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This engaging interdisciplinary study integrates the deep histories of infectious intestinal disease transmission, the sanitation revolution, and biomedical interventions.
Africa's Water and Sanitation InfrastructureùAccess, Affordability, and Alternatives integrates a wealth of primary and secondary information to present a quantitative snapshot of the state of the WSS sectors in Africa. It explains the sectoral institutional structures and utility performance and articulates the volume and quality of financing available over time. The authors also evaluate the challenges to the WSS sectors and explore the factors that govern the expansion of coverage over time. Finally, the authors estimate spending needs for WSS, arriving at a funding gap for meeting the MDGs. The proposed directions for the future draw on lessons learned from best practices and present the menu of choices available to African countries, bearing in mind that the challenges differ to a significant extent among countries and solutions must be tailored to national or regional conditions. --Book Jacket.
Everywhere in the world communities and nations organize themselves in relation to water. We divert water from rivers, lakes, and aquifers to our homes, workplaces, irrigation canals, and hydro-generating stations. We use it for bathing, swimming, recreation, and it functions as a symbol of purity in ritual performances. In order to facilitate and manage our relationship with water, we develop institutions, technologies, and cultural practices entirely devoted to its appropriation and distribution, and through these institutions we construct relations of class, gender, ethnicity, and nationality. Relying on first-hand ethnographic research, the contributors to this volume examine the social life of water in diverse settings and explore the impacts of commodification, urbanization, and technology on the availability and quality of water supplies. Each case study speaks to a local set of issues, but the overall perspective is global, with representation from all continents.
"This report was written by a team led by Somik V. Lall"--P. xi.
How solar could spark a clean-energy transition through transformative innovation—creative financing, revolutionary technologies, and flexible energy systems. Solar energy, once a niche application for a limited market, has become the cheapest and fastest-growing power source on earth. What's more, its potential is nearly limitless—every hour the sun beams down more energy than the world uses in a year. But in Taming the Sun, energy expert Varun Sivaram warns that the world is not yet equipped to harness erratic sunshine to meet most of its energy needs. And if solar's current surge peters out, prospects for replacing fossil fuels and averting catastrophic climate change will dim. Innova...
An analysis that offers evidence to challenge the widely held assumption that urbanization and environmental quality are necessarily at odds.
Tourist visits used to be a less common activity in the past. However, more people than ever now make leisure trips, making this an era of mass tourism. This drastic change in spatial behaviour is not only caused by economic prosperity, but the scale of this phenomenon means that it is able to generate economic growth, making tourism a key factor in regional development policy. One of the main challenges of current regional policy is to market the attractiveness of an area, thereby increasing tourist visits and subsequent revenue. In particular, regions are attempting this through the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), which offer information on interesting places, and efficient methods for organizing and booking trips. This book examines the interconnections between tourism, ICT and regional development. Bringing together a range of European case studies illustrating various ICT and policy innovations, it not only critiques current activity by regions in terms of tourism development, but also considers how this sector is likely to continue to grow.
"Pierre Bourdieu conceptualizes the social as an economy. With an empirical example of free water transfers between 'water rich' and 'water poor' neighbours, this book demonstrates the relevance of moral considerations in habitualized everyday practice. Using Luc Boltanski's work on Justifications, the analysis introduces economic imperfection into Bourdieu's 'perfect' Economy of Symbolic Goods. By presenting a Poltiical Ecology of the neighbourly waterscape from the perspective of water consumers, this book is a scientific plea for a holistic analysis of water beyond the scale of policy making"--Publisher's description
Despite its vast oil wealth, central Africa still struggles to sustain strong, inclusive economic growth and to generate sufficient employment opportunities, particularly for its fast-growing youth population. Drawing on new research, Oil Wealth in Central Africa lays out the macroeconomic and growth challenges facing the region; examines oil wealth management and its implications for poverty reduction; and includes four case studies that exemplify lessons learned.
Global energy consumption will increase rapidly in the next decades. The discrepancy between demand and supply is worrisome within the old and new cores of the world-economy. Sub-Saharan Africa meanwhile possesses vast potential for energy resources to be further exploited. Whilst the Global North is a traditional player in the sub-Saharan energy sector, new actors from emerging economies - especially China’s state-owned enterprises but also Brazilian, Indian and South African giants - have entered what appears to be a scramble for the largely untapped energy resources of the region. This book is the first to bring together comparative perspectives on: · The strategies of state and non-st...