This book is the first comprehensive effort to bring together Water, Food Security and Nutrition (FSN) in a way that goes beyond the traditional focus on irrigated agriculture. Apart from looking at the role of water and sanitation for human well-being, it proposes alternative and more locally appropriate ways to address complex water management and governance challenges from the local to global levels against a backdrop of growing uncertainties.The authors challenge mainstream sup...

It is beyond doubt that the interconnectedness between food, energy, water security and environmental sustainability exists and is getting amplified with increased globalization. It has been recognized that efforts to address only one part of a systemic problem by neglecting other inherently interlinked aspects may not lead to desirable and sustainable outcomes. In this perspective, policy- and decision- making requires a nexus approach that reduces trade-offs and builds synergies across s...

In recent years, a greater level of integration of the world economy and an opening of national markets to trade has impacted virtually all areas of society. The process of globalization has the potential to generate long-term benefits for developing countries, including enhanced technology and knowledge transfers and new fina- ing options supporting agricultural and economic development. However, risks of political and economic instability, increased inequality, and losses in agricultural...

Available Open Access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.With Agenda 2030, the UN adopted wide-ranging Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that integrate development and environmental agendas. This book focuses on the political tensions between the environmental objectives and socio-economic aspects of sustainable development.The collection provides an introduction to interlinkages, synergies and trade-offs between the ‘green’ and other goals, such as gender equality and ...

Soaring income inequality and unemployment, expanding populations of the displaced and imprisoned, accelerating destruction of land and water bodies: today’s socioeconomic and environmental dislocations cannot be fully understood in the usual terms of poverty and injustice, according to Saskia Sassen. They are more accurately understood as a type of expulsion—from professional livelihood, from living space, even from the very biosphere that makes life possible.This hard-headed crit...

Look to Brazil for safe, stable investmentsAs the future of the American economy seems to get bleaker by the day, it is tempting to look abroad for business opportunities. Europe and Asia don't provide much hope, but what about somewhere that's both closer to home and sunny year-round? In Brazil is the New America: How Brazil Offers Upward Mobility in a Collapsing World, James D. Davidson shows that the current financial situation in Brazil is a haven for ...

There are often blanket claims that the world is facing more problems than ever but there is a lack of empirical data to show where things have deteriorated or in fact improved. In this book, some of the world's leading economists discuss ten problems that have blighted human development, ranging from malnutrition, education and climate change to trade barriers and armed conflicts. Costs of the problems are quantified in percent of GDP, giving readers a unique opportunity to understand the...

The failures of “free-market” capitalism are perhaps nowhere more evident than in the production and distribution of food. Although modern human societies have attained unprecedented levels of wealth, a significant amount of the world's population continues to suffer from hunger or food insecurity on a daily basis. In Agriculture and Food in Crisis, Fred Magdoff and Brian Tokar have assembled an exceptional collection of scholars from around the world to explore this fri...

As we struggle to feed a global population speeding toward 9 billion, we have entered a new phase of the food crisis. Wealthy countries that import much of their food, along with private investors, are racing to buy or lease huge swaths of farmland abroad. The Global Farms Race is the first book to examine this burgeoning trend in all its complexity, considering the implications for investors, host countries, and the world as a whole.The debate over large-scale land acquis...

Just as people schedule regular check-ups with physicians, our planet needs regular check-ups to catch issues as early as possible, before they become more serious and harder to heal. That is the much-needed service provided on a global scale by the Worldwatch Institute in this new book, Vital Signs 2012.By taking stock of global consumption, Vital Signs 2012 offers the facts that need to guide our stewardship of the Earth's resources-and some of these facts are s...

This book evaluates the history, the present and the future of water markets on 5 continents, beginning with the institutional underpinnings of water markets and factors influencing transaction costs. The book examines markets in seven countries and three different U.S. states, ranging from village-level water markets in Oman to basin wide formal water markets in Australia's Murray-Darling River basin.Introductory chapters on the background of water markets and on transaction costs...

Agricultural Investment and Productivity provides a deep and systematic look at the opportunities for and constraints to investments in sustainable agriculture in East Africa, offering important insights into what works and how to analyze agricultural investments in one of the poorest regions of the world. The book critically examines the reasons behind East Africa's stagnant agricultural productivity over the past forty-five years, using the primary lens of investments in fertilizers, see...