Review by Itzchak Kornfeld, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The issue of water management has been in the spotlight for decades. During the 1950s and 1960s water scholars and popular writers focused on water quality. In the last two decades of the twentieth century, and into the current one, however, the world began to witness droughts across the African Continent, throughout the Middle East, the Far East, and North America, and the impacts of global warming/climate change. Now, water quantity is the issue that is at center stage. Indeed, water will surely be "the resource that will determine the wealth, welfare, and stability of many countries in the twenty first century."
Over the past two decades numerous books have described the phenomenon of water shortage. This book is a refreshing change to the status quo and is singular in its approach. For that reason it should be a welcomed addition to one's bookshelf; as it enhances our understanding of surf ace water and groundwater from the perspective of watersheds. Moreover, this book's contribution is unique in its "how to", i.e., it is aimed at solving problems.
That is, the authors offer the reader a unique perspective into the water shortage debate: A management approach. In this regard this book is cutting edge and a refreshing narrative of an extremely important subject. Moreover, Islam and Susskind explore the potential for water conflicts, and water scarcity from a networks [stochastic] perspective. Their thesis for water systems is that they are open, complex, and have constantly changing inputs. Indeed, in the authors' own words, "[t]he components of each water resource management puzzle can fit together in so many different ways that it is practically impossible to use `reductionist' or traditional `systems engineering' methodologies to resolve water management conflicts."
In order to demonstrate how complex open networks are Islam & Susskind offer an example of this thesis, by employing the Apalachicola-Chattahoochie-Flint (ACF) river basin, which is shared by three states: Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. (Ibid. at 10 - 12). The ACF basin drains an area of 19, 800 square miles, and some 2.6 million people depend on it for their water. (Ibid. at 10). As with every water basin when water needs are minimal, precipitation regular, and there are few stakeholders, the need for water management is minimal, and that was true of the ACF, from the 1960s until a series of droughts occurred during the 1980s, according to the authors. But, once precipitation was curtailed, the number of stakeholders increased, demand for water grew, and socio-economic conditions changed, e.g., McMansion type subdivisions grew, friction began and progressed into conflicts.
Other drivers of conflict included additional inputs into this network. These comprised federal and state legal issues, and challenges to the Army Corps of Engineers, the agency charged with managing the ACF. Some of the challenges were made by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, state agencies as well as non-governmental organizations ("NGOs"). Rather than result in agency capture - the phenomenon where the regulated entity in effect controls the regulated community and the regulations that are promulgated by the agency - in this instance the result was agency competition, which created rivalries between the various agencies.
The foregoing demonstrates how a network or system that is initially simple, i.e., has a few inputs, can quickly turn into a complex one, with a growing number of variables or inputs over time. As I was reading the material about the ACF (located in chapter 2) I began to wonder whether the network will behave stochastically. However, it is clear that the inputs are highly predictable and not at all random. That is, there will always be an increase in water use, a diminishing resource and numerous public and private stakeholders. This lack of randomness is a valuable feature of the authors' network analysis, as it allows government workers, NGOs and others to focus on resolving any disputes, rather than finding more and more inputs, which would only increase the level of hostilities between the parties to a dispute.
The books has seven chapters, each of which builds on the other. Taking a different tact from that of other authors, the opening chapter of this book begins with a "water management fable". The fable begins with "once upon a time", as do many others. However, this tale is about a country called Indopotamia, where three separate tribes settled along different parts of a river. The fable continues with the complications that arise due to a lack of cooperation during an episode of water shortage. This fable establishes the foundation for the rest of the book, as the authors routinely return to it during the course of their journey in constructing their narrative. Islam & Susskind final chapter (ch. 7) ends, where it began, with Indopotamia. Here, the authors employ the various cooperative dispute resolution stratagems that they developed in chapter 2 - 6. Again, this chapter delves into practical solutions for water conflicts.
The book also has an excellent reference section, which will assist those who wish to learn more about the subject or wish to pursue further research.
