ABSTRACT

Scholarly interest in water ethics is increasing, motivated by the urgency of climate change, water scarcity, privatization and conflicts over water resources. Water ethics can provide both conceptual perspectives and practical methodologies for identifying outcomes which are environmentally sustainable and socially just. This book assesses the implications of ongoing research in framing a new discipline of water ethics in practice.
 
Contributions consider the difficult ethical and epistemological questions of water ethics in a global context, as well as offering local, empirical perspectives. Case study chapters focus on a range of countries including Canada, China, Germany, India, South Africa and the USA. The respective insights are brought together in the final section concerning the practical project of a universal water ethics charter, alongside theoretical questions about the legitimacy of a global water ethics.

Overall the book provides a stimulating examination of water ethics in theory and practice, relevant to academics and professionals in the fields of water resource management and governance, environmental ethics, geography, law and political science.

chapter 1|12 pages

Introduction

Global water ethics: towards a water ethics charter

part I|72 pages

Ethics and epistemology

chapter 3|19 pages

What is water ethics and to what end do we study it?

Lessons for the Water Ethics Charter

chapter 4|17 pages

Beyond general principles

Water ethics in a Deweyan perspective

chapter 6|16 pages

Transcending water conflicts

An ethics of water cooperation

part II|108 pages

Global water ethics, local cases and a diversity of perspectives

chapter 7|22 pages

Safe, just and sufficient space

The planetary boundary for human water use in a more-than-human world

chapter 12|18 pages

Water, virtue ethics and traditional ecological knowledge in Rajasthan

Anupam Mishra and the rediscovery of water traditions 1

part III|79 pages

Water ethics charters and charting water

chapter 13|25 pages

I yá.axch´age? (Can you hear it?), or Héen Aawashaayi Shaawat (marrying the water) 1

A Tlingit and Tagish approach towards an ethical relationship with water

chapter 16|13 pages

The Berlin Water Charter

Water ethics from an activist’s viewpoint

chapter 17|13 pages

Water ethics and water stewardship

Personal reflections