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Os modelos climaticos e seus cenarios sao importantes ferramentas para descrever como poderao ser os padroes climaticos no contexto das nacoes e seus territorios, alem destes modelos serem importantes ferramentas tecnicas para o desenvolvimento de acoes estrategicas territoriais. Seguindo este principio, este artigo tem como objetivo analisar possiveis cenarios futuros para a Escocia, ao longo do seculo XXI. A Escocia e uma importante nacao que integra o Reino Unido e possui um significativo potencial hidrico na Europa, especialmente em termos qualitativos. No mais, este pais possui uma politica hidrica avancada, fortemente relacionada as regras da Diretiva das Aguas da Europa. Para o desenvolvimento de um conciso relatorio climatico sobre a Escocia, este artigo descrevera os principais resultados de dois modelos climaticos Europeus inseridos no AR5, modelos estes criados por Collins at al. apud IPCC (2013) e Christensen & Kanicharla apud IPCC (2013).

This article investigates the spatial logic and different moments of place-making\ud during the expansion of Mato Grosso’s agribusiness frontier, in the southern section\ud of the Brazilian Amazon. The analysis is informed by three conceptual concerns: the tensions\ud between representation and experience, between humanist and class-based explanations,\ud and between the intensity of place-making and place-framing. Empirical results\ud from a qualitative case study (carried out between 2013–2015, when agribusiness was the\ud undisputed locomotive of the Brazilian economy) demonstrate that socio-spatial changes\ud in the last four decades evolved due to the complementary pressures and controversies\ud of displacement (particularly in the 1970s–1980s) and replacement (in the 1990s–2000s),\ud which eventually resulted in the widespread sense of misplacement due to accumulated\ud inequalities and entrenched forms of socioeconomic exclusion. The principal conclusion\ud found that the places dominated by agribusiness in Mato Grosso evolved around a totalizing\ud spatial strategy that undermined alternative forms of production and livelihoods\ud that do not fit in the export-oriented agricultural model. Keywords: place-making,\ud agricultural frontier, soybean.

Today’s society faces many challenges when it comes to food production: producing food sustainably, producing enough of it, distributing food, consuming enough calories, consuming too many calories, consuming culturally-appropriate foods, and reducing the amount of food wasted. The distribution of power within the current mainstream agri-food system is dominated by multinational agri-businesses that control the flow of goods and wealth through the system. This hegemony has implemented a regime whose structures reinforce its control. A growing response to the current agri-food regime is the rise of agroecology, in both developed and developing country contexts. This is not a new phenomenon, but it has evolved over time from its Latin American origins. However, agroecology is not a monolithic block and represents many different perceptions of what it means to advance agroecology and ways in which it can help today’s society tackle the crisis of the agri-food system. This paper addresses these sometimes discordant view points, as well as the gaps in our knowledge regarding agroecology in an effort to lay out some guiding principles for how we can move forward in transforming the current agri-food system to achieve sustainability and a more equitable distribution of power and resources.

© 2017 Elsevier B.V. Values have been identified as important factors to estimate preferences within water governance and to assess the political legitimacy of water governance in a given time and location. The present study applies an interdisciplinary ‘value landscapes approach’ to water governance in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil, using conflicts around the construction of the Paraguay-Paraná Waterway as a case study. Using material from interviews with major stakeholders in the region, the results demonstrate that supporters of the waterway hold similar ‘value landscapes’ around economic values of water, efficiency, order, and economic development, while opponents' ‘value landscapes’ centre on cultural and non-economic values of water, social justice, solidarity, conservation and tradition. This suggests that persistent conflicts around the Paraguay-Paraná Waterway are only an expression of much deeper value conflicts that are also relevant to other water governance issues. Moreover, values expressed through the planned construction of the Paraguay-Paraná Waterway disproportionately reflect values of powerful stakeholder groups such as the agribusiness sector, which significantly undermines its political legitimacy.

The present study investigates the prospects for a large-scale implementation of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes in the Brazilian Pantanal wetland. Despite increasing environmental threats associated with development pressures and the growing interest of public and private organizations, no PES schemes are currently in place in the Pantanal. Through an exploratory scenario analysis, this article determines the prospects for PES in the area. The findings suggest that a large-scale implementation is unlikely, as this would require much higher levels of environmental awareness among local decision makers and low substitution rates of ecosystem services by technology. Furthermore, strong socioeconomic inequality between inhabitants of the Pantanal lowlands and wealthy farmers of the neighboring uplands means that potential suppliers of ecosystem services would face very high opportunity costs to participate in PES schemes. The research findings are also relevant to other environmentally sensitive regions experiencing rapid economic growth and weak environmental regulation.

