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Urban Warfare Ecology: A Study of Water Supply in Basrah
Abstract
This article assesses the impact of armed conflict on the drinking water service of Basrah from 1978 to 2013 through an ‘urban warfare ecology’ lens in order to draw out the implications for relief programming and relevance to urban studies. It interprets an extensive range of unpublished literature through a frame that incorporates the accumulation of direct and indirect impacts upon the hardware, consumables and people upon which urban services rely. The analysis attributes a step-wise decline in service quality to the lack of water treatment chemicals, lack of spare parts, and, primarily, an extended ‘brain-drain’ of qualified water service staff. The service is found to have been vulnerable to dependence upon foreign parts and people, ‘vicious cycles’ of impact, and the politics of aid and of reconstruction. It follows that practitioners and donors eschew ideas of relief–rehabilitation–development (RRD) for an appreciation of the needs particular to complex urban warfare biospheres, where armed conflict and sanctions permeate all aspects of service provision through altered biological and social processes. The urban warfare ecology lens is found to be a useful complement to ‘infrastructural warfare’ research, suggesting the study of protracted armed conflict upon all aspects of urban life be both deepened technically and broadened to other cases.
... Zeitoun et al. (2014) alternatively refer to direct impacts as "primary" and indirect impacts as "secondary". Additional categories include "reverberating effects" (Weinthal & Sowers, 2019) and "cumulative impacts" (Zeitoun et al., 2017), both referring to the combination and interplay of conflict impacts on different elements of the water system and beyond. ...
... The weakened position of established actors in the water sector can open up spaces for new actors and lead to a shift in power dynamics as the role of the state is renegotiated (Allouche, 2014). Formerly centralized and hierarchical management systems might be transformed to meet localized demands for reconstruction or supply system maintenance, giving way to a decentralized system of "hybrid governance," in which state actors work alongside local non-state actors such as community-led or private service providers (Meagher, 2012;Zeitoun et al., 2017). Such processes take place rather spontaneously in a context of little central oversight and thus provide an opportunity for local groups, armed or unarmed, to rise to power. ...
... This classification matches the findings by Etienne and Nembrini (1995) with regards to the impacts of the Gulf War on Iraqi water infrastructure, where the lack of spare parts, qualified personnel, and access to treatment chemicals led to insufficient system maintenance and operational errors. The same elements still contribute to the deterioration of water services in southern Iraq two decades later, leaving service provision reliant on foreign assistance (Zeitoun et al., 2017). In addition to people, hardware and consumables, water supply systems are dependent on a steady power supply. ...
Armed conflict has the potential to disrupt water systems that are crucial to environmental and human wellbeing. Yet there is no comprehensive overview of scientific evidence on the impact of armed conflicts on water resources and their management. This paper assesses the relevant scientific evidence through a systematic literature review. We discern conceptual, empirical, and methodological approaches adopted in the reviewed publications and synthesize the overarching research results. Common research topics across the body of literature include the role of water resources in armed conflicts, either as a casualty or as a weapon used by conflict parties, and the implications of armed conflict on water resources management, such as basic service provision and water governance. The analysis also pinpoints the research field's focus on empirical studies based on a small number of cases, and highlights a lack of conceptual engagement with the notion of armed conflict. Future research on water resources and their management in conflict settings needs to be more transparent on conceptual frameworks and assumptions to facilitate knowledge integration across different studies.
This article is categorized under:
• Planning Water > Engineering Water
• Water Governance > Human Water
Abstract
The scientific evidence synthesized in this review shows that research on the impacts of armed conflicts on water resources and their management focuses on the Middle East and, to a lesser extent, Asia and Africa. Publications are often single case studies and do not consider insights from other parts of the world.
... The assessment of both direct and indirect impacts is therefore needed (Al-Saidi et al., 2020;Weinthal & Sowers, 2020). However, the conceptual understanding and empirical evidence on such indirect impacts and knock-on effects is limited (InterAction & Stanford Health Policy, 2020;Zeitoun et al., 2017). ...
... Second, we analyze the operation and maintenance (O&M) of physical infrastructure as a separate component. Earlier studies identified several O&M challenges for water service delivery in conflict settings that go beyond direct infrastructure damage (Etienne & Nembrini, 1995;Pinera, 2012;Sikder et al., 2018;Zeitoun et al., 2017;Zeitoun & Talhami, 2016). This covers the operational capacity of both public and private water service providers, and the dynamics that can often be observed between them in conflict-affected settings (Pinera & Reed, 2009;Schillinger et al., 2020). ...
Armed conflicts disrupt social, environmental and economic processes. This includes water resources management and the provision of water services, with numerous implications for human security and environmental sustainability. Such impacts go beyond direct, immediately visible effects and can have far-reaching, long-term consequences. However, the understanding of these indirect conflict impacts in different social and political contexts is still limited. In order to address this knowledge gap, we build on the social-ecological systems framework to differentiate between direct and indirect conflict impacts and to analyze their effects on the water system. We then apply the framework to map direct and indirect impacts of armed conflict on water resources management, using empirical data from eleven cases in Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Yemen. This allows us to identify pathways in which conflict impacts are propagated through the water system. The results show the central role of financial mechanisms in upholding water resources management throughout conflict and the importance of enforcing international humanitarian law on the protection of civilian infrastructure. They also highlight the value of system-based approaches in revealing cumulative effects that can reinforce conflict impacts within the system, and in identifying potential obstacles for coping strategies employed by local populations throughout the conflict.
