Academic literature on the topic 'Water exploitation indexes'

Abstract The never-ending exploitation of natural resources after the industrial revolution has caused irreversible damage to our environment and life. This vast resource deployment was expected to finally decelerate after the emergence of the Sustainable Development paradigm in the late 1980s. The concept of sustainable development aims to balance the tradeoff between supply and the needs of societies to also preserve the needs of future generations. Nonrenewable resources, especially water, have been at the heart of sustainable development goals. Sustainable Water Management (SWM) is an essential component of sustainable development. To achieve SWM, various water management challenges, in both developing and developed countries, should be addressed by attracting stakeholders to invest in water system efficiency and improvement projects, as well as by recycling and reusing water. To assess sustainable management policies and practices, evaluation of performance metrices – such as the Water Resources Sustainability Index, reliability, resiliency and vulnerability, and the Stability Index – is imperative. A cost-efficient policy should also facilitate the attainment of sustainability in all socioeconomic, and environmental sectors.

This paper aims to analyse the determinants of the food insecurity examining the relationship of important economic,social and natural factors with an overall food insecurity index that derived by dividing the food imports value to the sum of total exports and the net remittance inflows. Overall analysis is made by employing panel-data methods using a dataset that covers 18MENA countries and Turkey for the period of 1990-2014.Emprical results support the evidence of the harmful effect of price increases on food security. Furthermore, significance of education related variables and fresh water withdrawals indicate that the region has had benefit from nearly 30 years investment on education and intensive water exploitation, although poor water management and great waste of irrigation will most likely have negative effects on food security in the near future.

The discussion in the previous chapters has shown how water is deeply embedded in the practice of everyday urban life, and how the uneven power over its control and the oppression caused by its absence result in it being highly contested terrain. A wide spectrum of social conflicts and struggles consequently unfold over the appropriation of and access to ‘metabolized’ urban water; struggles that are embedded in and embody social, political, and economic power relations. Put simply, the transformation of nature and the urbanization of nature’s water express the political economic and socio-ecological power relations that shape the urbanization process itself. The urban hydrosocial cycle is indeed infused with a myriad of social tensions and is contested terrain at each moment of its flow. We shall consider not only the strategies of the weak and the weapons they deploy, but also the tactics of the water vendors. Their control over water enables them to mobilize a range of tactics to maintain if not expand their hold over water and the appropriation of water rents. This chapter will explore these multifaceted dimensions of the social struggles around water and their political, economic and social significance. The most striking, if least powerful, actions are those waged by urban communities to gain or improve access to water. From the position of those facing oppressive mechanisms of water supply, four strategies have been identified (see, among others, Espinoza and Oliden 1988): passive acceptance, individual resistance, self-help, and social protest/mobilization. Notwithstanding the immense problems associated with problematic access to water, acceptance of the exclusive and/or exploitative status quo is very often the most common behaviour, resulting in the absence of collective action. Cotic and Dascal (1987) suggest that the nature of an eventual possible, but essentially private solution (i.e. domestic connection to a comprehensive networked system), results in passive acceptance as a particular form of response. While the demand for the provision of roads, schools, health services, or public transport is often subject to collective action and struggle,water (and waste disposal (Olaya 1991) ) has rarely resulted in popular and collective revolts.

Along with the population increasing and social economic developing rapidly, the groundwater resource is affected by human activities seriously. In order to achieve optimal local allocation of water resources and promotion of local economic development, a suitable method for measuring the effect degree of human activities on groundwater resource system is very important. In this paper, regarding Hongxinglong Administration of Heilongjiang Agricultural Reclamation in China as the study area, the comprehensive assessment system to analysis the influence of human activities on groundwater level change with eight evaluated indicators closely related to the amount of groundwater exploitation is established by applying variable fuzzy optimization model. According to relative superiority, the function of effect degree index to evaluate the impact situation is constructed. The results in 2012 show that the human activities on Farm Youyi have the strongest impact on groundwater level variation, while Farm Beixing weakest. Comparing the results from 2003 to 2012, the trend of most effect degree indices reveals decrease by some effective measures. However, there are four farms whose human activities have a stronger influence on groundwater table.

Since the fall of Soviet communism, capitalism—perhaps we should say big business—has been prescribed more than ever as the cure for any ill, including the decline of nature. A large part of the natural world has been damaged or destroyed by unregulated commerce. Now, various groups of conservationists are trying to save some of the most spectacular remnants of nature, both species and ecosystems—with more commerce. The idea of turning the tables and using the methods of exploiters to prevent more serious exploitation is an interesting one, but the risks are high and not everyone in the business of saving by selling seems to have given much thought to them. I first came across commercial conservation in one of its earliest and most dubious forms, the farming of sea turtles, a phoenix like enterprise that, despite its chronic inability to turn a profit, always springs up renewed from the ashes of its last bankruptcy. Because of its biological and economic complexity, the farming of sea turtles nicely illustrates many of the problems inherent in the commercialization of consevation and is worth examining in some detail. There are seven species of sea turtles in the world’s oceans, ranging in size from the approximately 100-pound Atlantic and Pacific ridleys and the hawksbills, to the huge leatherbacks, which can weigh as much as1200 pounds and possibly more. All except the loggerhead nest primarily on tropical or subtropical beaches, although some venture far into cold waters in between nestings. The eggs of every species are prized as food and in Latin America are considered an aphrodisiac. The leather is used for expensive shoes; the hawksbill provides shell for jewelry; and the hawksbill, loggerhead, and especially the green are taken for their meat, cartilage (for soup) and oil (for cosmetics). Indeed, the green turtle has been described as the world’s most valuable reptile. Not surprisingly, nearly all sea turtle populations have been seriously depleted, and the great majority of the nesting populations that existed 150 years ago are now extinct.

A successful drilling operation requires an effective drilling fluid system. Due to the variety of downhole conditions across the globe, the fluid system should be designed to meet complex challenges such as High-Pressure/High-Temperature (HPHT) environments, while promoting better productivity with a minimum interference for completion operations. This study aims to improve the rheological and fluid loss properties of water-bentonite suspensions by using both commercial (C-NP) and custom-made (CM-NP) iron oxide (Fe3O4) nanoparticles (NP) as drilling fluid additives. Superparamagnetic Fe3O4 NP