The state is not only a main environmental player, but its involvement in environmental regulation has major consequences for the dynamics of statecraft. Environmental governance is the expression that better summarises the ongoing transformations of state interventions and the search for more flexible, adaptive approaches. A growing body of scholarly work has tried to establish the connections between the failures of environmental governance and the wider commitments of the state. What is largely missing in those studies is the synergy between environmental governance and the statecraft model put forward by Hegel in the early period of the industrial, liberal capitalism. Recent environmental policies have been particularly influenced by the Hegelian constitutional theory, especially considering the pursuit of legitimacy and flexibility. Consequently, the central challenge for geographers and other scholars of environmental governance is still to identify the changes in the rationale and configuration of the state apparatus and relate them to the wider political ecology of state action.

Climatic change is expected to have serious impacts on the Pantanal, a large tropical wetland located in the Upper Paraguay River Basin, in the centre of South America, where a range of institutional responses are being developed to mitigate and adapt to climate change. In order to examine the institutional achievements and challenges for managing the region, a specific typology is initially introduced, which comprises a schematic gradient of institutional responses. An empirical analysis was conducted in Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay, the three countries that share the Pantanal, which identified the hybrid basis of the policy framework under construction, in the sense that it actually combines elements of various institutional responses included in the proposed typology. Important factors that seem to undermine the efficacy of institutional responses in addressing climate change in the region are the strong influence of the agribusiness sector and the still relatively low importance of the Pantanal for national environmental policy-making. This essay makes a claim that the principles of climate justice should guiding policies and interventions as it they constitute the most appropriate strategy to address the inequality and unfairness related to climate change.

Scholarly work in geography has often fallen short of establishing the politicized connections between socio-ecological pressures, spatial dynamics and the changing patterns of the state apparatus. It is still necessary to better examine the failures of the responses to ecological problems in relation to the underlying politico-ideological factors that constrain state interventions. Environmental governance has been particularly influenced by Hegelian political theories about flexibility and legitimacy. The persistence of problems largely derives from the idealism of the Hegelian constitutional plan, which has facilitated the advance of capitalism over the more-than-human spheres of socionature mediated and promoted by the contemporary state.

The article analyzes the political-economy of the agriculture frontier in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso to question the productivist argument commonly presented by the agribusiness sector. The assessment makes use of the category of rent considered as a proportion of exchange value diverted from production for the payment to the landowners and its class-based allies. The agriculture frontier in Mato Grosso had basically three main rent extraction periods: a first moment when rent was forged by the state apparatus (1970s–1980s), a second period with serious turbulence and a macroeconomic transition (1980s–1990s) and a third phase with more complex flows of rent due to the neoliberalization of agribusiness (since the late 1990s). At the frontier of agribusiness, agricultural activity depends on combined strategies of rent creation and rent extraction. Empirical results suggest that rent is more than just the extraction of value from the use of land, but there is a wider capture of value from the network of relations that maintain land in production. Rent derives from land through the formation of a powerful network state-landowners-private agroindustrial sector that provides the conditions for rent extraction.

Water valuation represents both an opportunity and a challenge for interdisciplinary scholarly research, given that it can mobilize academic work beyond unnecessary cleavages between physical and social sciences. The article revisits the most common valuation approaches – namely, water as an economic resource, entangled in commodification strategies and embedded in cultural heritages – as important, but incomplete, considerations of the multitude of water values. While previous publications have dealt with the values held by different social groups and by the territorialized manifestation of water values, the limitations of prevailing valuation strategies are discussed here and a relational synthesis is proposed. As relevant as the examination of particular values (e.g. economic, non-economic, religious, cultural, aesthetic values, etc.) is the realization that the valuation of water is articulated according to socionatural interdependencies and the historic-geographical trajectories of individuals and groups. Water valuation is, therefore, premised on a relational, holistic ontology, in the sense that values are necessarily interrelated and emerge out of concrete, politicized socionatural interactions. Making use of relevant examples, it is argued that the valuation of water is ultimately a political statement that synthesizes mechanisms of cooperation and competition between individuals and social groups for the allocation, use and conservation of water. Such politicized understanding of the interconnections between water values provides a helpful entry point into the causes and consequences of water management problems. These are all profoundly geographical, but also interdisciplinary, questions, as water values reflect multiscale connections between local processes and wider relations of production, consumption and reproduction.

The decade of 1950s was a crucial period of the industrialization of the Brazilian economy. The dominant school of thought was the national-developmentalism, which was not restricted to the sphere of economic production but also encompassed political and socio-cultural processes of change. Combining repression, persuasion and paternalism, the national state took a significantly political and economic responsibility in the social, material and symbolic modernization dur ing the Vargas and Kubitschek administrations. However, internal disputes, foreign demands and a long legacy of socio-spatial inequalities prevented the achievement of more socially inclusive goals, leading a legacy of unanswered questions that still have currency today.