... While southern Iraq was affected by the direct impacts of war, research on Basra identifies a complex assemblage of water infrastructure damage since the 1980s, relating more to the unravelling of indirect water service components-notably understaffed facilities, low operating budgets, a lack of spare parts and water treatment chemicals-than the degradation of physical structures (Kuttab, 1992;Micangeli et al., 2013;Zeitoun et al. 2017). Indeed, insights from humanitarian responses to the impacts of protracted conflict on water services across Iraq informed the adoption of a new urban systems approach on infrastructural warfare within the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC, 2015). ...
... The growing dependence on CWTUs reinforces a water technology preference set in previous periods of conflict and endorsed by international actors (humanitarian organisations, donors) for complex emergencies; one in which operational resilience is favoured over more complex water treatment technologies, such as large reverse osmosis plants with high maintenance and electricity demands (Zeitoun et al., 2017). In principle CWTUs offer operational resilience on the basis of their modular design and redundancy: use can be scaled up or down, with individual units repaired or replaced whilst maintaining plant-wide water treatment (Micangeli et al., 2013). ...
Water infrastructure is an active element of state-making in southern Iraq, although major failings in water governance have in recent years triggered violent protests. Informed by scholarship on state clientelism and the political ecology of infrastructure, I examine the conflict-affected trajectories affecting public water management in Basra governorate. The degraded water treatment network manifests a post-2003 political system structured by embedded clientelism and politically sanctioned corruption. However, broad categorisations of clientelism can miss context-laden political effects produced by the spatial and technological configurations of infrastructure. I consider the state effects of water infrastructure practices in Basra governorate–how water supply networks and treatment technologies project state (in)capacity by means of volumetric and qualitative control over water flows. The empirical focus is on compact water treatment units (CWTUs), which are the main technology of public water supply in Basra governorate. I undertake an analysis of the deployment and management of CWTUs, as experienced by local actors responsible for, or politically contesting, the workings of water infrastructure in Basra city. Clientelist practices targeting public procurement and maintenance contracts have disrupted and delayed the upgrading of water infrastructure; yet these practices were enabled by neoliberal state-building that promoted the privatisation of public resources. Shortfalls in state capacity to provide clean drinking water in Basra are compounded by the growing hydro-climatic unpredictability of water flows.
... Among the most challengingyet least studiedis the necessity for international peacebuilding actors to repair and more often build up the infrastructure for basic water services from scratch. During civil wars existing infrastructure is often poorly managed, deteriorating, and at times even targeted (Sowers, Weinthal, and Zawahri 2017;Zeitoun et al. 2017). The resulting lack of access to safe water and adequate sanitation amplifies the vulnerability of post-conflict communities and inevitably prolongs the human costs of war (Gleick 1993), even affecting the legitimacy of United Nations (UN) peacebuilding missions (Freedman and Lemay-Hébert 2015). ...
This article presents an examination of post-conflict water resource management in East Timor through the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) with the aim of contributing to our understanding of the opportunities and challenges inherent to the sustainable management of water resources in post-conflict countries and of gaining insight into its potential long-term benefits for sustaining peace. The article contributes one of the first theory-centred, empirical analyses of post-conflict water resource management, in which the challenges and failures of UNTAET in East Timor shed light on the opportunities and risks inherent to post-conflict water service provision for peacebuilding.
This article investigates the effects that attacks during armed conflict which damage water and wastewater services have on the outbreak and transmission of infectious disease. It employs a lens of uncertainty to assess the level of knowledge about the reverberations along this consequential chain and to discuss the relevance to military planning and targeting processes, and to the laws of armed conflict. It draws on data in policy reports and research from a wide variety of contexts, and evidence from protracted armed conflicts in Iraq, Yemen and Gaza. The review finds a strong base of evidence of the impact of attacks on water and wastewater services, and a high level of confidence in information about the transmission of infectious disease. One clear risk identified is when people are exposed to water supplies which are contaminated by untreated wastewater. Obtaining a similar level of confidence about the cause and effect along the full consequential chain is challenged by numerous compounding variables, though there are a number of patterns related to the duration of the armed conflict within which the attacks occur. As the conflict protracts, both the risk of the spread of infectious disease and the evidence base for gauging the reverberating effects becomes stronger, for example. The article concludes that the reverberating effects of damage from an attack can be foreseen in some contexts and can be expected to become more foreseeable over time. The analysis suggests that the most pragmatic path for military institutions and those involved in targeting operations to take this knowledge into account is through a “precautionary approach” which assumes the existence of the reverberating effects, and works them in to the standard information-gathering and planning processes.
From the 24 – 28 March 2014, RedR held a pilot course for 24 WASH experts on the subject of addressing the social, institutional and technical gaps that currently exist for water, sanitation and hygiene provision in the urban emergency context. This document, produced as a partnership between ALNAP and RedR, captures the key messages, lessons and experiences of both course facilitators and participants on the topic of WASH in urban emergency response.
