Water, water everywhere… nor any drop to drink
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The line is from Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Water is, like food, a fundamental
way in which we understand our world geographically. Like food, water is necessary for survival, and although
most of the earth's surface is covered with water, fresh drinking water is unevenly distributed. For some,
despite water being everywhere, getting a drink can be a significant task. The units in this theme explore
some of the conflicts surrounding the use of water as a natural resource in different parts of the world,
including three units on large-scale water conservation and hydroelectricity projects (Chapters 3, 8, and 9-see
the subtheme on "Big Dams" below), and two units on water consumption in arid regions such as the western United
States (Chapter 2), and water transfers for large scale agricultural development in Egypt (Chapter 6).
These units serve to remind us of the basic link between water and other types of production: water use involves
more than paying attention to where your tap water comes from. It can also mean water for crops (as in irrigation)
and energy production (as in hydroelectricity, or water in power-plant "cooling towers"). In the subtheme on Big Dams,
we pay particular attention to three large-scale dam projects: the Xingu River in Brazil, the Narmada Project in India,
and the Three Gorges Project in China. Each project has generated firestorms of controversy, much of it expressed on
the Web. Because of the international prominence of these projects, particularly among international environmental
groups, they offer interesting case studies on the globalization of water resource conflicts.
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