Global Water Policy: Knowing others’ limitations and attempts helps build a resilient water sector
Our world is confronted by many issues with global effects such as food and energy prices, and pandemic diseases. Many countries in the world are also affected to various degrees by water scarcity and deteriorated quality. Unlike food and energy prices and pandemic diseases that show a stochastic cyclical pattern, the water scarcity and its quality are with us for years and its situation worsens dues to population growth, increase in life style, and likely effects of climate change, needing policy interventions.
Policy work in the water sector has grown over the past two decades, following the realization that water scarcity may affect the economies of many countries if not properly addressed. Over the years policy designs and implementation performances have been accumulated, and has created what economists named, a panel dataset of policy experiences. This information was drawn from the natural laboratory of physical, economic, legal, cultural, institutional and other issues faced by different countries, together with the myriad of policies that have been attempted over a series of time and cross section of cultures.
The book published this year, provides an overview on national policies and regulations related to water resource management in the Middle East and North African countries (MENA), where water scarcity problems are critical. The physical/natural constraints, socio-economic and political circumstances make the MENA region a sort of ‘laboratory’ for natural resource management and particularly water management. The book provides a good comparison on how neighboring countries with quite similar natural constraints and cultures are addressing water problems in different ways.
What can be better than learning from each other’s experience? From comparing the conditions and the policies designed to address water issues in different countries? The book series has exactly that objective in mind. Treating a whole host of a country’s water resources issues in one set of pages, is a significant contribution to scholars, students, and other interested public who can compare and identify issues and policy interventions that could be adopted from one place to another. Because the field of water resources is interdisciplinary in nature, covering physical, economic, institutional, legal, environmental, social, and political aspects, this diversification is taken as the departing point for the book series, assembling inputs from the world’s leading experts of these disciplines.
In the book the editors bring together water professionals and academics to describe the diversity of possible approaches and policy pathways to implement sustainable groundwater development. The content is based on a comparative analysis of numerous quantitative management case studies from France and Australia.
Global Issues in Water Policy makes existing knowledge and experience in water policy accessible to a wider audience that has a strong stake and interest in water resources. The series consists of books that address issues in water policy in specific countries, developing and developed, regional books, and books addressing specific water themes. This book series is expected to address both the current practice of fragmented treatment of water policy analyses, and the need to have water policy being communicated to all interested parties in an integrated manner but in a non-technical language. The purpose of this book series is to make existing knowledge and experience in water policy accessible to a wider audience that has a strong stake and interest in water resources. The series consists of books that address issues in water policy in specific countries, covering both the generic and specific issues within a common and pre-designed framework.
Biography: Ariel Dinar
Ariel Dinar is a Distinguished Professor of Environmental Economics and Policy at the School of Public Policy, University of California, Riverside (UCR). His work addresses various aspects of economic and strategic behavior associated with management of natural resources and the environment. Dr Dinar received his PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Since then he spent 15 years in the World Bank working on water and climate change economics and policy. In 2008, Dr Dinar assumed a professorship at UCR. Dr Dinar founded the Water Science and Policy Center, which he directed until 2014. Dr Dinar is an International Fellow of the Center for Agricultural Economic Research of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel since November 2010; a Fulbright Senior Specialist since 2003; and was named a 2015 Fellow of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. He authored and co-authored nearly 220 publications in peer reviewed journals, policy outlets and book chapters. He co-authored and edited 29 books and textbooks. He founded two technical journals (Strategic Behavior and the Environment, and Water Economics and Policy) for the latter one he serves at present as an Editor-in-Chief. He founded and serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the book series Global Issues in Water Policy.