This article reviews the factors that determine the impact of explosive weapons on urban services in space and time, with a focus on drinking water services. The evidence comes from published and unpublished research and records, as well as experience restoring or maintaining such services. Urban services are seen as interconnected, and each composed of interdependent components of people, consumables and hardware. Elements that make up the components are labelled “upstream”, “midstream” and “downstream”, to reflect their location and hierarchy in the production and delivery of any urban service. The impact of explosive weapons is broken into the direct effects on any of the components of a service, and the reverberating effects on up- and or downstream components of the same service, or on other services. The effects are most commonly observed in service infrastructure, and determined chiefly by the extent of the damage to the functionality of any component. The spatial extent of the impact is found to be determined primarily by the hierarchy of the component suffering the direct impact, with attacks on upstream components being the furthest-reaching. The duration of the impact is determined primarily by the pre-explosion “baseline resilience” of the service, itself a function of system redundancies and emergency preparedness and response. The analysis suggests that the impact is more reasonably foreseeable than may commonly be thought, in the sense that the direct effects of explosives are well known and that the most important infrastructure is generally identifiable. It follows that proportionality assessments which involve urban services would benefit from (i) the direct and consistent engagement of specialized engineers within the targeting cell, and (ii) greater familiarity of the weapons controller with services, infrastructure and systems in urban areas.
During an armed conflict, the use of explosive weapons with wide area effects in populated areas has a devastating impact on civilians. Less visible than the direct effects of explosive weapons, but equally devastating, are the reverberating effects of the use of explosive weapons in populated areas. While there is growing consensus that parties to an armed conflict are legally obliged to take into account the reasonably foreseeable reverberating effects of an attack, particularly for the purposes of the rules on proportionality and precautions in attack, the precise scope of this obligation remains unclear. After setting out the legal arguments in support of the position that reasonably foreseeable reverberating effects must be taken into account, this article goes on to examine how such effects should be evaluated and how they must be avoided or minimized.
Cities in the global South are often considered to be in the midst of infrastructural breakdown, and characterized as either lacking networked services or as suffering from ongoing disruption and sometimes failure. This article focuses on the electricity network of Accra to examine the series of socio-natural processes that produce this ongoing disruption and to explore the power relations of networked systems in the city. It focuses on the production of disruption through the analytical lens of urban political ecology, in order to show how such a framework can be utilized to interrogate energy geographies. The article begins by describing what happens when the lights go out and the flow of electricity is interrupted across Accra in order to connect a series of socio-natural processes that contribute to the ongoing network disruption and interruption. The article establishes the effect of historical infrastructural governance, greenhouse gas emissions, flows of international capital, water and drought in northern Ghana, as well as urban sprawl, slum urbanism and rising energy demand in the city, to illustrate the fundamentally unequal and politicized socio-natures of these disrupted infrastructural processes.
This research looks at post-2006-war reconstruction of the southern suburbs of Beirut under the auspices of Hezbollah (the Islamic resistance movement in Lebanon). The project was widely acclaimed as an alternative to current neoliberal planning practices in the Middle East and beyond. Based on a critical reading of the conception of property issues in this planning project, the article argues that this reconstruction presents a new geometry or alternative to the mainstream configuration of neoliberal urbanism, rather than a departure from its precepts. The reason for this is that the adopted language of property corresponds closely with the conception of property advocated by neoliberal planning, one that enshrines private, individual ownership as sacred and desirable and that works to strengthen its model in the city. I further argue that the ‘neoliberal planning regime’ within which Hezbollah's urban intervention occurs is not accidental; rather, it is necessary for the party's control of this space's future and for consolidating its territory in the city. It is hence expected that Hezbollah's planning in the city will produce the same decried effects as neoliberal planning elsewhere in the city rather than usher an innovative, progressive model of planning.
This paper develops an analytical framework to investigate the relationship between water and armed conflict, and applies it to the 'Summer War' of 2006 between Israel and Lebanon (Hezbollah). The framework broadens and deepens existing classifications by assessing the impact of acts of war as indiscriminate or targeted, and evaluating them in terms of international norms and law, in particular International Humanitarian Law (IHL). In the case at hand, the relationship is characterised by extensive damage in Lebanon to drinking water infrastructure and resources. This is seen as a clear violation of the letter and the spirit of IHL, while the partial destruction of more than 50 public water towers compromises water rights and national development goals. The absence of pre-war environmental baselines makes it difficult to gauge the impact on water resources, suggesting a role for those with first-hand knowledge of the hostilities to develop a more effective response before, during, and after armed conflict.
The impacts of climate change in any city are obviously influenced by the quality of its housing and other buildings, its infrastructure and services. These were not built with climate change risks in mind, although they were influenced by environmental health risks that were present when they were constructed (including those from extreme weather) and often by responses to past disasters. Well-governed cities that have greatly reduced these risks have accumulated resilience to the climate change impacts that exacerbate (or will exacerbate) these risks. In so doing, they have also developed the social, political, financial and institutional structures that provide the basis for addressing these and other risks. These structures were developed through social, environmental and political reforms, driven by such factors as democracy, decentralization and strong social movements representing the needs of those with limited incomes, or other factors associated with vulnerability. These “bottom-up” pressures from citizens and civil society on national and city governments are critical for developing the institutions and measures to reduce climate change-related risks (especially for those most at risk) and to support resilience.
