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 percent 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.
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 percent 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.
Keeping Up the Flow
Lynne Heasley is an Associate Professor with the Department of History and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at Western Michigan University. Her research examines the intersections and complex problems of ecology, economics, and culture in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence basin. She is the author of A Thousand Pieces of Paradise: Landscape and Property in the Kickapoo Valley. Lynne Heasley is an Associate Professor with the Department of History and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at Western Michigan University. Her research examines the intersections and complex problems of ecology, economics, and culture in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence basin. She is the author of A Thousand Pieces of Paradise: Landscape and Property in the Kickapoo Valley. Frédéric Lasserre is a professor of Geography at Laval University, Directeur du Centre Québécois d'Ãtudes géopolitiques and a research associate at Groupe d'études et de recherche sur l'Asie contemporaine. Daniel Macfarlane is an assistant professor in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at Western Michigan University. Graeme Wynn is a professor of historical geography at the University of British Columbia and editor of BC Studies. He is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Canada and lives in Vancouver. Daniel Macfarlane is an assistant professor in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at Western Michigan University.
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
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