In an era of abundance, at least part of humanity has stopped thinking about the future provision of basic vital resources such water, energy and food. Storage actions, with all their variants whether real or imagined, are sources of innovation in the provision and treatment of crucial resources. This book deals with cases of water, food, energy and biodiversity storage as a response to a new era of scarcity. Examining multilevel storage policies, consumers’ practices and local organisations, author Giorgio Osti explores a variety of examples such as the need to stock agriculture produce, the industry and practices of food conservation, the role of artificial water basins in controlling floods and droughts and the development of batteries able to compensate for the intermittence of renewable energy sources. Storage and self-sufficiency can be achieved in many technical ways, at different territorial levels and according to different policies or philosophies. Being more a grasshopper or an ant - the two extreme positions - depends not only on the technologies available but also on different analyses of the environment and different attitudes to the future. This book offers an environmentalist perspective that uncovers hidden or absent activities of ultramodern societies that will be useful to students of environmental sociology as well as those researching and studying at the interface of environmental studies and geography.

In an era of abundance, at least part of humanity has stopped thinking about the future provision of basic vital resources such water, energy and food. Storage actions, with all their variants whether real or imagined, are sources of innovation in the provision and treatment of crucial resources. This book deals with cases of water, food, energy and biodiversity storage as a response to a new era of scarcity. Examining multilevel storage policies, consumers’ practices and local organisations, author Giorgio Osti explores a variety of examples such as the need to stock agriculture produce, the industry and practices of food conservation, the role of artificial water basins in controlling floods and droughts and the development of batteries able to compensate for the intermittence of renewable energy sources. Storage and self-sufficiency can be achieved in many technical ways, at different territorial levels and according to different policies or philosophies. Being more a grasshopper or an ant - the two extreme positions - depends not only on the technologies available but also on different analyses of the environment and different attitudes to the future. This book offers an environmentalist perspective that uncovers hidden or absent activities of ultramodern societies that will be useful to students of environmental sociology as well as those researching and studying at the interface of environmental studies and geography.

A surprising and intriguing examination of how scarcity—and our flawed responses to it—shapes our lives, our society, and our culture

Of the four major ways of storing water –in the soil profile, in underground aquifers, in small reservoirs, and in large reservoirs behind dams–the first is possible only for relatively short periods of time. In this paper, the authors concentrate on the three kinds of long-term technologies, and compare the hydrological, operational, economic and environmental aspects of each.

In this classic study, the authors assess the importance of technological change and resource substitution in support of their conclusion that resource scarcity did not increase in the Unites States during the period 1870 to 1957. Originally published in 1963

An insightful and original look at why understanding macroeconomics is essential for all investors

Scarcity is considered a ubiquitous feature of the human condition. It underpins much of modern economics and is widely used as an explanation for social organisation, social conflict and the resource crunch confronting humanity's survival on the planet. It is made out to be an all-pervasive fact of our lives - be it of housing, food, water or oil. But has the conception of scarcity been politicized, naturalized, and universalized in academic and policy debates? Has overhasty recourse to scarcity evoked a standard set of market, institutional and technological solutions which have blocked out political contestations, overlooking access as a legitimate focus for academic debates as well as policies and interventions? Theoretical and empirical chapters by leading academics and scholar-activists grapple with these issues by questioning scarcity's taken-for-granted nature. They examine scarcity debates across three of the most important resources - food, water and energy - and their implications for theory, institutional arrangements, policy responses and innovation systems. The book looks at how scarcity has emerged as a totalizing discourse in both the North and South. The 'scare' of scarcity has led to scarcity emerging as a political strategy for powerful groups. Aggregate numbers and physical quantities are trusted, while local knowledges and experiences of scarcity that identify problems more accurately and specifically are ignored. Science and technology are expected to provide 'solutions', but such expectations embody a multitude of unexamined assumptions about the nature of the 'problem', about the technologies and about the institutional arrangements put forward as a 'fix.' Through this examination the authors demonstrate that scarcity is not a natural condition: the problem lies in how we see scarcity and the ways in which it is socially generated.