The present study analyzes the challenges related to the conservation of the South American Pantanal. It is focused on one of its most impacted areas, the Cuiabá River Basin. The research findings show a clear disconnect between the official assessment and the wider public perception of the processes that drive ecohydrological change. This partially explains the difficulty to implement environmental regulatory tools that conflict with the preexisting foundations of conservation strategies promoted by public agencies. The most significant result of the research shows a lack of a shared understanding about who is responsible for environmental problems. The responsibility is largely obscure, indeterminate, it is typically related to someone else, the “vague other” who hijacks the river from the rest of society, but can’t be properly identified. This perception helps to conceal the underlying causes of environmental degradation and is limiting the possibilities for resolution. The present article highlights the importance of accounting for a range of highly politicized issues at the intersection between interpersonal relations and broader socioeconomic pressures in a way that goes beyond the narrowly framed development and conservation debate.

The reform of urban water services, and the related reorganisation of environmental conservation, has been influenced by novel approaches focused on flexibility, adaptability and partnership that are commonly described as the agenda of water governance. This new agenda, widely accepted worldwide in the last three decades, entails a convergence of de-regulation and re-regulation policies, including incentives for decentralisation and market-based solutions. The chapter specifically examines the influence of urban water governance reforming public services and environmental conservation in Glasgow (UK) and in Lima (Peru). These two case studies, despite their idiosyncratic complexities, are highly emblematic of the controversies surrounding water governance. Glasgow is an intriguing example of a post-industrial European conurbation and Lima is a paradigmatic case of an emerging megacity at the intersection of post-colonial legacies and market globalisation. In both metropolitan areas, recent projects and policy adjustments reveal the achievements, but also the shortcomings of water governance. One main problem is that public participation has been appropriated by the same agencies that in the past promoted highly centralised, disjointed and politically asymmetric administration. Furthermore, positive results from increased investments and rationalisation of water services have been undermined by the discriminatory and short-term basis of the discourse and practice of urban water governance.

The different chapters of this book discuss key aspects of agricultural modernization and raise some important questions about politico-economic and socio-ecological transformations taking place in countries of both the Global North (Europe in particular) and the Global South (with specific examples from Brazil and India). Our starting point is that, because of complex socio-economic interactions, environmental pressures, and fierce disputes, agriculture and rural development are today among the most controversial areas of policymaking, planning, and lobbying. With the encroachment of contemporary capitalism upon food production and biological systems, agriculture has become increasingly associated with, and subordinate to, a globalized agroindustrial complex that exerts decisive influence over technology, financing, logistics, and commercialization. In general terms, a—partial and problematic—transition from agriculture to agribusiness has taken place over the last century, with the last two decades or so seeing a further transition to neoliberalized agribusiness. Consequently, the concept of agribusiness, which was originally introduced in the 1950s at the time of Fordist agriculture in the USA, has had to mutate in order to encapsulate agricultural production based on business-friendly state interventions, policy liberalization, and the dominance of transnational corporations.

Water management dilemmas represent a unique entry point into the challenging management of metropolitan areas, as in the case of Lima (Peru). A condition of water scarcity goes beyond the mere physical insufficiency of resources, but vividly contains the inadequacy of social relations responsible for the allocation, use and conservation of water. Lima’s experience demonstrates the association between investment priorities, political agendas and corruption scandals leading to selective abundances and persistent scarcities that are perpetuated in a hydrosocial territory. The production of water scarcity has been predicated upon discriminatory practices associated with the reinforcement of uneven development and environmental injustices.

It is not difficult to appreciate why ideas of ‘integrated’ and ‘joined-up’ planning have become key motifs of emerging approaches to the sustainable management of water and agricultural systems. Decision-makers with responsibility for this rapidly developing arena of cross-sectoral policy quite reasonably seek a future in which system interdependencies will be recognised, priorities for management assigned, and responsibilities for action borne fairly. In England, for instance, the government department with responsibility for sustainable rural development recently published its strategy for water (DEFRA 2008), setting out a vision that positions agricultural systems as central to the process of resolving competing issues of water supply and demand, and water quality and quantity by the year 2030. While priorities for action vary greatly according to political and material circumstances, parallel calls can be found elsewhere (Blanco 2008; Conca 2006; Faby et al. 2005; Lemos and Oliveira 2005; Swatuk 2005). Driven in part by the exigencies of an increasingly congested terrain of international agreements (such as the Convention on Biological Diversity) and laws (such as the pan-European Water Framework Directive), what holds this diversity together is the recognition that fragmented policymaking and implementation across the agricultural and water sectors continues to be a systematic and deeply institutionalised feature of natural resource management and, consequently, a major obstacle to the realisation of sustainable livelihoods and development.

