Mountains - Sources of Water, Sources of Knowledge

377 Pages·2005·4.495 MB·English

by  E. Weigandt

MOUNTAINS: SOURCES OF WATER, SOURCES
OF KNOWLEDGE
ADVANCES IN GLOBAL CHANGE RESEARCH
VOLUME 31
Editor-in-Chief
Martin Beniston, University of Geneva, Switzerland
Editorial Advisory Board
B. Allen-Diaz, Department ESPM-Ecosystem Sciences, University of California,
Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.
R.S. Bradley, Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA,
U.S.A.
W. Cramer, Department of Global Change and Natural Systems, Potsdam
Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany.
H.F. Diaz, Climate Diagnostics Center, Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, NOAA,
Boulder, CO, U.S.A.
S. Erkman, Institute for Communication and Analysis of Science and
Technology – ICAST, Geneva, Switzerland.
R. García Herrera, Facultad de Físicas, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain
M. Lal, Centre for Atmospheric Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology,
New Delhi, India.
U. Luterbacher, The Graduate Institute of International Studies,
University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
I. Noble, CRC for Greenhouse Accounting and Research School of Biological Sciences,
Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
L. Tessier, Institut Mediterranéen d’Ecologie et Paléoécologie, Marseille, France.
F. Toth, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria.
M.M. Verstraete, Institute for Environment and Sustainability,
EC Joint Research Centre, Ispra (VA), Italy.
The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.
Mountains: Sources of Water,
Sources of Knowledge
Edited by
Ellen Wiegandt
Institut Universitaire Kurt Bösch,
Sion, Switzerland
AC.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4020-6747-1 (HB)
ISBN 978-1-4020-6748-8 (e-book)
Published by Springer,
P.O. Box 17, 3300 AADordrecht, The Netherlands.
www.springer.com
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved
© 2008 Springer
No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
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recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the
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PREFACE
The idea for Mountains: Sources of Water, Sources of Knowledge began
with the constitution of the Association Montagne 2002, whose mission
was to celebrate the International Year of Mountains in the alpine canton
of Valais, Switzerland. The year 2002 was the occasion for diverse
activities ranging from exchanges with Bhutan and the construction of
a traditional hanging bridge, to a contest for schoolchildren and roving
photography exhibits. An international scientific colloquium was also
organized at the University Institute Kurt Bösch. Committee members of
the Association Montagne subsequently agreed that the presentations
should be gathered into a book. The topic seemed particularly appropri-
ate for the Martin Beniston-edited series, “Advances in Global Change
Research,” which regularly publishes the results of the annual Wengen
Workshops on Global Climate Change Research as well as of other
conferences.
This volume was a collective effort. The dedication of the Associa-
tion Montagne committee members was unflagging. The commitment to
the overall project of State Councilor Jean-Jacques Rey-Bellet and of
Gabrielle Nanchen, then President of the Fondation pour le développement
durable des regions de montagne, was particularly noteworthy and is
gratefully acknowledged here. We appreciate the support of numerous
financial sponsors of the Association Montagne 2002 and its International
Year of Mountains activities, who made the conference and the book
possible. Martin Beniston deserves thanks for including the volume in his
series.
A book is ultimately the fruit of its authors and the reviewers who help
refine arguments and clarify style. All contributors to this volume have
been exemplary in revising manuscripts, responding to queries, and
making corrections. They are especially thanked for their patience as this
book followed its long route from conference to publication, helped in
its final stages by research assistants from the Graduate Institute for
International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland, Michael Flynn and Gauri
Khanna.
v
CONTENTS
Preface...............................................................................................v
General Concepts and Processes; Mountain Specificities
1. Framing the Study of Mountain Water Resources:
An Introduction............................................................................3
Ellen Wiegandt
2. “Water Towers”—A Global View of the Hydrological
Importance of Mountains...........................................................15
Daniel Viviroli and Rolf Weingartner
3. The History of Irrigation and Water Control in China’s
Erhai Catchment: Mitigation and Adaptation
to Environmental Change...........................................................21
Darren Crook, Mark Elvin, Richard Jones,
Shen Ji, Gez Foster, and John Dearing
