Water, Environment and Society

Catalog description

The world’s water resources are widely considered to be in crisis. Water and society shape one another in a process of constant flux. The ways we value and manage water has implications for the environment, for our society, and for the flow of water itself. This course will examine major issues in comparative and international water policy, including water markets, privatization, dams and river basin management, environmental flows, social equity, and water governance. As such we will investigate the social processes of water management that transform water into an ecological resource, a hazard, a commercial product, or a vector for pollution. On the most part, we will focus our investigation on recent debates in the national and international arena, however, we will have a small section on applying these debates to our backyard case - the Catawba River watershed. Some of the key questions that will guide our inquiry in this course are: Who controls water, why, and how? Who are the winners and losers of water management decisions? How do the ways we think about water influence decisions about its management? How might we make more just and equitable decisions about how to live with (and without) water?