Agriculture, Environment and Development: International Perspectives on Water, Land and Politics

This book deals with past legacies and emerging challenges associated with agriculture production, water and environmental management, and local and national development. It offers a critical interpretation of the tensions associated with the failures of mainstream regulatory regimes and the impacts of global agri-food chains. The various chapters include conceptual and empirical material from research carried out in Brazil, India and Europe. The assessment takes into account the dilemmas faced by farmers, companies, policy-makers and the international community related to growing food demand, water scarcity and environmental degradation. The book also questions most government reactions to those problems that tend to reproduce old, productivist approaches and are normally under the powerful influence of global corporations, mega-supermarkets and investment funds. Its overall message is that the trajectory of agriculture, rural development and environmental management are integral elements of the broader search for justice and novel socio-ecological thinking.

Antonio A. R. Ioris is Lecturer in Environment and Society and Director of the MSc in Environment and Development at the University of Edinburgh, UK. He trained as a political geographer and agricultural engineer and is an international scholar with an extensive research portfolio and numerous articles published in peer-reviewed journals. Recent books include Water, State and the City (2015, Palgrave Macmillan).