A simplified scheme of the hydrological stocks and flows is given below. The climate variables precipitation and temperature over time are the most important input variables. Rainwater will fall upon the vegetation and partly flow out as runoff and partly evaporate, and the remainder penetrates the soil where it adds to the stock of soil [...]
Worldviews often orient themselves to particular ideals, about human individuals and societies. Famous descriptions of an ideal society in literature are known as utopias: a place (τοπος) that is good (ευ) – or, in another interpretation, is not (ου). In his book Utopia (2006), Achterhuis proposes three criteria for a imagined future to be a [...]
On the eastside of Utrecht, there is a large area with a lake, a playground, trees, statues, an animal farm. It’s a very enjoyable place for all kinds of people and activities. Yet, only 60 years ago, it was the largest dangerous waste dump in The Netherlands. The story illustrates nicely the interaction over time [...]
Some 1500 km east of Papua New Guinea, in the Pacific, is the small island of Nauru. It is the smallest independent republic, with nowadays some 12.000 inhabitants on an area of less than 25 km2. The story of Nauru's ‘discovery’ in 1798 by a British captain who gave it the name Pleasant Island and [...]
October 2014. Latin America’s biggest metropolis may, again, run out of water. For some of the 20 million residents across Sao Paulo, taps are already running dry. Dilma Pena, chief executive officer of the state-run water utility Cia. de Saneamento Basico do Estado de Sao Paulo (Sabesp), told the city council that supplies are only [...]
The market has discovered scarcity as something to be desired. The Stock Fund Utilities department of the dutch bank ING announced in 2007:”…prospects remain good. In the states of California and New York energy shortages threaten and it drives the price up.” Similar advertisement are seen for water. Drinking water used to be a service [...]
Natural resources such as metal ores, coal and oil have been throughout history at the centre of power struggles and ideologies. The history of oil has been described by Yergin in his excellent book The Prize (1991). “The rapid rise of Russian production, the towering position of Standard Oil, the struggle for established and new [...]
‘For us, it has no sense or benefit because the industrial fishing boats don’t leave us any chance of survival. They fish right up to the coast without being stopped and the government doesn’t have the means to control their activities. If the government would listen to us, we wouldn’t sign an agreement with people [...]
Northeastern Canadian fisheries – cod, haddock and other species – are in serious crisis since the 1990s. It is “the classic case of the failure of conventional science-based fisheries management: the collapse of the northern cod of Newfoundland and Labrador” (Finlayson and McCay 1998:311). For centuries the extraordinary abundance of cod has been exploited by [...]
‘When you understand that the take-it-or-leave-it prices now being offered [by wholesalers] mean that you’ll pay more to produce crops than you’ll get back in proceeds, you’re left with the choice of either becoming a slave to this impossible system or find a niche to begin other activities.’ This statement is from a French farmer, [...]