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Water as Global Social Policy—International Organizations, Resource Scarcity, and Environmental Security
Summary
This chapter traces how international organizations shaped global water policy over the twentieth century, shifting from managing water scarcity to framing water as a matter of environmental and economic security. The analysis highlights how these institutions influence — and sometimes constrain — how nations respond to mounting water-related risks.
Abstract Water is an important area of global social policy. This chapter provides historical context for understanding how international organizations developed a distinctly global orientation to water policy alongside the emergence of global hydrology in the mid-twentieth century. Subsequently, international organizations linked concerns over water scarcity to integrated approaches to resource management. As human impacts on the global water system accelerated into the twenty-first century, international organizations influenced the shift from concerns over resource scarcity to those over environmental security. Water security is now central to how international organizations frame and respond to risks affecting interconnected environmental and economic systems.
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