Publication - Prof Mark Zeitoun - Reflections: Understanding Our Use and Abuse of Water
Water is central to all life, but we use it to destroy. Water can nourish, but we use it to starve. It can cleanse and unify, but we ensure it contaminates and divides. The consequences of continuing to desecrate or beginning to restore water's inner grace are tremendousand will reflect as much on us as portend our future.
Drawing upon twenty-five years of professional work as a water engineer, negotiator, and scholar, the Geneva Water Hub General Director Prof Mark Zeitoun provides a unique insider's account of this phenomenon. He explains how unchecked assumptions about water mix with political and economic systems to create an insatiable and ruinous thirst for ever more water. He shows how we use water to lethal effect in wars, and demolish drinking-water systems with wanton disregard. He questions why we transform the most majestic of rivers into canals which spark international conflict and challenge our capacity for preventative diplomacy. The answers reflect more about our society than we might care to admit.
More information about the publication can be accessed by clickine on the image below.
The publication is endorsed by:
- Jan Selby, Chair in Politics and International Relations, Sheffield University
- Laurence Boisson De Chazournes, Professor of International Law, University of Geneva
- Marwa Daoudy, Seif Ghobash Chair in Arab Studies, Georgetown University
- Jamie Bartram, Professor Emeritus, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Danilo Türk, Former President of the Republic of Slovenia and Chairman of the Global High Level Panel on Water and Peace
- Aula Abarra, Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer, Imperial College London