As discussed in detail in the other chapters in this book, although agricultural production has increased considerably in absolute terms since the post–World War II years, various problems continue to affect the agriculture industry’s image worldwide. These problems include a lack of access to affordable, nutritious food in many countries; the impacts of agrochemicals on communities and ecosystems; and the enormous concentration of power held by a small number of mega-supermarkets and agri-food corporations to control food production, distribution, and consumption. There is a growing understanding today that the increasing industrialization of agriculture represents an important chapter, perhaps the most important, in the renovation of the global capitalist economy (Busch and Bain 2004) and, in particular, the transition to post-Fordist modes of production under the sphere of influence of globalization and neoliberalism (McMichael 2009). If neoliberalism—as a complex, inherently variegated ideology of critical importance across scales and regions (MacArtney 2009)—comprises beliefs and practices centred on the idea that market efficiency is the best mechanism for regulating socio-economic relations and renovating politico-economic strategies (Schmalz and Ebenau 2012), agro-neoliberalism is a highly idiosyncratic phenomenon that combines free-market pressures and flexibilization approaches with renewed forms of protectionism, trade barriers, and labour movement restrictions (Potter and Tilzey 2005). Agro-neoliberalism is essentially a politicized ideology that ultimately deepens the contradictions of capitalism across time and space (Araghi 2003), such as the disturbing contrast between southern areas of production (and environmental degradation) and northern spaces of consumption (and capital accumulation).

Water scarcity is a widespread phenomenon that still affects many cities and settlements around the world. Situations of scarce water resources are not external to society, but are directly and indirectly caused by deliberate attitudes towards nature and society. Conditions of water scarcity go beyond the physical insufficiency of resources to vividly contain the long-term inadequacy of social institutions. In the case of Lima, the capital of Peru, the material and discursive elements of scarcity have been exacerbated by political and ideological affirmation of market-based institutions and private property relations. Rather than being an extreme hydrological event, water scarcity is part of the urbanisation and modernisation of Lima under the sphere of influence of neoliberal policies. Scarcity has been constantly recreated and, in the end, has served as a legitimating tool to maintain social and spatial inequalities. The evolution of water infrastructure and the formulation of public policies have consolidated the patterns of discrimination, fragmentation and risks that characterise everyday life in the Peruvian capital. Understanding water problems ultimate requires a class-based approach that connects the local, national and global scales of interaction, which should be articulated together with considerations of culture and the micro-dynamic of power. Only through a political ecology approach it is possible to explain the synergistic ontology of water scarcity and the persistent obstacles to democratising water and the waterscape.

The paper discusses the contradictory evolution of water services and the politicised nature of water scarcity in Lima, the capital of Peru. It initially claims that water scarcity cannot be understood as an isolated phenomenon, but it is inserted in a wider multiplicity of scarcities that characterise contemporary urban development. The naturalisation of scarcity in the official policy discourse is then criticised for its tendency to overlook interconnected mechanisms of political differentiation and socioeconomic exploitation that influence the allocation and use of water. Against such reductionist readings, the analysis employs a non-essentialist interpretation of multiple scarcities related to water and emphasises the need to address the totality of the experience of scarcity. Based on qualitative fieldwork, which explored recent institutional reforms and the daily struggle for water in the periphery of Lima, three fundamental reasons were identified for the persistence of water scarcity: first, the expansion of water problems as a result of the poor quality of housing and the discriminatory practices against low-income residents; second, the modest improvements in water services provided by public investment programmes, which have primarily aimed to answer political and electoral demands of the ruling party; and third, the technocratic basis of new management approaches and the systematic exclusion of grassroots communities from the decision-making process. Genuine responses to the mounting water problems of Lima require a more critical appreciation of the production of circumstantial abundances and totalising scarcities in the city.

Nosso objetivo principal neste artigo é o de analisar a implementação das tecnologias de cisternas de placas na região semiárida da Paraíba, com foco no Programa Um Milhão de Cisternas (P1MC), discutindo em que medida o mesmo contribuiu para a sustentabilidade hídrica para as comunidades rurais atingidas. Nosso objeto empírico foi o município de Catolé do Rocha-PB, sendo feita entrevistas com beneficiários e coordenadores do programa analisado. Com base no observado, as principais conclusões são as a seguintes: a) a proposta de implantação das cisternas pela ASA implica um alto custo econômico para os ‘beneficiários’; b) o programa produz e reproduz as relações do clientelismo político, as quais são (re)significadas; c) o P1MC representa uma estratégia ineficiente no que tange à melhoria do acesso e uso à água na região estudada, sendo a substituição da indústria do carro-pipa por uma política de cunho universalista ainda é algo distante de ser materializado; e, por fim, d) o P1MC contribui para reforçar a ideologia da naturalização da ‘escassez’ de água na região Nordeste, sendo seu custo social invisível aos beneficiários do programa.

