The Hydropolitics of Dams charts the troubled waters of 'heavy engineering' approaches to ecosystem management, exploring the history, benefits and problems of large dams. It then explores diverse ecosystem-based approaches to management of human interactions with the water cycle, concluding that a synthesis of approaches is needed in future. The book also addresses political, economic and legal dimensions of water management. Featuring case studies from China, India and South Africa, this insightful new book argues that there are more appropriate physical and social technologies that can help to sustainably provide access to clean water for all.

An in-depth look at the people and institutions connected with the Itaipoe Dam, the world's biggest producer of renewable energy, Hydropolitics is a groundbreaking investigation of the world's largest power plant and the ways energy shapes politics and economics.ics.

The Hydropolitics of Dams charts the troubled waters of 'heavy engineering' approaches to ecosystem management, exploring the history, benefits and problems of large dams. It then explores diverse ecosystem-based approaches to management of human interactions with the water cycle, concluding that a synthesis of approaches is needed in future. The book also addresses political, economic and legal dimensions of water management. Featuring case studies from China, India and South Africa, this insightful new book argues that there are more appropriate physical and social technologies that can help to sustainably provide access to clean water for all.

Water is both an essential resource and a source of disease and conflict in contemporary Africa. And we begin to learn that far distant processes of consumption and pollution can have their impact on the water systems of Africa: global warming produced by the material culture of the first world threatens the weather systems and very survival of developing countries. In this context, this volume – the product of an expert meeting at Cornell University’s Institute for African Development – traces and tracks the dynamics of the contemporary hydropolitics of Africa. The volume contains a variety of approaches to the study of the organisation of water within Africa ranging from technical essays on water borne diseases, through institutional analyses of the legal and political arrangements around the distribution of water to social policy analyses of the unmet demand for water amongst Africa’s poor. Taken as a whole, the volume provides the reader with a useful reference work on the contemporary hydropolitics of Africa whilst simultaneously providing a lively introduction to a critical and much neglected area of African development policy.

Water, Civilisation and Power in Sudan offers an alternative account of how water policy, violence, and economic modernisation are linked.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. After more than a decade of construction, Ethiopia is filling the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), a controversial dam with the potential to transform the hydrology and politics of the Nile Basin. The GERD is the culmination of a dam building boom carried out over three decades and a key pillar of the Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front's (EPRDF) efforts to bring about an Ethiopian 'Renaissance'. Dams, Power, and the Politics of Ethiopia's Renaissance provides a detailed examination of the domestic and international political dynamics that shaped Ethiopia's dam building, drawing on extensive primary research including more than a hundred interviews with politicians, technocrats, consultants, and donors. The authors reflect on the implications of Ethiopia's dam building for broader debates about the role of the state in late development, the dynamics of twenty-first century dam building, and the political economy of renewable energy transitions. A central argument of the book is that Ethiopia's dam building is symbolic of the successes and failures of the EPRDF's 'developmental state'. On the one hand, this dams' boom enhanced electricity generation capacity, while constituting a key element of the state infrastructure investment that turned Ethiopia into one of the world's fastest growing economies. In contrast, a politically driven decision-making process undermined electricity planning, contributed to an unsustainable debt burden, and, ultimately, failed to provide reliable electricity access to key users. Following the EPRDF's collapse, the subsequent Prosperity Party government has taken steps away from the state-led development model of its predecessor, while labouring towards the final completion of the GERD. Oxford Studies in African Politics and International Relations is a series for scholars and students working on African politics and International Relations and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on contemporary developments in African political science, political economy, and International Relations, such as electoral politics, democratization, decentralization, gender and political representation, the political impact of natural resources, the dynamics and consequences of conflict, comparative political thought, and the nature of the continent's engagement with the East and West. Comparative and mixed methods work is particularly encouraged. Case studies are welcomed but should demonstrate the broader theoretical and empirical implications of the study and its wider relevance to contemporary debates. The focus of the series is on sub-Saharan Africa, although proposals that explain how the region engages with North Africa and other parts of the world are of interest. Series Editors: Nic Cheeseman (University of Birmingham), Peace Medie (University of Bristol), and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira (University of Oxford)