Spain is arguably the European country where the water crisis has become most acute in recent years. The political and ecological importance of water is not, however, only a recent development in Spain. Throughout this century, water politics, economics, culture, and engineering have infused and embodied the myriad tensions and conflicts that drove and still drive Spanish society. And although the significance of water on the Iberian peninsula has attracted considerable scholarly and other attention, the central role of water politics, water culture, and water engineering in shaping Spanish society on the one hand, and the contemporary water geography and ecology of Spain as the product of centuries of socioecological interaction on the other, have remained largely unexplored. The hybrid character of the water landscape, or “waterscape,” comes to the fore in Spain in a clear and unambiguous manner. The socionatural production of Spanish society can be illustrated by excavating the central role of water politics and engineering in Spain's modernization process. In the first part of the paper, I develop a theoretical and methodological perspective that is explicitly critical of traditional approaches in water-resources studies, which tend to separate various aspects of the hydrological cycle into discrete and independent objects of study. My perspective, broadly situated within the political ecology tradition, draws critically from recent work by ecological historians, cultural critics, sociologists of science, critical social theorists, and political economists. My main objective is to bring together what has been severed for too long by insisting that nature and society are deeply intertwined. In the second part of the paper, I excavate the origins of Spain's early-twentieth-century modernization process (1890–1930) as expressed in debates and actions around the hydrological condition. The conceptual framework presented in the first part helps structure a narrative that weaves water through the network of socionatural relations in ways that permit the recasting of modernity as a deeply geographical, although by no means coherent, homogeneous, total, or uncontested project. In sum, I seek to document how the socionatural is historically produced to generate a particular, but inherently dynamic, geographical configuration.
In this follow‐up to a piece originally published in City 8(2), Stephen Graham offers a detailed portrait of the tactics and techniques of contemporary urban warfare. As cities have become more reliant than ever on networks, and as their infrastructures have become more fragile due to the vagaries of neoliberal privatization, urban‐based warfare, which targets the systems—informational, medical, agricultural, and technological—that sustain the civilian populations of cities, has had disastrous consequences. Although terrorists have chosen to target urban infrastructures in an attempt to disrupt modern urban life, Graham suggests that the greater threat to metropolitan existence comes from systematic attempts by traditional powers, such as the United States, to disrupt urban networks, thereby effectively ‘switching cities off’. Policies of what Graham calls ‘deliberate demodernization’ have become the hallmark of US air power. Although such policies are thought to bring about asymmetrical military advantage, they also place civilian populations at risk. Such policies represent thus perpetuation of total war in a different key. Graham concludes by calling for further research into the new geopolitics of infrastructural warfare.
We tend to see contemporary cities through a peace-time lens and war as somehow exceptional. In this ambitious paper, long in historical range and global in geographical scope, Steve Graham unmasks and displays the very many ways in which warfare is intimately woven into the fabric of cities and practices of city planners. He draws out the aggression which we should see as the counterpart of the defensive fortifications of historic towns, continues with the re-structuring--often itself violent--of Paris and of many other cities to enable the oppressive state forces to patrol and subordinate the feared masses. Other examples take us through the fear of aerial bombardment as an influence on Le Corbusier and modernist urban design to the meticulous planners who devised and monitored the slaughter in Dresden, Tokyo and other targets in World War 2. Later episodes, some drawing on previously classified material, show how military thinking conditioned urbanisation in the Cold War and does so in the multiple 'wars' now under way--against 'terrorism' and the enemy within . City has carried some exceptional work on war and 'urbicide' but this paper argues that, for the most part, the social sciences are in denial and ends with a call for action to confront, reveal and challenge the militarisation of urban space.
The purpose of this book is specific and ambitious: to outline the distinctive elements, scope, and usefulness of a new and emerging field of applied ecology named warfare ecology. Based on a NATO Advanced Research Workshop held on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico, the book provides both a theoretical overview of this new field and case studies that range from mercury contamination during World War I in Slovenia to the ecosystem impacts of the Palestinian occupation, and from the bombing of coral reefs of Vieques to biodiversity loss due to violent conflicts in Africa. Warfare Ecology also includes reprints of several classical papers that set the stage for the new synthesis described by the authors. Written for environmental scientists, military and humanitarian relief professionals, conservation managers, and graduate students in a wide range of fields, Warfare Ecology is a major step forward in understanding the relationship between war and ecological systems.
The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating. There is no path that can guarantee success, but the prospects can be improved. In this report, we make a number of recommendations for actions to be taken in Iraq, the United States, and the region. Our most important recommendations call for new and enhanced diplomatic and political efforts in Iraq and the region, and a change in the primary mission of U.S. forces in Iraq that will enable the United States to begin to move its combat forces out of Iraq responsibly. We believe that these two recommendations are equally important and reinforce one another. If they are effectively implemented, and if the Iraqi government moves forward with national reconciliation, Iraqis will have an opportunity for a better future, terrorism will be dealt a blow, stability will be enhanced in an important part of the world, and America's credibility, interests, and values will be protected. The challenges in Iraq are complex. Violence is increasing in scope and lethality. It is fed by a Sunni Arab insurgency, Shiite militias and death squads, al Qaeda, and widespread criminality. Sectarian conflict is the principal challenge to stability. The Iraqi people have a democratically elected government, yet it is not adequately advancing national reconciliation, providing basic security, or delivering essential services. Pessimism is pervasive. If the situation continues to deteriorate, the consequences could be severe. A slide toward chaos could trigger the collapse of Iraq's government and a humanitarian catastrophe. Neighboring countries could intervene. Sunni-Shia clashes could spread. Al Qaeda could win a propaganda victory and expand its base of operations. The global standing of the United States could be diminished. Americans could become more polarized. During the past nine months we have considered a full range of approaches for moving forward. All have flaws. Our recommended course has shortcomings, but we firmly believe that it includes the best strategies and tactics to positively influence the outcome in Iraq and the region.