It is increasingly recognised that land degradation monitoring and assessment can benefit from incorporating multiple sources of knowledge, using a variety of methods at different scales, including the perspectives of researchers, land managers and other stakeholders. However, the knowledge and methods required to achieve this are often dispersed across individuals and organisations at different levels and locations. Appropriate knowledge management mechanisms are therefore required to more efficiently harness these different sources of knowledge and facilitate their broader dissemination and application. This paper examines what knowledge is, how it is generated and explores how it may be stored, transferred and exchanged between knowledge producers and users before it is applied to monitor and assess land degradation at the local scale. It suggests that knowledge management can also benefit from the development of mechanisms that promote changes in understanding and efficient means of accessing and/or brokering knowledge. Broadly, these processes for knowledge management can (i) help identify and share good practices and build capacity for land degradation monitoring at different scales and in different contexts and (ii) create knowledge networks to share lessons learned and monitoring data among and between different stakeholders, scales and locations.

The complexity of water management requires an explanatory framework that is able to capture the multidimensionality of the relations between nature and society increasingly mediated by the state. The evolution of water problems in the Baixada Fluminense, a wetland area situated to the north of Rio de Janeiro, provides a paradigmatic example of how water management becomes incorporated into the fluid politics between state, nature and society. The local experience is examined by making use of the strategic-relational approach (after Bob Jessop) expanded to urban political ecology. The concept of “trialectics” is proposed as an ontological representation of the interconnections between the state apparatus, class-based relations and the socionatural elements of the water cycle. The empirical results show that, in a situation of precarious water supply, regular flooding and severe river degradation, state interventions have tended to favour certain groups and areas, which only intensifies the politicisation of water management.

For land degradation monitoring and assessment (M&A) to be accurate and for sustainable land management (SLM) to be effective, it is necessary to incorporate multiple knowledges using a variety of methods and scales, and this must include the (potentially conflicting) perspectives of those who use the land. This paper presents a hybrid methodological framework that builds on approaches developed by UN Food & Agriculture Organisation's land degradation Assessment in Drylands (LADA), the World Conservation Approaches and Technologies (WOCAT) programme and the Dryland Development Paradigm (DDP), and is being applied internationally through the EU-funded DESIRE project. The framework suggests that M&A should determine the progress of SLM towards meeting sustainability goals, with results continually and iteratively enhancing SLM decisions. The framework is divided into four generic themes: (i) establishing land degradation and SLM context and sustainability goals; (ii) identifying, evaluating and selecting SLM strategies; (iii) selecting land degradation and SLM indicators and (iv) applying SLM options and monitoring land degradation and progress towards sustainability goals. This approach incorporates multiple knowledge sources and types (including land manager perspectives) from local to national and international scales. In doing so, it aims to provide outputs for policy-makers and land managers that have the potential to enhance the sustainability of land management in drylands, from the field scale to the region, and to national and international levels. The paper draws on operational experience from across the DESIRE project to break the four themes into a series of methodological steps, and provides examples of the range of tools and methods that can be used to operationalise each of these steps. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Water is not only a valuable substance, but is also valued in different ways dependent on substantive social, ecological, and historical conditions. The concept of water value positionality is introduced to describe the dynamic ensemble of meanings forged from cooperation and competition in the allocation, use, and conservation of water. Positionality helps us to understand water conflicts as individuals and groups struggling to legitimise their valuation of water. The explanatory function of positionality is demonstrated with an empirical case study in the metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro. Hegemonic positionality depicts water as an economic resource required for regional development and urban growth. This has been increasingly challenged by sectors of the state apparatus who call for the monetary valuation of water. Beyond these two perspectives, there exists a vast range of water values articulated by the local communities in their struggle for survival and political affirmation. The conclusion is that, in the process of constantly revaluing water, there are temporary ‘positions of value’ that last and change with sociocultural and politicoecological experiences.

This paper examines governance requirements for integrating water and agricultural management (IWAM). The institutional arrangements for the agriculture and water sectors are complex and multi-dimensional, and integration cannot therefore be achieved through a simplistic 'additive' policy process. Effective integration requires the development of a new collaborative approach to governance that is designed to cope with scale dependencies and interactions, uncertainty and contested knowledge, and interdependency among diverse and unequal interests. When combined with interdisciplinary research, collaborative governance provides a viable normative model because of its emphasis on reciprocity, relationships, learning and creativity. Ultimately, such an approach could lead to the sorts of system adaptations and transformations that are required for IWAM.

