Border Flows
A Century of the Canadian-American Water Relationship
Lynne Heasley editor Daniel Macfarlane editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:University of Calgary Press
Published:30th Nov '16
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Declining access to fresh water is one of the twenty-first century's most pressing environmental and human rights challenges, yet the struggle for water is not a new cause. The 8,800-kilometer border dividing Canada and the United States contains more than 20% of the world's total freshwater resources, and Border Flows traces the century-long effort by Canada and the United States to manage and care for their ecologically and economically shared rivers and lakes.
Ranging across the continent, from the Great Lakes to the Northwest Passage to the Salish Sea, the histories in Border Flows offer critical insights into the historical struggle to care for these vital waters. From multiple perspectives, the book reveals alternative paradigms in water history, law, and policy at scales from the local to the transnational. Students, concerned citizens, and policymakers alike will benefit from the lessons to be found along this critical international border.
This collection of thoughtful essays by an impressive group of expert contributors examines separation and inter-action along the aquatic borders, boundaries, and borderlands shared by Canada and the United States. How distinct jurisdictions as neighbours at various political levels have and will con-tinue to face common challenges makes this volume a valuable record of aquatic envi-ronmental history and a source of insights into the future of water, aptly described by the editors as âa fundamental environmental and moral concern of the twenty-first century.â -Jamie Benidickson, Faculty of Law and Centre for Environmental Law and Global Sustainability, University of Ottawa
These impressive essays penetrate many dualisms-abundance and scarcity, Canada and the U.S., local and regional, science and humanities, and geography and history to name a few. The accomplished authors provide both rich details and expansive views of the transborder territory and illuminate both the shared and dissimilar interests of the two principal political entities, while exposing the mutual concerns that float atop the border-defying and fluid topic of water. Riding the rapids of a tumultuous subject, the contributors make sense of the highly contentious and complex issues for academic and lay readers alike. -Craig E. Colten, Carl O. Sauer Professor, Department of Geography & Anthropology, Louisiana State University
Reading this book was like taking a boundary waters canoe trip with experienced guides narrating the landscape and humanityâs place in it. They taught me about lakes, fish, and flora; law, politics, and prejudice; photographs, fish-buying, and ice-sail-ing. In the evening after dinner, around the campfire, these boundary waters guides spoke from their hearts about their love of nature and longing for a just world in the final section of the book entitled âFinding Our Place.â It was inspiring and enjoyable. I heartily recommend the journey. -Paul Hirt, Professor of History and Sustainability, Arizona State University
"....This book presents close analyses of this paradox, as experienced in the waters and landscapes of the border regions of Canada and the United States. The editors, both at Western Michigan University, have brought together in this nicely constructed volume an international cast of historians and other scholars....". Bocking, S. (2018)
Border Flows demonstrates the value of reaching across ideological and methodological boundaries that divide academic disciplines . . . the editors' keen sense for organization and the myriad conceptual connections that reach across each section, link this collection of articles to a larger aquatic context. This book will appeal to students and scholars from a wide variety of academic backgrounds and will serve as an excellent text for courses in legal history, environmental history, foreign relations, and borderlands studies. This edited collection represents a fine addition to the historiography of borders and water. - Erik Reardon, Canadian Journal of History
ISBN: 9781552388952
Dimensions: 228mm x 152mm x 25mm
Weight: 550g