For proponents of the view that anthropogenic climate change will become a ‘threat multiplier’ for instability in the decades ahead, the Syrian civil war has become a recurring reference point, providing apparently compelling evidence that such conflict effects are already with us. According to this view, human-induced climatic change
was a contributory factor in the extreme drought experienced within Syria prior to its civil war; this drought in turn led to large-scale migration; and this migration in turn exacerbated the socio-economic stresses that underpinned Syria’s descent into war. This article provides a systematic interrogation of these claims, and finds little merit to them. Amongst other things it shows that there is no clear and reliable evidence that anthropogenic climate change was a factor in Syria’s pre-civil war drought; that this drought did not cause anywhere near the scale of migration that is often alleged; and that there exists no solid evidence that drought migration pressures in Syria contributed to civil war onset. The Syria case, the article finds, does not support
‘threat multiplier’ views of the impacts of climate change; to the contrary, we conclude, policymakers, commentators and scholars alike should exercise far greater caution when drawing such linkages or when securitising climate change.
Political scientists have conducted only limited systematic research on the consequences of war for civilian populations. Here we argue that the civilian suffering caused by civil war extends well beyond the period of active warfare. We examine these longer-term affects in a cross-national (1999) analysis of World Health Organization new fine-grained data on death and disability broken down by age, gender, and type of disease or condition. We test hypotheses about the impact of civil wars and find substantial long-term effects, even after controlling for several other factors. We estimate that the additional burden of death and disability incurred in 1999, from the indirect and lingering effects of civil wars in the years 1991-97, was approximately equal to that incurred directly and immediately from all wars in 1999. This impact works its way through specific diseases and conditions and disproportionately affects women and children.
The Middle East region is plagued with repeated armed conflicts that affect both civilians and soldiers. Injuries sustained during war are common and frequently associated with multiple life-threatening complications. Wound infections are major consequences of these war injuries. The microbiology of war-related wound infections is variable with predominance of Gram-negative bacteria in later stages. The emergence of antimicrobial resistance among isolates affecting war-related wound injuries is a serious problem with major regional and global implications. Factors responsible for the increase in multidrug-resistant pathogens include timing and type of surgical management, wide use of antimicrobial drugs, and the presence of metallic or organic fragments in the wound. Nosocomial transmission is the most important factor in the spread of multidrug-resistant pathogens. Wound management of war-related injuries merits a multidisciplinary approach. This review aims to describe the microbiology of war-related wound infections and factors affecting their incidence from conflict areas in Iraq, Syria, Israel, and Lebanon.
This article examines how colonial violence has been recast in light of Israel’s disengagement from Gaza during the summer 2005. By looking at infrastructural networks —the systems that distribute water, electricity sewage, fuel etc— it explores how far from ending the occupation, disengagement provided a distinct spatial scale from which to experiment new methods of control and repression. In particular, it seeks to expose how these life support systems function as geopolitical sites of spatial control and as biopolitical tools to regulate and suppress life. Specially, it illustrates how the mobilization of discourses strategies and doctrines, criminalize these critical system turning them into ‘legitimate’ and ‘pre-emptive’ targets Drawing on the destruction of Gaza’s only power plant and the subsequent sanctions on electricity and fuel, it argues that the destruction and manipulation of infrastructura networks has severe consequences, particularly in public health. In exploring these claims with respect to Gaza, the article draws attention to the ways in which infrastructure play a crucial role in regulating the elastic Gaza’ humanitarian collapse. The article closes introducing the concept of infrastructural violence as way to further explore this discussion.
When disaster strikes in cities the effects can be catastrophic compared to other environments. But what factors actually determine the vulnerability or resilience of cities? The Vulnerability of Cities fills a vital gap in disaster studies by examining the too-often overlooked impact of disasters on cities, the conditions leading to high losses from urban disasters and why some households and communities withstand disaster more effectively than others. Mark Pelling takes a fresh look at the literature on disasters and urbanization in light of recent catastrophes. He presents three detailed studies of cities in the global South, drawn from countries with contrasting political and developmental contexts: Bridgetown, Barbados - a liberal democracy; Georgetown, Guyana - a post socialist-state; and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic - an authoritarian state in democratic transition. This book demonstrates that strengthening local capacity - through appropriate housing, disaster-preparedness, infrastructure and livelihoods - is crucial to improving civic resilience to disasters. Equally important are strong partnerships between local community-based organizations, external non-governmental and governmental organizations, public and private sectors and between city and national government. The author highlights and discusses these best practices for handling urban disasters. With rapid urbanization across the globe, this book is a must-read for professionals, policy-makers, students and researchers in disaster management, urban development and planning, transport planning, architecture, social studies and earth sciences.
