.

Snaking 2,540 miles from Montana to the Mississippi River, the Missouri is the longest waterway in the nation. Its basin—stretching 530,000 square miles—extends broadly into ten states and twenty-five Indian reservations. For millions of years the river and its tributaries meandered untamed. But that irrevocably changed with the passage of the Pick-Sloan Plan, part of the Flood Control Act of 1944. In River of Promise, River of Peril, John Thorson takes the first comprehensive look at how and why the Missouri River basin-now with six major dams and hundreds of miles of navigation canals-has become one of the most significantly altered drainage systems in the country. He also looks at the consequences. The Pick-Sloan Plan, he argues, has not fared well over time, particularly in its failure to provide an effective blueprint for regional river management. Persistent conflicts over the river, he contends, illuminate important weaknesses of federalism in dealing with regional resources, the most glaring being the exclusion of any proactive role for Indian tribal governments. To support his argument, Thorson examines the physical, demographic, and political features of the river basin; analyzes the comprehensive river development that gave birth to the Pick-Sloan Plan; reveals why the original goals of the legislature were never achieved; explores the deep-seated and continuing tensions between basin governments; and investigates how Indian tribes, the river's ecology, and federalism have been damaged as the river has been developed. He also describes the various associations created and later abandoned from the sixties to the eighties and assesses their virtues and limitations. Thorson sees in the story of the Missouri River Basin the vertical and horizontal strains of federalism-the states chafing against federally mandated and controlled projects exacerbated by the lack of constitutional guidance for handling conflicts among neighboring states and with Indian nations. Not just bent on spotlighting problems, Thorson also evaluates different approaches for improved river system management and recommends a Missouri River management institution based on environmentally sensitive policies, a strong state role, and full participation by the basin's tribal governments.

Water is not only a source of life and culture. It is also a source of power, conflicting interests and identity battles. Rights to materially access, culturally organize and politically control water resources are poorly understood by mainstream scientific approaches and hardly addressed by current normative frameworks. These issues become even more challenging when law and policy-makers and dominant power groups try to grasp, contain and handle them in multicultural societies. The struggles over the uses, meanings and appropriation of water are especially well-illustrated in Andean communities and local water systems of Peru, Chile, Ecuador, and Bolivia, as well as in Native American communities in south-western USA. The problem is that throughout history, these nation-states have attempted to 'civilize' and bring into the mainstream the different cultures and peoples within their borders instead of understanding 'context' and harnessing the strengths and potentials of diversity. This book examines the multi-scale struggles for cultural justice and socio-economic re-distribution that arise as Latin American communities and user federations seek access to water resources and decision-making power regarding their control and management. It is set in the dynamic context of unequal, globalizing power relations, politics of scale and identity, environmental encroachment and the increasing presence of extractive industries that are creating additional pressures on local livelihoods. While much of the focus of the book is on the Andean Region, a number of comparative chapters are also included. These address issues such as water rights and defence strategies in neighbouring countries and those of Native American people in the southern USA, as well as state reform and multi-culturalism across Latin and Native America and the use of international standards in struggles for indigenous water rights. This book shows that, against all odds, people are actively contesting neoliberal globalization and water power plays. In doing so, they construct new, hybrid water rights systems, livelihoods, cultures and hydro-political networks, and dynamically challenge the mainstream powers and politics.

This visually dynamic historical atlas chronologically covers American environmental history through the use of four-color maps, photos, and diagrams, and in written entries from well known scholars.Organized into seven categories, each chapter covers: agriculture * wildlife and forestry * land use and management * technology and industry * polluti