Asit K. Biswas Livres

First book to authoritatively assess how water management will be shaped by 2020 due to forces both within and outside the water sector

The journey of Singapore's development is intricately linked to its quest for water self-sufficiency, highlighting the critical role water has played in shaping urban policies and agendas. As the city-state navigates rapid changes, the strategies implemented to secure water resources reveal unique insights into sustainable development in a densely populated environment. This exploration underscores the importance of water management in urban planning and its impact on Singapore's growth and resilience.

This book examines the transformation of the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority from a dysfunctional and corrupt entity in 1993 to a highly successful water utility by 2010, outperforming cities like London and Paris. It outlines the enabling conditions for this change and offers a framework for other developing countries' water utilities to achieve similar success.

Coffee, as a commodity and through its global value chains, is the focus of much interest to achieve fair trade and equitable outcomes for producers, processors and consumers. It has iconic cultural and economic significance for Colombia, which is one of the world's major coffee producers for the global market. This book examines sustainable coffee production in Colombia, specifically the initiatives of Nestl�o create shared value. It describes the transformation of the coffee landscape by the development of economically, socially and environmentally viable and dedicated supply chains. Suppliers have been encouraged to shift production and quality paradigms, in order to develop long-term and sustainable strategies for higher value and premium quality products. This has been partially achieved by establishing a robust partnership with the Coffee Growers Federation and other public, private and social actors, thereby taking control of the institutional architecture and knowledge base that exists in the country. The book provides an important lesson of corporate social responsibility and the creation of shared value for the benefit of farmers, corporations and consumers.

Since the late 1990s, megaconferences in the water-related sectors have become regular occurrences. The latest one, in Mexico City, in March 2006, is estimated to have cost a total of $205 million, and had 19,000+ participants. In spite of such huge costs and organizational efforts, not a single water megaconference has ever been seriously evaluated in terms of its overall impacts on the water sector. This book is the first pioneering study to assess the impacts of the megaconferences on water policies, programs and projects at global, regional and national levels. The results are bleak. The evaluation indicated that except for the UN Water Conference, held in Argentina in 1977, the impacts of the subsequent megaconferences have been at best marginal in terms of knowledge generation and application, poverty alleviation, environmental conservation and /or increasing availability of investments funds for the water sector.

This study presents for the first time an independent and authoritative analysis of water quality management in North and South America, and discusses the practices and future implications of the impacts of the current practices in the different countries of the hemisphere. Includes in-depth case studies analyzing water quality management practices at country and state levels, especially in terms of their effectiveness and overall impact.

Leonardo da Vinci, the eminent Renaissance scholar and philosopher said, „water is the driver of nature“. Many may have considered it to be an overstatement in the past, but at the beginning of the third millennium, no sane individual would disagree with Leonardo's view. Water is becoming an increasingly scarce resource for most of the world's citizens. The current trends indicate that the overall situation is likely to deteriorate further, at least for the next two decades, unless the water profession eschews its existing „business as usual“ practices, which can only allow incremental changes to occur. Somewhat surprisingly, the water profession as a whole neither realised nor appreciated the gravity of the global water situation as late as 1990, even though a few serious scholars have been pointing out the increasing criticality of the situation from around 1982. For example, the seriousness of the crisis was not a major issue, either at the International Conference on W ater and the Environment, which was organised by the UN system in Dublin and also at the UN Conference on Environment and Development at Rio de Janeiro. Held in 1992, both are considered to be important events for the water sector of the past decade. It is now being increasingly recognised that the Dublin Conference was poorly planned and organised, and thus not surprisingly it produced very little, if any, worthwhile and lasting results.