Routledge Handbook of Water and Development

The Handbook finds its market niche in that no other comparable volume deals with water and development. All other publications and handbooks in the field are either approaching water from very different standpoints or adopting rather narrow disciplinary or thematic perspectives. The relationship between water and development has become more urgent as the world moves towards a range of severe water challenges, such as water scarcity in megacities and for food production, backlogs in water and sanitation services, financial gaps in infrastructural investments, and growing competition of water resources at all levels, and so forth. The general aim of the book cannot be restricted to merging two "fields" (water and development), but is better formulated as an attempt to explore the role of water for societal evolution. Engages with the concept of Global Development, according to which all countries are to be seen as in a process of development, not just the 'Global South'. This allows the choice of case studies to bridge the problematic binary between developing and developed countries.