Kaarten en Nederlandse Waterstaatsgeschiedenis

The detailed account of discussions between the Waterlanders, the reeve and Amsterdam provided by the 2019 book Broek en Waterland. Regionale samenwerking en conflicten, 1281-1811, makes it clear that Broek in Waterland and fellow villages were continually engaged in realising influence and achieving aims through negotiation. The book also shows that the material environment that was the consequence of negotiation in turn exerted considerable influence on those negotiations. The influence of the human participants was realised by non-human actors such as money, wood or earth, with water playing a major role of course. The water infrastructure of the region was pivotal to the power those towns and villages were able to accrue. The power of the district water board turned out to be relative because it was only one of several influential administrative bodies. In practice there was also considerable overlap in administrative functions and roles in Waterland, with members of a town or village council often serving on water boards as well. This interweaving of administrative functions challenges the unquestioned impression of all-powerful, independent water boards and little administrative overlap in Dutch water management history.De in 2019 verschenen publicatie Broek en Waterland. Regionale samenwerking en conflicten, 1281-1811 maakt door een gedetailleerde weergave van discussies tussen de Waterlanders, de baljuw en Amsterdam duidelijk dat Broek in Waterland en de collega-dorpen continu bezig waren met het realiseren van invloed en het behalen van doelen door onderhandelingen. Tevens blijkt uit het boek dat de materiële omgeving die het gevolg was van de onderhandelingen ook de nodige invloed uitoefende op die onderhandelingen. De invloed van menselijke betrokkenen werd gerealiseerd via niet-menselijke historische actoren, zoals geld, hout of aarde – met uiteraard het water in een grote rol. De waterinfrastructuur van de regio was een belangrijke drager van de macht die dorpen en steden konden ontwikkelen. De macht van het waterschap bleek relatief te zijn, omdat het waterschap slechts een van de invloedrijke bestuursapparaten was. Bestuurlijke functies en rollen in Waterland bleken bovendien goed te combineren, zodat leden van een dorps- of stadsbestuur regelmatig ook in het waterschapsbestuur optraden. Deze verwevenheid van bestuursfuncties problematiseert het te vanzelfsprekende beeld van zelfstandige waterschappen met veel macht en weinig bestuurlijke overlap in de Nederlandse waterstaatsgeschiedenis

Water History and the Modern

Water Resource

Propagation of Drought: From Meteorological Drought to Agricultural and Hydrological Drought

Drought is a hazard that occurs everywhere in the world (both in dry and in wet areas). Despite the controversy regarding drought changes in the last decades [1–3], increases in drought intensity are clearly identified in some areas [4] and it is believed that although increased heating from global warming may not directly cause droughts, it is expected that when droughts occur, they are likely to set in quicker and be more intense [5]. Throughout its history, China has frequently suffered from drought disasters due to its monsoon climate and was regularly hit hard by droughts over the last decades. Although little evidence of an expansion of the area affected by droughts was found in China over the last 50 years [6], severe droughts in southwestern China in 2010 and the middle/lower Yangtze Basin and Huaihe River Basin in 2011 have drawn more attention from the research community as well as from the public and governments alike on the impacts and problems brought on by drought. Poor performance by China’s emergency response management during recent major drought events highlights the necessity of improving both drought preparedness and emergency response skills

Tony Wilkinson and the water history of the Near East

Anthropolog

Mainstreaming water quality in River Basin Management in the Brantas River Basin, Indonesia:abstract submitted to the International Conference Water Science for Impact

Over the past 20 years, water quality in Indonesia has deteriorated due to an increase of water pollution. Research and analysis is needed to identify pollution sources and assess contamination in Indonesian water resources. Water quality management is not yet sufficiently integrated in river basin management in Indonesia, which mainly focuses on water quantity. Women are comparatively highly impacted by failing water resources management, but their involvement in decision making processes is limited. Water quality deterioration continues to increase socio-economic inequality, as it are the most poor communities who live on and along the river. The uneven water quality related disease burden in Brantas River Basin widens the socio-economic gap between societal groups. In the Brantas region, cooperation and intention between stakeholders to tackle these issues is growing, but is fragile as well due to overlapping institutional mandates, poor status of water quality monitoring networks, and limited commitment of industries to treat their waste water streams. The existing group of Indonesian change makers will be supported by this project. Three Indonesian and three Dutch organisations have teamed up to support negotiation platforms in order to deal with institutional challenges, to increase water quality monitoring capacity, to build an enabling environment facilitating sustainable industrial change, and to develop an enabling environment in support of community concerns and civil society initiatives. The project builds on integrated water quality monitoring and modelling within a framework of social learning. The strong consortium will be able to build links with civil society groups (including women, farmer and fisher unions) in close cooperation with local, regional and national Indonesian government institutions to clean the Brantas river and secure income and health for East Java’s population, in particular the most vulnerable groups

Sand dams for sustainable water management: challenges and future opportunities

Sand dams are impermeable water harvesting structures built to collect and store water within the volume of sediments transported by ephemeral rivers. The artificial sandy aquifer created by the sand dam reduces evaporation losses relative to surface water storage in traditional dams. Recent years have seen a renaissance of studies on sand dams as an effective water scarcity adaptation strategy for drylands. However, many aspects of their functioning and effectiveness are still unclear. Literature reviews have pointed to a range of research gaps that need further scientific attention, such as river corridors and network dynamics, watershed-scale impacts, and interaction with social dynamics. However, the scattered and partially incomplete information across the different reviews would benefit from an integrated framework for directing future research efforts. This paper is a collaborative effort of different research groups active on sand dams and stems from the need to channel future research efforts on this topic in a thorough and coherent way. We synthesize the pivotal research gaps of a) unclear definition of “functioning” sand dams, b) lack of methodologies for watershed-scale analysis, c) neglect of social aspects in sand dam research, and d) underreported impacts of sand dams. We then propose framing future research to better target the synthesized gaps, including using the social-ecological systems framework to better capture the interconnected social and biophysical research gaps on sand dams, fully utilizing the potential of remote sensing in large-scale studies and collecting sand dam cases across the world to create an extensive database to advance evidence-based research on sand dams