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A convoluted network of different water governance systems exists around the world. Collectively, these systems provide insight into how to build sustainable regimes of water use and management. We argue that the challenge is not to make the system less convoluted, but rather to support positive and promising trends in governance, creating a vision for future environmental outcomes. In this paper, we analyse nine water case studies from around the world to help identify potential innovative arrangements' for addressing existing dilemmas. We argue that such arrangements can be used as a catalyst for crafting new global water governance futures. The nine case studies were selected for their diversity in terms of location, scale and water dilemma, and through an examination of their contexts, structures and processes we identify key themes to consider in the milieu of adaptive transformation. These themes include the importance of acknowledging socio-ecological entanglements, understanding the political dimensions of environmental dilemmas, the recognition of different constructions of the dillema, and the importance of democratized processes.

This paper explores how social networks and bonds within and across organisations shape disaster operations and strategies. Local government disaster training exercises serve as a window through which to view these relations, and social capital' is used as an analytic for making sense of the human relations at the core of disaster management operations. These elements help to expose and substantiate the often intangible relations that compose the culture that exists, and that is shaped by preparations for disasters. The study reveals how this social capital has been generated through personal interactions, which are shared among disaster managers across different organisations and across levels' within those organisations. Recognition of these group resources' has significant implications for disaster management in which conducive social relations have become paramount. The paper concludes that socio-cultural relations, as well as a people-centred approach to preparations, appear to be effective means of readying for, and ultimately responding to, disasters.

A convoluted network of different water governance systems exists around the world. Collectively, these systems provide insight into how to build sustainable regimes of water use and management. We argue that the challenge is not to make the system less convoluted, but rather to support positive and promising trends in governance, creating a vision for future environmental outcomes. In this paper, we analyse nine water case studies from around the world to help identify potential ‘innovative arrangements’ for addressing existing dilemmas. We argue that such arrangements can be used as a catalyst for crafting new global water governance futures. The nine case studies were selected for their diversity in terms of location, scale and water dilemma, and through an examination of their contexts, structures and processes we identify key themes to consider in the milieu of adaptive transformation. These themes include the importance of acknowledging socio-ecological entanglements, understanding the political dimensions of environmental dilemmas, the recognition of different constructions of the dillema, and the importance of democratized processes.

Africa is rapidly urbanising and is likely to home to some of the most populous cities within the next decade. Such rapid growth has made the prevention of urban sprawl a Sisyphean Quest in many African cities, as rural fringes are rapidly being transformed into urbanised space. A strategy proposed around the world to address some of the urban challenges is the increasing adoption of a volumetric lens to planning the city. Specifically, to use the urban underground as a strategic site to place infrastructure and free-up superficial urban surface space, in turn potentially helping to create more sustainable, liveable, equitable and just urban environments. Yet, so far, little attention has been paid to the urban underground in Africa cities. In this paper, mobilising Lagos, Nigeria as a case study, we start addressing this lacuna. We provide a critical long-term analysis – spanning the colonial and since independence eras – of how the urban underground has been used in Lagos, focussing on utility (energy, telecommunications, water) and transport infrastructure. We follow this with an analysis of how political economies have shaped underground use and access, with a particular consideration on informal interactions, and how they shape underground use and access. We conclude by offering an assessment of the possibilities and challenges that the urban underground presents for the future of Lagos and other African cities, with a critical consideration of the dynamism of localised volumes and the practices around them.

A convoluted network of different water governance systems exists around the world. Collectively, these systems provide insight into how to build sustainable regimes of water use and management. We argue that the challenge is not to make the system less convoluted, but rather to support positive and promising trends in governance, creating a vision for future environmental outcomes. In this paper, we analyse nine water case studies from around the world to help identify potential ‘innovative arrangements’ for addressing existing dilemmas. We argue that such arrangements can be used as a catalyst for crafting new global water governance futures. The nine case studies were selected for their diversity in terms of location, scale and water dilemma, and through an examination of their contexts, structures and processes we identify key themes to consider in the milieu of adaptive transformation. These themes include the importance of acknowledging socio-ecological entanglements, understanding the political dimensions of environmental dilemmas, the recognition of different constructions of the dillema, and the importance of democratized processes.