Water, Security and U.s. Foreign Policy

The policies and approaches used by the U.S. government to address global water challenges over the past 30 years have been driven by domestic political dynamics, not the needs of water-stressed partner countries. Now eclipsed by new demographic pressures, expanding economies and growing impacts of climate change, U.S. foreign policy must shift significantly from its focus on water provision to sustainable watershed management accompanied by institutional and policy reforms in scores of water-stressed countries.

Water, Security and U.S. Foreign Policy provides an analytical framework to help policy makers interpret the potential impacts and significance of drought and weather extremes as they intersect with other development challenges and difficult developmental trade-offs. Through this analytical lens, the aim is to propose a new U.S. governmental approach that can anticipate and help forestall social destabilization and economic downturn potentially leading to accelerated outward migration and disruption of global supply chains with accompanying challenges to U.S. security interests.

Organized into three complementary themes: Water and Conflict; Financing Water Infrastructure, and; Climate Change and Hydrologic Security, and presenting research and evidence from 19 geographies, this book allows its readers to identify how water-related social and economic disruptions escalate from development challenges in partner countries to security risks and threats to U.S. security interests.

David Reed is Senior Vice President, Policy for WWF-US. He holds a Ph.D. and graduate degrees from the University of Geneva, Switzerland. He has worked for twenty five years in social and economic development programs in Latin America, Africa, and Asia at both the grassroots and managerial levels. Areas of expertise include Environmental impacts of macroeconomic reforms, Poverty-environment nexus, International architecture for climate finance, and Environmental dimensions of U.S. foreign Policy. He has authored numerous books and publications, including: Structural Adjustment, the Environment, and Sustainable Development (1996); Economic Change, Natural Resource Wealth and Governance: The Political Economy of Change in Southern Africa (2001); Poverty is Not a Number: The Environment is Not a Butterfly (1998); Escaping Poverty’s Grasp (2006).