The global water crises: a cross-national analysis of metabolic rift theory

Abstract

Unchecked consumption, extraction, and growth have resulted in severe damage to ecological systems. Fresh water issues constitute one of the great challenges for political ecologists. On the one hand, there is a human health and development crisis and over 700 million people still lack access to clean, safe drinking water. On the other hand, there is a growing environmental water crisis regarding water scarcity, water stress, and freshwater resource depletion. This analysis utilizes metabolic rift theory to demonstrate the disruptive consequences that human development and agriculture have on the water cycle. I use two-way fixed effects longitudinal regression for 176 nations from 1970-2015 to test how agriculture, capital, international aid, governance, and civil society are associated with two important water indicators: access to water and water stress. I find that agriculture is associated with higher levels of water stress and higher levels of water access. Higher GDP per capita and international aid increase water access but have no significant relationship with water stress. Additionally, international non-governmental organizations and environmental treaty ratifications are associated with decreased water stress, but also decreased water access. Therefore, I find that the disruptive processes of capital and development have differential impacts on these two interrelated water outcomes. This political ecological analysis suggests that simple solutions that address water access or water stress alone, without considering the interrelated aspects of global water issues, may inadvertently influence other facets of the world's growing water concerns. Furthermore, agriculture and development create an ever-growing metabolic rift in the processes that allow fresh water to replenish itself, leading to future global issues of water access and stress.

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

“…Following previous literature identifying siloing and other shortcomings of academic research, the entrenchment of academia in the growth paradigm may help explain the lack of overlap in these two literatures (Purdey 2010; Schmelzer 2016). The development agenda has for many decades been aligned with the growth paradigm that supports expansion, production, and waste of resources like water (Hargrove 2019, 2021; Stuart, Gunderson, and Peterson 2020b). Following critical theory, the UN's addition of “Sustainability” to their already held development goals may be a sign that sustainability is being co‐opted to meet elite capitalist goals rather than challenge the growth paradigm.…”

“…Our global reliance on capitalism, supported by development theories, undermines preservation and conservation efforts (Stuart, Gunderson, and Petersen 2020a, 2020b). There is a direct link between capital's need to expand production and the environmental destruction from production (Hargrove 2021). The growth paradigm, thus, makes it illogical to consider both development concerns and environmental concerns simultaneously.…”

“…This would not be problematic if water crises were unrelated. However, efforts to solve human development water issues and environmental water issues separately may be exacerbating the severity of each other (Hargrove 2021). Unfortunately, solutions to these issues are often contradictory and, therefore, may be difficult to address when they are not considered concurrently (Barlow 2014).…”

Hydropolitical potentialities in a post-'Day Zero' Cape Town: "Sensemaking" and the Cape Flats Aquifer

“…The positioning of nature (natural resources) by governments, companies, and civil society organizations has become increasingly politicized in the context of the climate crisis. Longstanding critiques of commercial farming, largely quintessential to the field of political ecology, have become more pointed as water scarcity and soil depletion increase (Hargrove, 2021;Hetherington, 2020). Contestations over how land, arable soil, and water should be used embed the politics of the PHA.…”