On Hybrids and Socionature: Flow, Process, and DialecticsThe Production of Nature: Water and Modernization in SpainModernization as a Geographical Project: The Production of Space/NatureWater as the Linchpin to Spain's Modernization DriveThe State as Master Socioenvironmental EngineerPurification and the Transformation of Nature: Hydraulic Engineers as Producers of SocionatureConclusions
Introduction The idea of a ‘pure’ or natural disaster is a pervasive one. The occurrence of an ‘Act of God’ appears to be the one instance where international intervention is beyond criticism: the blamelessness of the victims translates into an ethical imperative for action on the part of the ‘international community’ to alleviate the resultant suffering (Edkins 2000). While it is possible to point to many instances of critique of political interventions (Mamdani 200 7; Pugh 2005; Chandler 2006) and others who criticise the efficacy or appropriateness of certain modes of disaster relief (Duffield 1991; Edkins 2000; Keen 1994; De Waal 1997), there are few authors who have problematised the basic premise that the international community has a responsibility to provide assistance to those affected by a natural disaster (Bankoff 2001; Hewitt 1995). Yet authors such as Smith (2006), Davis (2000), and O'Keefe et al. (1976) stress that while natural hazards exist, the severity of their impact on human settlement is determined by human decisions: where and how to build; access to preventive measures; the existence and knowledge of escape routes. While a direct, and unique, causal link between geography and social development (Landes 1998; Diamond 2005) is highly disputed, the link between underdevelopment and increased risk of natural disasters is well documented. According to Ian Davis (1978:11), ‘the study of disasters is almost by definition a study of poverty within the developing world.’
Many of the recent armed conflicts have affected cities of the developing world. In the resulting emergency situations, water supply is among the most essential services to restore. It forms part of urban services commonly managed by local water sector institutions. This article is based on case-study research carried out in six war-afflicted cities and towns that looked at how partnerships between aid agencies and water sector institutions influenced aid operations benefits. In emergency operations, findings showed that partnerships did not necessarily influence the efficiency or effectiveness of the response in the short term but were beneficial because they prepared for rehabilitation. During rehabilitation, findings suggested that current practice maintains a separation between large-scale rehabilitation projects and community-based projects focusing on specific neighbourhoods. This has a detrimental effect on sustainability and fails to address the needs of the most vulnerable populations. The research recommended a more coordinated approach in order to reconcile sustainability and universal service.
The term 'urbicide' became popular during the 1992-95 Bosnian war as a way of referring to widespread and deliberate destruction of the urban environment. Coined by writers on urban development in America, urbicide captures the sense that the widespread and deliberate destruction of buildings is a distinct form of violence. Using Martin Heidegger's notion of space and Jean-Luc Nancy's idea of community, Martin Coward outlines a theoretical understanding of the urban condition at stake in such violence. He contends that buildings are targeted because they make possible a plural public space that is contrary to the political aims of ethnic-nationalist regimes. Illustrated with reference to several post-Cold War conflicts - including Bosnia, Chechnya and Israel/Palestine - this book is the first comprehensive analysis of organised violence against urban environments. It offers an original perspective to those seeking to better understand urbanity, political violence and the politics of exclusion.
This article examines the role of water infrastructure in the production of state power, and advances an understanding of nonhumans as power brokers. While state power is increasingly understood as the effect of material practices and processes, I draw on the idea that objects are ‘force-full’ to argue that infrastructure helped cement federal state power in Tijuana over the twentieth century, and simultaneously limited the spaces of stateness in surprising ways. To support my argument, I examine three sets of water infrastructure in Tijuana, Mexico. First, I examine the key constitutional edicts, laws, and treaties that enabled bureaucratic development and staked territorial claims on water during Mexico’s liberal era (1876–1911) and post-revolutionary period. Second, I trace the development of Tijuana’s flood control and potable water conveyance networks, designed and built between the 1960s and the 1980s, which enabled rapid urban growth but ultimately cultivated dependency on a distant, state engineered water source. Finally, I show how the ordinary infrastructures of water supply—such as barrels, cisterns, and buckets, common tools in Tijuana homes—both coexist with and limit state power, resulting in variegated geographies of institutional authority, punctuated by alternative spaces of rule. Together, these infrastructures form the ‘hydrosocial cycle’ of Tijuana, which I use to illustrate the uneven spatiality of state power. In conclusion, I draw on insights from object-oriented philosophy and science and technology studies to move past the anthropocentric notion of infrastructure as ‘power tools’—handy implements used by humans to exercise dominion—toward tool-power: the idea that objects-in-themselves are wellsprings of power.
