Valuing Water

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the vital task of valuing water in an era of economic globalization. I depict, analyze, evaluate and integrate several scholarly discourses that inform the slippery task of valuing water in the present day. My starting point is the context of economic globalization. Chapter 1 introduces a political economy of water that has relied upon the proliferation of large-scale hydraulic technologies. It then explores important aspects of economic globalization vis-a-vis natural resources and charts major developments in, and challenges to, the incorporation of environmental concerns into economic theory. The concluding section postulates that neither economics nor ethics have sufficiently delved into the murky questions surrounding fresh water's value