A Political Ecology of Women, Water and Global Environmental Change

Description

This edited volume explores how a feminist political ecology framework can bring fresh insights to the study of rural and urban livelihoods dependent on vulnerable rivers, lakes, watersheds, wetlands and coastal environments. Bringing together political ecologists and feminist scholars from multiple disciplines, the book develops solution-oriented advances to theory, policy and planning to tackle the complexity of these global environmental changes. Using applied research on the contemporary management of groundwater, springs, rivers, lakes, watersheds and coastal wetlands in Central and South Asia, Northern, Central and Southern Africa, and South and North America, the authors draw on a variety of methodological perspectives and new theoretical approaches to demonstrate the importance of considering multiple layers of social difference as produced by and central to the effective governance and local management of water resources. This unique collection employs a unifying feminist political ecology framework that emphasizes the ways that gender interacts with other social and geographical locations of water resource users. In doing so, the book further questions the normative gender discourses that underlie policies and practices surrounding rural and urban water management and climate change, water pollution, large-scale development and dams, water for crop and livestock production and processing, resource knowledge and expertise, and critical livelihood studies. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of environmental studies, development studies, feminist and environmental geography, anthropology, sociology, environmental philosophy, public policy, planning, media studies, Latin American and other area studies, as well as women’s and gender studies. Cover......Page 1 Title Page......Page 6 Copyright Page......Page 7 Table of Contents......Page 8 List of figures......Page 12 List of tables......Page 14 Contributors......Page 16 Foreword: A quarter century of knowledge and change: pushing feminism, politics, and ecology in new directions with feminist political ecology......Page 20 Acknowledgments......Page 26 1 Introduction: towards a feminist political ecology of women, global change, and vulnerable waterscapes......Page 28 PART I Feminist political ecology and large-scale water resource management......Page 44 2 Interrogating large-scale development and inequality in Lesotho: bridging feminist political ecology, intersectionality, and environmental justice frameworks......Page 46 3 The silent (and gendered) violence: understanding water access in mining areas......Page 65 4 Urban water visibility in Los Angeles: legibility and access for all......Page 85 5 Advances and setbacks in women’s participation in water management in Brazil......Page 104 PART II Women and innovative adaptation to global environmental change......Page 124 6 Climate-water challenges and gendered adaptation strategies in Rayón, a riparian community in Sonora, Mexico......Page 126 7 International partnerships of women for sustainable watershed governance in times of climate change......Page 145 8 Women’s contributions to climate change adaptation in Egypt’s Mubarak Resettlement Scheme through cactus cultivation and adjusted irrigation......Page 168 PART III Stories, narratives, and knowledge production of socio-environmental change......Page 190 9 Shoes in the seaweed and bottles on the beach: global garbage and women’s oral histories of socio-environmental change in coastal Yucatán......Page 192 10 Storytelling water north of the future Héen Kas’él’ti Xoo (among the ragged lakes): collaborative water research with Carcross/Tagish First Nation, Yukon Territory, Canada......Page 212 11 Pamiri women and the melting glaciers of Tajikistan: a visual knowledge exchange for improved environmental governance......Page 233 12 Conclusions: advancing multi-disciplinary scholarship on gender, water, and environmental change through feminist political ecology......Page 253 Appendix: Tlingit/Tagish stories......Page 273 Index......Page 275