Water Politics
Governance, Justice and the Right to Water
Earthscan Water Text Series

Scholarship on the right to water has proliferated in interesting and unexpected ways in recent years. This book broadens existing discussions on the right to water in order to shed critical light on the pathways, pitfalls, prospects, and constraints that exist in achieving global goals, as well as advancing debates around water governance and water justice.

The book shows how both discourses and struggles around the right to water have opened new perspectives, and possibilities in water governance, fostering new collective and moral claims for water justice, while effecting changes in laws and policies around the world. In light of the 2010 UN ratification on the human right to water and sanitation, shifts have taken place in policy, legal frameworks, local implementation, as well as in national dialogues. Chapters in the book illustrate the novel ways in which the right to water has been taken up in locations drawn globally, highlighting the material politics that are enabled and negotiated through this framework in order to address ongoing water insecurities. This book reflects the urgent need to take stock of debates in light of new concerns around post-neoliberal political developments, the challenges of the Anthropocene and climate change, the transition from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as the mobilizations around the right to water in the global North.

This book is essential reading for scholars and students of water governance, environmental policy, politics, geography, and law. It will be of great interest to policymakers and practitioners working in water governance, as well as the human right to water and sanitation.

Foreword by Leo Heller 1. The right to water in a global context: Challenges and transformations in Water Politics 2. Valuing Water: Rights, Resilience, and the UN High-Level Panel on Water 3. Making Space for Practical Authority: Policy Formalization and The Right to Water in Mexico 4. Turning to Traditions: Three Cultural-Religious Articulations of Fresh Waters’ Value(s) in Contemporary Governance Frameworks 5. The Right to Bring Waters into Being 6. The Rights to Water and Food: Exploring the Synergies 7. Water-Security Capabilities and the Human Right to Water 8. Rights on the Edge of the City: Realizing of the Right to Water in Informal Settlements in Bolivia 9. Human Right to Water and Bottled Water Consumption: Governing at the Intersection of Water Justice, Rights, and Ethics 10. Against the Trend: Structure and Agency in the Struggle for Public Water in Europe 11. Remunicipalization and the Human Right to Water: A Signifier Half Full? 12. Citizen Mobilization for Water: The Case of Thessaloniki, Greece 13. Race, Austerity and Water in the US: Fighting for the Human Right to Water in Detroit and Flint, Michigan 14. Class, race, space and the ‘right to sanitation’: The limits of neoliberal toilet technologies in Durban, South Africa Index

Farhana Sultana is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, USA.

Alex Loftus is Reader in the Department of Geography at King’s College London, UK.