While last week I began to concentrate on the interconnected reaches of energy corporations, this week I have identified two more crucial concepts, specific to my situated context, which are in great need of investigation. In order to more completely understand the current Chilean Water Management system, I will need to analyze the Chilean Water […]
Who Owns the Rivers?
Water law and allocation management is different in every country. As far as the U.S. is concerned, water management systems can vary from state to state. This reality seems to be in direct conflict with the nature of water and specifically rivers, in that they move and flow in a sort of continuum. This continuum is […]
Thinking Methodology Beyond the Travel Itinerary
As my thesis hourglass will shift and sharpen as the semester continues, I want to make sure that my methodology follows accordingly. My goal is to have a solid methodology by the end of the semester, in order to gain the greatest and most applicable research from my travels in Chile. I plan on submitting the interview […]
Thesis Foundation: Moving Forward with Chile
This past week I received a grant that will allow me to travel to Chile in January of 2016. I will be conducting interviews in three different regions of the country starting in Santiago, traveling to Cajon del Maipo, moving down towards Santa Barbara, and finally to Futaleufú. This opportunity will provide me with an […]
Scarcity: Catalyzing Transboundary Cooperation
“Whiskey’s for drinking, and water is for fighting,” or is it? This quote, attributed to Mark Twain, is largely being proven inaccurate. After researching the broader and conclusive portion of my project, I found an extraordinary amount of evidence which points to transboundary watershed cooperation. By investigating directly within national water ministry’s databases for information, current treaties […]
Broadening the Scope: Precautionary Collaboration
Due to the depth of analysis current complexities behind the Colorado and Brahmaputra management systems require, I revamped the Focussed Assessment page. Now that I feel confident about the information presented there, I have been working on broadening the scope of my study to all major transboundary basins. I’m finding that the pattens and similarities I […]
Potential Adaptations to Static Watershed Management Structures
To reach a more in-depth understanding of the Colorado and Brahmaputra’s current management responses, I contacted Aaron Wolf, and expert in the transboundary basin realm. After discussing my study with him, in addition to other research, it became clear that potential transboundary conflict is ultimately a road to necessary cooperation. Colorado has made many mistakes in terms […]
Rediscovering the Brahmaputra
After pushing through initial research difficulties, Chinese data being much harder to gather than U.S. data, information that I had not previously been aware of surfaced. For example, Mao Zedong, chairman during China’s Communist Revolution, was greatly influenced by the intense dam building period in the U.S., including the construction of the Hoover Dam. This […]
The Law of the River
This week I specifically dove into researching the historical context of the Colorado River watershed. I tried to find the most major agreements, surface water projects, and developments to focus on and discuss them in a chronological manner. Minus the decision to enact the Prior Appropriation doctrine rather than the Riparian, one of the most […]
Transboundary Watershed Conflicts: Water Scarcity and Multi-Level Power Struggles
This week I focused on answering my ‘top of the hourglass’ question: In transboundary water basins, what key forces have propelled increased use, and how does their transboundary status affect that exploitation? In doing so, I discovered vital background information in addition to more basic stats like how many transboundary basins exist. Some of the information I […]