In the context of a global United Nations-commissioned study examining the humanitarian impacts of economic sanctions, the authors were asked to review sanctions imposed against Burundi as the most recent and evolving example of sanctions as a policy tool. During their month-long field study in Burundi and Kenya, Drs. Hoskins and Nutt interviewed personnel from more than fifty United Nations agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), Burundian government offices and foreign embassies. The following comments are preliminary in nature, pending completion and publication of the full report in the coming months. The views expressed represent those of the consultants and are not necessarily those of the organizations involved in the larger research study. Important characteristics of the Burundi sanctions -Comprehensive sanctions (with no humanitarian exemptions) were first imposed on July 31, 1996. They have been gradually modified to permit limited humanitarian exemptions on a case-by-case approval basis. -These are regional sanctions, recognized and endorsed, but not enforced by the international community. Sanctioning countries include Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zaire and Zambia. A Regional Sanctions Coordinating Committee (RSCC), composed of representatives of the participating countries, formulates sanctions policy, reviews implementation of the sanctions and considers requests for general exemptions. Following RSCC exemption, specific requests and quantities of humanitarian aid must be submitted for approval, on a written case-by-case basis, to National Sanctions Committees (NSC) established within each sanctioning country. -A combination of profiteering, insecurity, lack of enforcement, and weakening political resolve has resulted in a high level of smuggling and cross-border trade which have diluted sanction's impact.
Partnerships between the public and private sectors have been a central feature in the development of British cities since the nineteenth century. Many major civic projects, transport links and even industrial estates have been successfully completed thanks to government, central and local, working with private interests, developers and investors. After the second world war, however, these partnerships became fundamental to the redevelopment of urban Britain. While the state provided legislation, finance and policy directives, local government worked with the private sector to build social housing, new roads and schools. However, the council also relied on private investment to transform tired city centres by building new shopping centres, hotels and office blocks. While contemporary studies recognize the importance of these partnerships in the growth of cities since the 1980s, this article will look at their significance in a broader historical perspective, highlighting the pivotal role they played from the 1950s to the 1970s, and assessing their relevance not simply in terms of the material redevelopment of the built environment but also in what is revealed about urban governance.
Programmes of organized, political violence have always been legitimized and sustained through complex imaginative geographies. These tend to be characterized by stark binaries of place attachment. This article argues that the discursive construction of the Bush administration’s ‘war on terror’ since September 11th 2001 has been deeply marked by attempts to rework imaginative geographies separating the urban places of the US ‘homeland’ and those Arab cities purported to be the sources of ‘terrorist’ threats against US national interests. On the one hand, imaginative geographies of US cities have been reworked to construct them as ‘homeland’ spaces which must be re-engineered to address supposed imperatives of ‘national security’. On the other, Arab cities have been imaginatively constructed as little more than ‘terrorist nest’ targets to soak up US military firepower. Meanwhile, the article shows how both ‘homeland’ and ‘target’ cities are increasingly being treated together as a single, integrated ‘battlespace’ within post 9/11 US military doctrine and techno-science. The article concludes with a discussion of the central roles of urban imaginative geographies, overlaid by transnational architectures of US military technology, in sustaining the colonial territorial configurations of a hyper-militarized US Empire.
This article examines the role of drought and climate change as triggers of the Syrian uprising that started in March 2011. It frames the 2006–10 drought that struck north-eastern Syria in the context of rapid economic liberalization and long-standing resource mismanagement, and shows that the humanitarian crisis of the late 2000s largely predated the drought period. It argues that focusing on external factors like drought and climate change in the context of the Syrian uprising is counterproductive as it diverts attention from more fundamental political and economic motives behind the protests and shifts responsibility away from the Syrian government.
The health consequences of the ongoing US-led war on terror and civil armed conflicts in the Arab world are much more than the collateral damage inflicted on civilians, infrastructure, environment, and health systems. Protracted war and armed conflicts have displaced populations and led to lasting transformations in health and health care. In this report, we analyse the effects of conflicts in Iraq and Syria to show how wars and conflicts have resulted in both the militarisation and regionalisation of health care, conditions that complicate the rebuilding of previously robust national health-care systems. Moreover, we show how historical and transnational frameworks can be used to show the long-term consequences of war and conflict on health and health care. We introduce the concept of therapeutic geographies-defined as the geographic reorganisation of health care within and across borders under conditions of war.
This article addresses the question of whether contemporary global urbanization is characterized by a distinctive relationship between the city and warfare. In particular, it examines the specific way in which two particular forms of warfare — so-called Al-Qaeda terrorism and US tactics in Iraq — target urban infrastructure. I argue that infrastructure is targeted because it is a constitutive feature of contemporary urban life. Metropolitan life is marked by its constitutive relation to urban infrastructure. The article thus suggests that this targeting of infrastructure provides a lens through which to investigate some of the central questions posed by the contemporary urbanization of security.
The following text is taken from the publisher's website:
"Splintering Urbanism offers a path-breaking analysis of the nature of the urban condition at the start of the new millennium. Adopting a global and interdisciplinary perspective, it reveals how new technologies and increasingly privatised systems of infrastructure provision - telecommunications, highways, urban streets, energy, and water - are supporting the splintering of metropolitan areas across the world. The result is a new 'socio-technical' way of understanding contemporary urban change, which brings together discussions about:
* globalisation and the city
* the urban and social effects of new technology
* urban, architectural and social theory
* social polarisation, marginalisation and democratisation
* infrastructure, architecture and the built environment
* developed, developing and post-communist cities."
