Growing Cities and Subnational Hydropolitics

Authors : Dursun YILDIZ

Pages : 61-70

View : 23 | Download : 10

Publication Date : 2020-06-15

Article Type : Review Paper

Abstract :Abstract Although academia doesn`t expect water wars in the 21st Century, we should be ready to prevent the water conflicts between provinces at the subnational level. This is not only because %60 of the world population will live in urban and metropolitan areas when we reach the year 2050 but also because of a lack of visionary approach and adequate governance arrangements to prevent and resolve conflicts over water use. In addition to these two effects when we count on climate change effects on water resources it means that we are moving towards stronger water conflicts at different levels compared with the 20th Century. Increasing sub-national water conflict between cities and federal states is mainly driven by decentralization policies and climate change effects on shared water resources. The role of growing metropolitans in water management is increased worldwide as a result of decentralization. Our past experiences in Turkey and ongoing low-level conflicts are also pointing out that this issue will need more attention from now on. In this article, we aim to focus on growing water conflicts between sub-national actors, including municipalities, states, and provinces. We also aim to define some existing conflicts that need innovative sub-national hydropolitics while potential growing conflict needs to preventive measures.
Keywords : Growing cities, Subnational Hydropolitics, Water shortage