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The worldwide privatization of public sector services has expanded market opportunities for transnational corporations enormously. Ann-Christian Holland visits countries as far apart as Britain and Argentina, Ghana and South Africa, to find the effect of privatization on that most basic of human needs, fresh water. She finds that two companies, Suez and Veolia, rapidly came to dominate nearly 80% of the privatized water market. As prices for water soared, massive public protests erupted in country after country. Holland interviewed senior corporate executives to get their responses, and sets out the arguments on both sides to present some of the innovative ideas and experiments for providing water as an essential service for all citizens.
The spread and consolidation of the women's movement in North and South over the past thirty years looks set to shape the course of social progress over the next generation. Peggy Antrobus draws on her long experience of feminist activism to set women's movements in their changing national and global context.
Using 50 questions and answers, this book explains the debt impasse for developing countries in a simple but precise manner. It details the roles of the various actors involved, the mesh in which indebted countries are caught, the possible scenarios for getting out of the impasse, and the various alternatives to future indebtedness. It also sets out the various arguments - moral, political, economic, legal and environmental - on which the case for a wholesale cancellation of developing countries‘ external debt rests. It replies to the range of possible objections and proposes new ways of financing development at both local and international level.
Jonathon Moses makes moral, political and economic arguments in favor of the free mobility of human beings across national borders. Pointing to the importance of immigration to the sucess of many nations, he shows that Europe itself now faces a falling population, and has over the past fifty years actively encouraged huge immigration from other countries. There is near consensus across the political spectrum that the free movement of goods and free movement of capital are good for economies, and therefore should apply to people as well.
This book combines evidence from natural and social sciences to examine the impact on Africa of seven cholera pandemics since 1817, particularly the current impact of cholera on such major countries as Senegal, Angola, Mozambique, Congo, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Myron Echenberg highlights the irony that this once-terrible scourge, having receded from most of the globe, now kills thousands of Africans annually - Africa now accounts for more than 90 percent of the world's cases and deaths - and leaves many more with severe developmental impairment. Responsibility for the suffering caused is shared by Western lending and health institutions and by often venal and incompetent African leadership. If the threat of this old scourge is addressed with more urgency, great progress in the public health of Africans can be achieved.
Koen De Feyter, who has chaired Amnesty International's Working Group on economic, social and cultural rights, shows the many ways in which rampant market economics in today's world leads to violations of human rights. He questions how far the present-day international human rights system really provides effective protection against the adverse effects of globalization. This accessible and thought-provoking book shows both human rights activists and participants in the anti-globalization movement that there is a large, but hitherto untapped, overlap in their agendas, and real potential for a strategic alliance between them in joint campaigns around issues they share.
In the face of growing freshwater scarcity, most countries of the world are taking steps to conserve their water and foster its sustainable use. Water crises range from concerns of drinking water availability and/or quality, the degradation or contamination of freshwater, and the allocation of water to different users. To meet the challenge, many countries are undergoing systemic changes to the use of freshwater and the provision of water services, thereby leading to greater commercialization of the resource as well as a restructuring of the legal, regulatory, technical and institutional frameworks for water. The contributions to this book critically analyse legal issues arising under intern...
Market society is producing more crime around the world. More acts are being defined as crimes. Ever increasing numbers of people are classified as criminals and more are being locked up in prison. With globalization, the crime and punishment problem is no longer insulated from pressures beyond national borders. The rich may retreat behind their expensive security into gated communities, but the poor are more and more at the mercy of criminals and corrupt policing. Yet, Vivien Stern argues, the trends towards more criminalization and more imprisonment are not making for more effective crime control or safer communities. This important book demonstrates that the prospects for the future are serious unless NGOs and reformers join in a new movement for reform that gives more control of justice policy back to communities and neighbourhoods.
Safe drinking water is essential to daily life. Meeting that demand with bottled water is a luxury too far, argues Emma Jones. She is not a lone critic of the packaged water industry. However, this author looks to history for solutions to a major sustainability problem: in the design, management and use of the city. With original stories from London's archives, Parched City tracks drinking-water obsessions through a popular architectural history tale. ,
Trade, along with the free movement of capital, is at the heart of today's international economy. But international trade is an intensely political and contested subject. In this book, Greg Buckman details possible future directions in global energy supplies and balance-of-payments imbalances. He argues that, just as current trading arrangements have been the product of past decisions emerging out of apparently unrelated considerations, so factors like future fossil fuel costs, global warming, and the economic imbalances between North and South are likely to impel a radical reshaping of the WTO and the principles enshrined in its agreements as well as the global trading system in general. A ...