Gilbert F. White

Drawers of Water: Domestic Water Use in East Africa

This document which is a chapter reprinted from a book originally published in 1972 focuses on the total social costs of improvements on water supply for the prevention of infections. It notes that particular water-multiplied infections and diseases with water-related insect vectors are local problems and can best be overcome by particular local solutions. However some improvements are so costly that they are not feasible in certain environments and the health benefits from a given improvement will also vary with the environment. In this perspective seven model East African habitats are considered in detail; two are urban three are rural with dispersed settlement and two more are rural nucleated settlements. These models include urban high density low and medium density urban dispersed semiarid dispersed highland humid dispersed lowland humid nucleated semiarid and nucleated humid. Health costs are measured on an arbitrary centile scale and are conceived as aggregating the costs of morbidity mortality currently available treatment and economic loss.

Knowing better and losing even more: the use of knowledge in hazards management

Abstract Although loss of life from natural hazards has been declining, the property losses from those causes have been increasing. At the same time the volume of research on natural hazards and the books reviewing findings on the subject have also increased. Several major changes have occurred in the topics addressed. Emphasis has shifted from hazards to disasters. There has been increasing attention to vulnerability. Views of causation have changed. Four possible explanations are examined for the situation in which more is lost while more is known: (1) knowledge continues to be flawed by areas of ignorance; (2) knowledge is available but not used effectively; (3) knowledge is used effectively but takes a long time to have effect; and (4) knowledge is used effectively in some respects but is overwhelmed by increases in vulnerability and in population, wealth, and poverty.

Reflections on the 50-year international search for integrated water management

Abstract In the roughly 70 yr since the concept of integrated water management in river basins replaced primarily single-purpose management, there has been increasing question by international science and policy agencies as to the full consequences of such strategies for both social and environmental systems and for fulfillment of the notions underlying sustainable development. The experience suggests there is continuing urgent need for expanding the range of management measures considered as part of the planning process; for deepening the quality of criteria to judge each measure for reconciling the various evaluation principles; and for making incisive, correct post-audits of what actually resulted from their applications. It also reminds us that realization of the full potential of truly integrated water management may be very long in coming. Problems of improved analysis and of necessary institutional reform are formidable.

The Environmental Effects of the High Dam at Aswan

No single resource development project has aroused more controversy than the high dam that stores the flow of the Nile River above the first cataract at Aswan. It is praised as the mainstay of the Egyptian economy and vilified as an environmental catastrophe. Twenty-one years after its completion there has been sufficient time to permit a first approximation of what is known about the dams environmental effects and how they compare to what was anticipated when engineers and politicians decided to undertake the massive project. Although the evidence from post-audit study over the past decade is far from complete, there is enough to warrant general observations on direct economic impacts and to suggest several possible lessons of importance to scientists engaged in predicting and tracing environmental linkages from major water projects.

A Perspective of River Basin Development

The river systems of the world flow today with only a small proportion of their total volume harnessed and applied for human good. With the exception of a few small drainage basins in arid regions, the water of no stream has been fully regulated or used. There are physical limits to such regulation and use, but the degree to which those limits are approached is related to conditions which are partly technological, partly economic, partly political, and partly ethical. Using the concept of integrated river basin development, each major network of streams draining the land masses of the earth may be viewed as the backbone for a possible planned use of a unified system of multiple-purpose and related projects to promote regional growth. This view of river basin development has come, during the past sixty years, to be employed rather widely as a technical tool for achieving social change. It has found imaginative support, and it appears to be on the threshold of wider application. How much further it wisely may be applied would seem to depend, in part, upon sharpening of our knowledge as to its utility and implications as a tool. Like any tool, it is not inherently good. Its value must be judged in terms of the growth and changes it can effect and upon its flexibility and precision. The concept of river basin development is used here to mean three component ideas having separate roots in western civilization but coming to be associated with each other in present-day theory and practice. In addition, at least two other ideas have been related in varying circumstances, and it now is possible to suggest a definition of the tool on which there is relatively common agreement in practice. Before examining the evolution of that concept, it may be helpful to identify the broad limits to river basin development and the distinguishing characteristics of river systems. A. Limits and Degrees of Development Although the Nile and Tigris-Euphrates Valleys cradled the early civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean and still support their basic irrigation agriculture, and although the flows of the Rhine, the Ohio, and the Thames long have been essential to the industrialized populations along their banks, it would be inaccurate to regard

A perspective on reducing losses from natural hazards

Abstract Editors Note: This article is the first in a series of three articles based on apresentation to the Symposium on the International Decade for Natural DisasterReduction held 24 January 1994 in Nashville, Tennessee. The symposium washeld in conjunction with the 75th AMS Annual Meeting.

Contributions of Geographical Analysis to River Basin Development

This is an effort to outline against the background of one experimental area the contributions which geographical analysis is making or might be expected to make to the strategy of river basin development. It begins in the Lower Mekong but then expands its view to other basins where geographers have taken a hand. The international experiment in river development in the Lower Mekong is unique not only in being the first attempt under United Nations auspices to bring several nations together in managing the waters of a large basin before contending claims arise, but also in seeking to relate the full array of scientific knowledge and method of planning before major construction begins. Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Viet-Nam have been interested since 1957 in putting together whatever data and analytical techniques would enable them to move ahead with building and operating an integrated system of river regulation works in the shortest time at reasonable cost.

SCOPE: The First Sixteen Years *

Understanding of processes of change in the global environment comes from analysis of evidence that spans the boundaries between nations and between disciplines. Scientists are obliged to work across those boundaries in a variety of ways if they are to arrive at reasonably accurate judgements as to what is known or not known about the alterations that are taking place in the air, water, soil, and biota, of the Earth. One of the devices which they have used since 1969 is the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE).

Potable Water for All: The Egyptian Experience with Rural Water Supply

ABSTRACT Egypt during 1952–1960 achieved a more rapid and proportionately larger improvement in potable water supply for its rural population than any other developing country. The way in which this was done laid the groundwork for later difficulties in maintenance and extension of services. Similar problems arose in the Fayoum project in 1953–1964. A program for basic village services initiated in 1979 applied some of the lessons learned in the earlierprogram, but raised new environmental issues. The early change in water service was not followed by striking reductions in prevalence of childhood disease.

Critical Analysis of Existing Institutional Arrangements

The need for improved institutional arrangements has been recognized for many years; prior to Mar del Plata, and most recently at Dublin and Rio. Consensus seems to be em erging that a new global organization should be created from representatives of local, national, regional and international organizations embracing environmental, economic and political concerns. It would promote exchange of information and experience to define issues and methods deserving of attention, and would critically appraise previous actions in selected sectors and areas of water management. It should not duplicate existing organizations .