EuropeNow – Page 92

A Legal Foundation: Critical to a Realized SDG 6 and Universal Access to Water and Sanitation

By Alexandra Campbell-Ferrari and Luke Wilson

It seems simple: water and sanitation are essential to life and livelihood, and thus everyone should have access to these basic necessities and services. But therein lays the challenge. They are services that demand resources, capacity, infrastructure, and governance to be safely and efficiently delivered. Services do not come free. And the reality is: it costs a lot to provide water and sanitation services, it is not easy to provide these services, and everyone should but not everyone can pay.

Campus Dispatches

Learning from Challenges in the Arid West: Stanford’s Water in the West

By Leon F. Szeptycki and Newsha Ajami

The American West is an arid region to begin with, and climate change, population growth, and aging infrastructure are further exacerbating water scarcity in some parts of the region. Stanford University established Water in the West in 2010 to conduct research relevant to the growing water challenges in the American West and to develop solutions that will move the region toward a more sustainable water future.

Research

Water Quality Law in the US and EU: A Comparison of the Clean Water Act and Water Framework Directive

By Robin Kundis Craig

“Water management” can refer to several types of governmental activities. These include allocation of surface water use and depletion rights, allocation of groundwater use and depletion rights, control of surface water pollution, control of groundwater pollution, preservation or restoration of aquatic habitat and ecosystems, and regulation of development near and in waterbodies, including the destruction of wetlands and mangrove forests.

Campus Dispatches

The Pacific Institute: A Global Water Think Tank

By Rebecca Olson

The Pacific Institute is a global water think tank that combines science-based thought leadership with active outreach to influence local, national, and international efforts in developing sustainable water policies

Research

Are Water Markets Liquid? Evidence from Southeastern Spain

By Javier D. Donna and José-Antonio Espín-Sánchez

Water scarcity is ubiquitous, affecting all continents and nations. The World Economic Forum (2015) listed water scarcity as one of the “greatest global [risks] to economies, environments, and people.”

Campus Dispatches

Columbia Water Center

By Upmanu Lall

Founded in January 2008, the Columbia Water Center (CWC) is committed to understanding and addressing both the role and scarcity of fresh water in the 21st century. The CWC was established for the purpose of studying the diminishing levels of fresh water and creating innovative sustainable and global solutions. CWC combines multidisciplinary academic research with solutions-based fieldwork to develop and test creative responses to water challenges around the world.

Academic

Tight Knit: Global Families and the Social Life of Fast Fashion by Elizabeth Krause

Reviewed by Elandre Dedrick

Fast fashion has taken the world by storm in recent years, and this book gives ethnographic depth to a growing controversy.

Academic

The Irish Scholarly Presence at St. Gall: Networks of Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages by Sven Meeder

Reviewed by Salvatore Cipriano

The notion that early medieval Ireland was an island of “saints and scholars,” a bastion of civilization-saving monks and their rich corpus of well-travelled books and manuscripts, is something of a popular truism. Scholars, too, have also readily identified Irish scholarship’s significant contributions to monastic, spiritual, and intellectual life in the eight and ninth centuries.

Academic

Electing the Pope in Early Modern Italy, 1450-1700 by Miles Pattenden

Reviewed by Christopher P. Gillett

In his new book, Electing the Pope in Early Modern Italy, 1450-1700, Miles Pattenden argues that the unique character of the papal electoral model contributed to the papacy’s increasing economic and structural problems throughout the early modern period.