Environment, Development, and Water in Academia: A Critical Network Perspective

Abstract

The world is currently confronting two water crises, a developmental crisis concerning populations who lack access to water and an environmental crisis regarding water scarcity and freshwater resource depletion. Are we as academics addressing the complexity of these issues? Using network analysis of over 5,000 articles that address water development and water scarcity, I generate a co-citation network to identify the overlap between development and environmental water literatures in academic journals. The results suggest that the development literature only has a 6.28 percent overlap with the environmental literature and the environmental literature has a mere 1.92 percent overlap. Overall, this research suggests that there is an extreme lack of academic articles that address water scarcity and water development concurrently. Until we as an academic community become more nuanced in our studies of water, we will lack a full understanding of how to solve these seemingly contradictory problems. I conclude by drawing on critical Marxist and "Frankfurt School" perspectives to explain this apparent disconnect.