Recent and ongoing military operations in cities and urban areas, as well as the expectation for future conflict and operations in this environment, have led the U.S. military community to focus on improving its understanding of and capabilities in military operations in urban terrain (MOUT). However, despite this interest and the importance of interconnected infrastructure networks to the functioning of a city, there does not appear to have been a corresponding degree of concentration or study with respect to the effects (costs and benefits) of urban infrastructure and its disruption. The study presented in this paper attempts to address this void by expanding the understanding of infrastructure, specifically the power grid and transportation network, and the types of impacts that its disruption can have on a military operation and non-combatants. This study further uses this improved understanding of infrastructure to develop an approach for incorporating a power grid, transportation network, and their impacts into modeling and simulation (M&S).
Imagine a great metropolis covering hundreds of square miles. Once a vital component in a national economy, this sprawling urban environment is now a vast collection of blighted buildings, an immense petri dish of both ancient and new diseases, a territory where the rule of law has long been replaced by near anarchy in which the only security available is that which is attained through brute power. Such cities have been routinely imagined in apocalyptic movies and in certain science-fiction genres, where they are often portrayed as gigantic versions of T. S. Eliot's Rat's Alley. Yet this city would still be globally connected. It would possess at least a modicum of commercial linkages, and some of its inhabitants would have access to the world's most modern communication and computing technologies. It would, in effect, be a feral city. Admittedly, the very term "feral city" is both provocative and controversial. Yet this description has been chosen advisedly. The feral city may be a phenomenon that never takes place, yet its emergence should not be dismissed as impossible. The phrase also suggests, at least faintly, the nature of what may become one of the more difficult security challenges of the new century.
This article draws parallels between interventions to restore water services in post-conflict Kabul, Afghanistan and Monrovia, Liberia. Its aim is to show that, in addition to aid agencies and water utilities, communities of consumers have important roles to play in the delivery of water in an environment transformed by war. The interventions in this study were measured in terms of their sustainability and coverage and provide several lessons learned for other post-conflict contexts, including the importance of involving the private sector, coordinating aid interventions, considering context and engaging stakeholders.
In recent years, states and non-governmental organizations have expressed concern about the humanitarian consequences of the category of technologies labelled 'explosive weapons', particularly in relation to their use in populated areas. This article seeks to outline the magnitude of these consequences as well as what can be done to reduce harms. In particular, it makes a case for how health approaches could help prevent the harms associated with this category of weapons. Attention is given to the types of evidence and argument that might be required to characterize explosive weapons. An overarching aim is to consider how alternative ways of understanding weapons and violence can create new opportunities for addressing harms from conflict.
It is now well established that both the ‘war on terror’ and its offshoots have been conspicuously marked by overwhelmingly urban discourses, materialities and practices. Deliberately transdisciplinary, synthetical and polemical in scope, this article seeks to demonstrate that new ideologies of permanent and boundless war are radically intensifying the militarization of urban life in the contemporary period. The article delineates the ways in which contemporary processes of militarization — which surround what I label the ‘new military urbanism’— raise fundamental questions for critical urban scholarship because of the ways in which they work to normalize the permanent targeting of everyday urban sites, circulations and populations. Focusing primarily on US security and military doctrine, culture and technology, this article explores the new military urbanism's five interrelated foundations in detail, namely: the urbanization of military and security doctrine; the links between militarized control technologies and digitized urban life; the cultural performances of militarized media consumption; the emerging urban political economies of the ‘security’ industries; and the new state spaces of violence. Following the elaboration of each of these themes, the article concludes by identifying ways forward for critical urban research in exposing and confronting the normalization of the new military urbanism.
Since the end of the Cold War two modes of ‘new war’ have been distinguished. One, the Revolution in Military Affairs, transforms advanced state militaries (particularly in the global North) through an emphasis on stripped-down, highly specialised forces deploying cutting-edge technology with unprecedented precision. The other is waged by non-state militias and guerrilla forces (particularly in the global South) and relies on light, even improvised weapons, focuses its violence on civilians and is implicated in the criminal circuits of a shadow globalisation. Rhetorically, the first sustains a late modern ‘re-enchantment of war’– war as surgical, sensitive and scrupulous – whereas the second reactivates a profoundly non-modern ‘disenchantment of war’ as indiscriminate, callous and predatory. In practice, however, each bleeds into the other, so that it becomes necessary to expose the continuing horror of wars waged by the global North. One critical response is to show the production of three spaces of advanced military violence – the abstract space of the target, the alien space of the enemy Other, and the legal-lethal space of the exception – and then to disrupt them through a series of counter-geographies that challenges their claims to legitimacy.
Los Angeles is often described as the epitome of urban fragmentation, a notion which in this context is frequently connected to, or even conflated with urban sprawl. At the same time, the city features integrated water and power networks which have been under public ownership for over 70 years. We thus have an apparent paradox in the context of the debate on ‘splintering urbanism’, between socio-spatial fragmentation and the integration of networks. In discussing the idea that deregulation of infrastructural networks exacerbates urban fragmentation, the authors use the case of Los Angeles in order to highlight the central role of private interests in management decisions concerning infrastructure networks. The authors carry out their analysis in an historical perspective, revealing that network integration and universal access can often serve private interests more than the public good. Urban fragmentation in Los Angeles, they conclude, is the result of a complex process of instrumentalisation of network development and management.