Who Owns the Water?

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Lars Müller

Klaus Lanz

Christian Rentsch

René Schwarzenbach

Lars Müller Publishers, Zurich, Switzerland, 2006, English

Nonfiction, Urban Design

6.5 x 9.5 inches, hardcover, 536 pages, 256 illustrations

ISBN: 9783037780183

Suggested Retail Price: $60.00

From the Publisher. Industrialization and population growth have brought about a global water crisis. Nature can no longer compensate the exploitation of our freshwater and our oceans. One billion people have no reliable access to clean drinking water; two billion live in precarious hygienic conditions. Famine, poverty, epidemics, and infant mortality are closely linked with the water crisis. Social, ecological, political, and economic conflicts obstruct efforts to resolve the global water crisis. Water is an instrument of power. The key question reads: Is water a commodity or is free access to water an inalienable human right? By approaching water from a phenomenological perspective, Who owns the Water? seeks to persuade the reader that an element that is constantly flowing and changing defies all claims to own it, be they political or economic, and is instead the responsibility of the entire international community.

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