Cities and Water Security in the Anthropocene: Research Challenges and Opportunities for International Relations

Abstract

Abstract:Cities have become important actors in international relations, and integral to security and environmental politics. We are living in an increasingly urban world, dominated by human settlements and activities. The central role now played by humans in shaping the planet has led us into an uncertain, unstable, and dangerous geological epoch -the Anthropocene -that poses great and additional challenges to security. Local and global spheres are connected as never before, generating 'glocal' issues in which water plays a central role. Water is the element that interconnects the complex web of food, energy, climate, economic growth, and human security. In a rapidly urbanising world, cities influence the hydrological cycle in major but uncertain ways, affecting water resources beyond their boundaries. There is no doubt that these issues are highly relevant to the discipline of International Relations (IR). However, IR scholars have been slow to engage with them, and most academic studies of cities and water security still emanate from the natural sciences. This article examines the ways in which cities in the Anthropocene challenge water security, and why IR needs to reinvent itself if it wants to sustain its contribution to global security.

Fronteiras e águas transfronteiriças na Bacia do Prata

“…A demanda global de água está aumentando em aproximadamente 1% ao ano, enquanto entre 4,8 e 5,7 bilhões de pessoas são projetadas para viver em áreas que são potencialmente escassas em termos de água durante um mês por ano, até 2050 (UN-WATER, 2020). Segundo dados do Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a proporção da população global que vive sob condições de escassez de água aumentará ao longo do século XXI (Pereira;Freitas, 2017), sobretudo pelas consequências das mudanças climáticas.…”

Understanding environmental politics in a turbulent era

“…As Marielle Papin and her co-authors show in Chapter 6, cities are undergoing persistent turbulence from both local and global sources. The complexity and difficulty of governing city life are steadily increasing, as climate change disrupts basic services (e.g., from housing to sanitation) and as demand for food, energy, and water rises (Bulkeley 2021;Pereira and Freitas 2017). The turbulence from climate change, as Susan Park discusses in Chapter 9, even threatens the very existence of some nation-states (Conversi 2020).…”

Águas transfronteiriças e mudanças climáticas: desafios para a segurança hídrica na América do Sul

“…A demanda global de água está aumentando aproximadamente 1% ao ano, enquanto entre 4,8 e 5,7 bilhões de pessoas são projetadas para viver em áreas que são potencialmente escassas em termos de água por um mês por ano até 2050 (UN-Water, 2020). Segundo dados do Painel Intergovernamental de Mudanças Climáticas (IPCC), a proporção da população global que vive sob condições de escassez de água aumentará ao longo do século XXI (Pereira & Freitas, 2017), sobretudo pelas consequências das mudanças climáticas.…”