4. Scarcity, Equity, and Transparency: General Principles
for Successfully Governing the Water Commons......................43
Paul Trawick
5. From Principles to Action: Incentives to Enforce
Common Property Water Management......................................63
Ellen Wiegandt
Multiple Uses and Competition for Mountain Water
6. Hydroelectric Resources Between State and Market
in the Alpine Countries...............................................................83
Franco Romerio
vii
viii Contents
Box: Example of Water Rights: Concessions
in the Valais, Switzerland ........................................................102
Eric Wuilloud
7. Crans-Montana: Water Resources Management
in an Alpine Tourist Resort......................................................103
Christophe Clivaz and Emmanuel Reynard
Water Conflicts and Conflict Resolution Mechanisms
8. Water Value, Water Management, and Water Conflict:
A Systematic Approach............................................................123
Franklin M. Fisher
9. Evolutionary Explanations of Syrian–Turkish
Water Conflict .........................................................................149
Serdar(cid:249). Güner
10.Water Use and Risk: The Use of Prospect Theory
to Guide Public Policy Decision-Making.................................161
Raymond Dacey
Indigenous Knowledge; Technical Solutions
11.Disasters, Development, and Glacial Lake Control
in Twentieth-Century Peru.......................................................181
Mark Carey
12.Wetlands and Indigenous Knowledge in the Highlands
of Western Ethiopia..................................................................197
Alan Dixon
13.A New Ancient Water Mill: Remembering
Former Techniques...................................................................211
Michel Dubas
Contents ix
14. Water-Related Natural Disasters: Strategies to Deal
with Debris Flows: The Case of Tschengls, Italy.....................221
Walter Gostner,Gian Reto Bezzola,
Markus Schatzmann, and Hans-Erwin Minor
15. Flood Volume Estimation and Flood Mitigation:
Adige River Basin....................................................................243
Salvatore Manfreda and Mauro Fiorentino
16. Hydrological Assessment for Selected Karstic
Springs in the Mountain Regions of Bulgaria..........................265
Tatiana Orehova and Elena Kirilova Bojilova
Policy Implications for Efficient and Equitable Water Use
17. Water and Mountains, Upstream and Downstream:
Analyzing Unequal Relations...................................................283
Urs Luterbacher and Dushen Mamatkanov
18. Creating a Policy Environment for Sustainable
Water Use ................................................................................305
Katrina Schoengold and David Zilberman
Bibliography..................................................................................327
Index..............................................................................................381
FRAMING THE STUDY OF MOUNTAIN
WATER RESOURCES: AN INTRODUCTION
Ellen Wiegandt
Institut universitaire Kurt Bösch
Sion, Switzerland
[email protected]
1. ISSUES AND CHALLENGES
A crucial vulnerability the international community will face in the near
future is access to fresh water in sufficient quantity and of adequate quality
to meet the needs of a growing global population. As a result, mountains,
which have always held a privileged relationship with water as the sources
of the world’s greatest rivers and the homes of huge glacier reserves, will
come under increasing pressure. Already, these “water towers of the world”
are threatened by major global forces. Climate change is predicted to modify
the quantities of water available and shift its seasonality. Even greater
challenges will come from the dynamics of human behavior. Population
growth is one obvious threat to sufficient water supply, but equally impor-
tant are changing norms and evolving activities. Historically dominant
activities like agriculture and herding now compete with industry, leisure,
domestic, and energy sectors for mountain water. These new uses are
overlaid by various social constructs like pricing schemes, regulations, and
property rights that shape production and consumption patterns by deter-
mining who gets how much water and when. Appropriate solutions for water
use management contribute to efficient and equitable distribution. Poor
administration is likely to aggravate shortages, increase social and economic
disparities, and thereby make water issues a potential source of deadly local
and international conflict.
A paradox of mountain water resources is that concern about deficits
and competition for use coexist with the risks that come from their role as
repositories. Floods, landslides, and avalanches are disasters that do not
affect mountain populations uniquely, but these water-related disasters
nevertheless take an especially heavy toll on mountain communities. The
high volumes of water and the topography create special vulnerabilities.
3
E. Wiegandt (ed.), Mountains: Sources of Water, Sources of Knowledge, 3–13.
© 2008 Springer.