The intricacies of one of the most relevant agricultural frontiers in the world today – the State of Mato Grosso, in the Brazilian Amazon – are considered through an examination of place-making. Vast areas of rainforest and savannah were converted, since the 1970s, into places of intensive farming, to fulfil exogenous demands for land and agricultural production. Instead of merely studying the constellation of interconnected places, we examine the politicised genesis of the emerging places and their trajectory under socio-ecological disputes. Empirical results reveal three main moments of place-making characterised, respectively, by displacement, replacement and misplacement. In order to understand those intricate processes, it is necessary a qualitative intellectual jump: from place-making on the frontier to place-making as an ontological frontier in itself. Mato Grosso remains an unsettled frontier between a new socio-spatiality (shaped by fast economic growth) and the perpetuation of old practices (marked by exclusion and tensions).

A gestão de recursos hídricos está relacionada não somente a práticas e tecnologias diretamente ligadas à distribuição, uso e conservação de água, mas também a questões mais profundas de desenvolvimento nacional e representação política. A experiência brasileira, desde o período colonial até à recente liberalização económica, demonstra vividamente essa complexidade histórico-geográfica. Durante a fase desenvolvimentista, caracterizada pela substituição de importações, grande obras de engenharia hidráulica foram executadas como base da expansão urbana e agro-industrial. O alto custo ambiental e as insuficiências de tais iniciativas passaram a exigir um esforço de mitigação e regulação mais rigoroso. Contudo, o novo marco legal introduzido em 1997, apesar de mudanças discursivas e simbólicas importantes, em grande medida reproduz a mesma racionalidade elitista e tecnocrática do passado. Alternativas efetivas aos problemas de gestão de recursos hídricos requerem processos mais democráticos e equitativos, que inevitavelmente fazem parte de mudanças sociais mais amplas. The management of water resources is related not only to the allocation, use and conservation of water, but also to broader issues of national development and political representation. The Brazilian experience, from colonial times to the recent phase of economic liberalisation, vividly demonstrates that historico-geographic complexity. During the period of concerted development, based on import substitution, large hydraulic infrastructure works were built in order to support urban and agro-industrial expansion. The high environmental cost and the insufficiencies of those initiatives started to demand more stringent mitigation and regulatory measures. However, the new legal framework introduced in 1997, despite some discursive and symbolic changes, mostly reproduced the same elitist and technocratic rationality of the past. Effective alternatives to water management problems require more democratic and equitable processes, which are inevitably associated with deeper social changes. La gestion des ressources hydriques a non seulement trait à des pratiques et technologies directement liées à la distribution, l’utilisation et la préservation de l’eau, mais aussi à des questions plus profondes de développement national et de représentation politique. L’expérience brésilienne, de la période coloniale à la récente libéralisation économique, démontre de façon vécue cette complexité historico-géographique. Durant la phase développementiste, caractérisée par le remplacement d’importations, de grands travaux de génie hydraulique furent exécutés comme base d’expansion urbaine et agro-industrielle. Le haut coût environnemental et les insuffisances de telles initiatives obligèrent à un effort plus rigoureux de mitigation et de régulation. Néanmoins, le nouveau dispositif légal introduit en 1997, malgré des changements discursifs et symboliques importants, reproduit en grande mesure la même rationalité élitiste et technocratique du passé. Des alternatives effectives aux problèmes de gestion de ressources hydriques requièrent des procédures plus démocratiques et équitables, qui s’inscrivent inévitablement dans des changements sociaux plus vastes.

The search for water sustainability requires not only a combination of technical and managerial responses, but also firm action against socioeconomic injustices and political inequalities. The recognition of the politicised nature of water problems deserves particular attention in areas marred by long-term trends of environmental degradation and social exclusion. A case study of the Baixada Fluminense, an urbanised wetland in the Metropolitan Area of Rio de Janeiro, illustrates the challenge to reverse unsustainable practices in situations where water problems have been politically and electorally exploited. The research made use of an interdisciplinary approach to assess past and present initiatives that have attempted, but systematically failed, to restore river ecology and improve water services. The empirical results have important implications for water policy making and urban planning.

In the last few years, water management has been changing from rigid rules and prescriptive controls in favour of more flexible and comprehensive responses. In the European Union, water management ...

The introduction of the Water Framework Directive in Europe represents a unique opportunity to promote more inclusive strategies for the long-term preservation of (socionatural) water systems. However, the analysis of the Portuguese experience, using the River Douro as a case study, reveals still considerable shortcomings in the assessment of problems and the formulation of solutions. Instead of promoting a meaningful dialogue between social groups and spatial areas, there is a systematic attempt to conform to legal requisites by taking a ‘techno-bureaucratic’ shortcut that largely reproduces the distortions of previous regulatory approaches. Decisions on water management are part of political disputes about regional development and state reform, such as in relation to the provision of water and electricity by public utilities. Nonetheless, these broader issues have been kept tacitly away from the WFD agenda, which has been concentrated on adjusting established procedures to the (formal) requirements of the new regulation. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

The transition to water sustainability involves challenging questions about problem assessment, stakeholder involvement, and response coordination. To overcome these difficulties, new approaches ha...

