Insurance and deliberation as drought disaster risk reduction strategies

As the international community is moving from response to disaster risk reduction, it becomes imperative to take the whole risk chain into consideration, from prevention to rehabilitation of a droughtstricken area. To assess impacts on drought-stricken groups, it is useful to take a close look at risk spreading strategies these groups already use, which reduce their vulnerability to shocks. In Turkey, there is a very little coordination between adjacent water user groups on a river or in an irrigation scheme. This means there is no mutual coordination mechanism in times of unexpected drought. The article argues that a deliberative multi-stakeholder approach can enhance Disaster Risk Reduction, as currently practiced in Latin America and South Asia, and explores avenues for mutual crop and drought insurance initiatives such as currently practiced as pilot projects in India, and assess its applicability for the drought prone regions in Turkey, which experienced a coordination gap in the 2007-2008 drought

Opponents and supporters of water policy change in the Netherlands and Hungary

This paper looks at the role of individuals and the strategies that they use to bring about or oppose major policy change. Current analysis of the role that individuals or small collectives play in periods of major policy change has focussed on strategies that reinforce change and on the supporters of change. This paper adds the perspective of opponents, and asks whether they use similar strategies as those identified for supporters. Five strategies are explored: developing new ideas, building coalitions to sell ideas, using windows of opportunity, playing multiple venues and orchestrating networks. Using empirical evidence from Dutch and Hungarian water policy change, we discuss whether individuals pursued these strategies to support or oppose major policy change. Our analysis showed the significance of recognition of a new policy concept at an abstract level by responsible government actors, as well as their engagement with a credible regional coalition that can contextualise and advocate the concept regionally. The strategies of supporters were also used by opponents of water policy change. Opposition was inherent to policy change, and whether or not government actors sought to engage with opponents influenced the realisation of water policy change

Governance of the world food system and crisis prevention

The present study offers a framework, rooted in Disaster Studies. The next few sections will first discuss the analytical tool box, which we have largely drawn from Disaster Studies. Thereafter the food regime will be looked into in the quantitative (food security, Section 3.1) and qualitative sense (food safety, Section 3.2), and the actors and rules and regulations for international food aid discussed. It will become clear that the private sector has a key role to play in both categories. Chapter 4 calls attention to the increasing complexities and uncertainties in the global food system that complicate food governance. To get anything done at all, a simplification seems necessary, such as declaring a food problem a safety issue

Crisiskansen: 'poweren' en 'puzzelen' onder hoge druk

Crisis als kans? – Het Chinese karakter voor ‘crisis’ staat voor ongeluk, maar ook voor kansen. Een crisis kan destructief zijn maar ook constructief, in de zin dat ze positieve ontwikkelingen kan bevorderen. ‘Never waste a good crisis’, zei Hillary Clinton: de huidige economische crisis zou heel positieve effecten kunnen sorteren op klimaat en onze energiezekerheid. Onder druk wordt alles vloeibaar: een crisis legitimeert noodmaatregelen die normaliter ondenkbaar zijn, en kan ongekende innovatie bewerkstelligen

The struggle over Turkey's Ilisu Dam: domestic and international security linkages

While on the surface the Turkish state appears to have asymmetrical power vis-à-vis downstreamers and local societal opponents, and therefore, the ability to shape basin politics, domestic, basin and international protest over the ‘securitised’ Ilisu Dam in Turkey proved more decisive in that respect. A cornerstone of the GAP (Güneydogu Anadolu Projesi, Southeast Anatolia Project) multi-dam project to harness the water from the Euphrates and Tigris, the dam project elicited successful resistance from Turkey’s downstream neighbours, social and environmental NGOs and professionals targeting the international donors and contractors. On the basis of document research and interviews, this article investigates which factors opened up the space for politicising the project, and how this politicisation played out in both the domestic and international domain. The link between the securitised (where water is almost by default a security issue) and non-securitised spheres of hydropolitical decision-making (where it is not) proved crucial to the success of the anti-dam oppositio

Multi-stakeholder platforms: integrating society in water resource management?

Multi-Stakeholder Platforms are a currently popular concept in the international water world. It is however not a very well defined phenomenon. The present article unpacks the concept, proposes to see platforms as networks, and identifies two ´schools of thought´: social learning and negotiation. It attempts a preliminary typology of platforms encountered in real life, in which the Comités de Bacia in Brazil, for all their shortcomings, come out as a relatively influential type. In closing, the article then identifies reasons for non-participation, suggesting that it is an inevitable corollary of organised participation