Since the beginning of the 20th century, control over water resources and transformation of the waterscape have been integral to the expansion of industrial and commercial activities in Brazil.1 Th...

Few regions in the world have given rise to as much politico-ecological controversy as the Amazon. Since the time of Francisco de Orellana (ca. 1511–1546) and his epic search for El Dorado, the Ama...

Web as corpus for NLP has been popular, and we now employed web as corpus for NLG, and made the online communication of tailored river information more effective and efficient. Evaluation and analysis shows that our generated texts were comparable to those written by domain experts and experienced users.

The final chapter summarises the main findings, in particular the conclusion that water dilemmas represent the common moment of truth of all Latin American metropolitan areas. The analysis of urban water issues also serves to emphasise the politicised and constantly evolving organisation and functioning of the state apparatus. Recent policies and investment programmes have tried to conceal the ideological and class-based goals of politico-economic reforms. Consequently, meaningful alternatives to urban inequalities require not only a critical understanding of the connections between past and present, but also between personal and interpersonal attitudes with national and international scales of interaction. This requires the recognition of the politicised basis of sociospatial changes, assessing complex cross-scale phenomena in a way that helps to remove pre-established conceptions about the origin of problems and possible solutions.

The Mexican state apparatus has been the object of sustained, often violent, disputes between different elite groups and the wider national society. With the political settlement achieved in the early 20th century, the state was able to promote a reasonably successful agenda of national development, which nonetheless increasingly exhausted its results and was partially replaced by controversial liberalising reforms since the 1980s. The national capital city encapsulates, in dramatic ways, the process of national building, economic growth and political clashes. It is now one of the largest megacities in the planet, spreading to many states and municipalities, but has to rely on distant water reserves and large engineering infrastructure, which has caused renewed forms of controversy, antagonism and uncertainty.

Peri-urban floodplains located in upstream reaches of urban areas play a key role in the resilience of social-ecological systems. The need to adapt to increasing flood risks by protecting these natural assets represents a huge challenge for many cities facing rapid expansion and limited financial resources for the mitigation of environmental impacts. To understand how better governance and management can be put in place, there is a need to map the key players shaping and/or being impacted by land-use change processes and assess the barriers keeping them from playing a more constructive role in the collaborative governance of cities, the natural resources which sustain them, and the environmental risks that pose a threat. A conceptualization of power regarding natural resource governance is presented and its implications for the relationships between actors and the many scales of decision making is discussed. Drawing on existing literature, we develop a heuristic framework for analyzing policy dimensions of land-use change processes, and reflect on the possible ways for key stakeholders to become over time more committed to and involved in a collaborative approach to the development of land use policies for urban flood prevention. We apply this framework to the Brazilian city of Paraty, a case study through which the recurring problem of flooding exposes the deepening tensions between conservation and development. Empirical results demonstrate the need to acknowledge the politicization of floodplain change and the importance of trying to bridge the gap between sectors and actors with conflicting interest in urban environmental management.

Lima is an emerging Latin American megacity and the most critical case of a large metropolis located in a coastal desert. Urban development, in particular since the middle of the last century, consolidated a dualist city in which the large majority of the population has to live in marginalised, precarious settlements. Macroeconomic and political reforms adopted since 1990 have tried to enhance and regulate the housing market and, crucially, incorporate water infrastructure projects as a key element of business-friendly programmes. The Water for All initiative, closely examined in the chapter, constitutes one of the most emblematic examples of the ongoing process of water commodification, of the political appropriation of the metropolitan water utility (SEDAPAL) and of the mounting manifestations of corruption.

The introductory chapter situates the debate on the Latin American city in the wider historical and geographical perspective of colonisation, nation building, economic development and neoliberal reforms. Because Latin America is a diversified and dynamic region, a critical assessment of large-scale urbanisation offers a helpful entry point into its socioeconomic and environmental complexity. Particularly the achievements and failures of public water services reveal a great deal about the organisation, functioning and politicisation of metropolitan areas, as well as about the commitments and limitations of the state. The chapter finally explains the structure and innovation of the book, especially regarding the nexus between Latin American megacities and the evolving apparatus of the state using the dilemmas of the water sector as a critical category of analysis.

The failures of urbanisation in the city of Rio de Janeiro have serious repercussions on a larger geographical space, including catchments that supply water to the growing megacity. Urban conflicts can be directly associated with conflicting water values and contrasting forms of valuation. The chapter makes use of the concept of positionality to describe clusters of water values forged around cooperation and competition for water allocation, use and conservation. The explanatory function of positionality is demonstrated by the evolution of water use in the Baixada Fluminense, where the prevailing positionality has conventionally depicted water as an economic resource. Such centralised positionality has been challenged ‘from within the state apparatus’ by concerted calls for better governance. In contrast with those two perspectives, there exists also a vast range of water values articulated by the local communities in their struggle for survival and political recognition.

Urban dilemmas represent today some of the most challenging questions for Latin American governments and society. The region is one of the most urbanised in the world and has a significant proportion of its population living in large, chaotic metropolitan areas, including a growing number of megacities. A proper examination of large-scale urbanisation requires a coherent framework of analysis, as discussed in the chapter, able to address metropolitan changes, sociospatial inequalities and multiple forms of interaction and reaction. The key player behind urban transformations has been the state apparatus, which must be understood as a constantly evolving entity, fraught with contradictions and conflicting interests. Water policy-making demonstrates the territorialisation of sociospatial disputes, the diversity of interventions and multiscale agency and identity.

In response to the challenges of sustainable development, this paper describes the formulation and application of a framework of catchment-level water resource use and management indicators designed to integrate environmental, economic, and social aspects of sustainability. The framework of nine indicators was applied to the River Clyde catchment in Scotland, using existing secondary data and in a manner that recognized local thresholds and standards, where appropriate. Findings suggested a mixed and relatively complex situation, with encouraging results for water quality and supply, but much room for improvement regarding the preparedness of management systems and opportunities for public participation. The availability of adequate data in a suitable, catchment-level format was a significant problem, although this situation may improve with the advent of new legislation. Discussion of findings also addresses the inherently subjective nature of indicator selection and the opportunities provided by researc...

Urban ecological politics is shaped by both moments of concerted action and more silent perceptions and responses. Instead of only being evident in situations of organised protest, the politics of urban ecology is also manifested, in material and symbolic terms, in the daily life of the residents. The fragmentation of urban political ecology turns out to be an important element in the affirmation of post-political forms of urban governance. Those issues were the object of fieldwork research carried out in Greengairs and Ravenscraig, two towns in North Lanarkshire, near Glasgow, with the goal of unravelling the understanding and the coping mechanisms of environmentally deprived residents. The towns are permeated by a widespread, often dissimulated, political ecology that is nonetheless always present. Empirical results demonstrate that a more comprehensive handling of the political ecology of the urban is crucial in order to halt the sources of marginalisation and ecological degradation.

This paper explores Natural Language Generation techniques for online river information tailoring. To solve the problem of unknown users, we propose ‘latent models’, which relate typical visitors to river web pages, river data types, and river related activities. A hierarchy is used to integrate domain knowledge and latent user knowledge, and serves as the search space for content selection, which triggers user-oriented selection rules when they visit a page. Initial feedback received from user groups indicates that the latent models deserve further research efforts.

Water scarcity is matter of growing concern in Brazil, especially in the semi-arid, inland area of the Northeast, where the Sao Francisco River flows. This paper concentrates on the relations between the concrete experience of water resources development and the remaining demands for efficient water management in that river basin. The emphasis is on its Sub-Middle section, which since 1948 has been the preferential area for irrigation projects and hydropower generation. Recent modifications in the Brazilian legislation provide for a new approach to water resources policy, which is in favor of more decentralized and proactive forms of water management. In spite of such institutional evolution, conservative political groups in the SaTo Francisco River Basin have put obstacles before the transformation of established practices. In addition, there are other structural limitations contributing to hinder the adoption of a more comprehensive framework of water management. Resulting water conflicts have ...

Corruption is a global problem that feeds on national and localopportunities. Instead of the prevailing attempts to reduce anti-corruptionstrategies to the protection of business interests, corruption needs to be seenas a sociopolitical relation that emanates from the convergence betweenmore immediate circumstances and long-term institutional tendencies.Corruption is, therefore, a phenomenon with synchronic and diachronicdimensions. The complexity of corruption is examined in relation to theorganization of Peruvian state and society, in particular considering therecent liberalization reforms and investments in the water industry of Lima.The Peruvian case study shows how corruption becomes a productive forcefrom the perspective of conservative elites and the maintenance of politicalhegemony.

There is a pressing need to counter the dominant mode of commodity production and economic growth, which is responsible for the negative and unfair impacts of climate change. The political ecology critique emphasises the role of grassroots organisations and affected communities in the production of more inclusive public policies and mitigation strategies. The climate justice approach is a good example of the political ecology approach.