New York University
School of Continuing and Professional Studies
M.S. Program in Global Affairs
GLOB1-GC.2525 -- Water: Politics, Sustainability, & Opportunities
Spring 2012, Monday, 6:30-9:10pm
DRAFT January 4, 2012 

INSTRUCTOR: Chris Gadomski
http://www.smidirect.net/nyu
OFFICE HOURS: Mondays by appointment
OFFICE PHONE:914.993.9060
E-mail:gadomski@nyu.edu

Course Objective

Water, or more precisely, the lack of clean and abundant supplies has emerged as the next global challenge to human health, prosperity and peace. In the time that it takes you to read this sylabus, nearly 80 children will have died as a result of contaminated or insufficient water. Extrapolate that rate for a year, and according to researchers for the National Geographic Institute, that number swells to 3.4 million people. Most of them will be children under five living in either Asia or Africa victims to cholera, arsenic and uncontrolled diarrhea.

In Europe and the Americas, drinking water is not nearly as fatal, but pollution of groundwater and the rapid depletion of underground aquifers also pose serious economic and environmental challenges. Although 71% of the globe is covered by water, less than 2% of the world’s water is fresh, accessible and drinkable. The inhabitants of earth are not equally blessed. In parts of North America, renewable water resources exceed 37,000 cubic meters per capita per year. That is well above the world average of 7,000 cubic meters. At the other end of the spectrum lie many of the nations of the Middle East and North Africa where annual renewable water resources barely reach 100 cubic meters per person.

It will be our goal to understand how future generations will cope with challenges to water management. From a societal, technological, environmental, economic and political perspective, we will examine how countries/municipalities/companies/society/individuals contribute to developing a sustainable water future.

Another important goal is developing a thorough understanding of water and its cost. We will investigate "fossil water" and the sustainability of various agricultural economic development schemes.

Course Structure

This is an applied course that will be very much driven by hard data. We will learn about water, the current threats to its sustainable use, potential conflict areas that may emerge over water resources, technological solutions to water scarcity, and finally the business of water through lectures, case analysis, class discussion and class assignments which will be based upon real projects. Our starting point will be a variety of web resources, several books and the daily newspapers that will form the foundation for our class lectures and discussions. We will complete our course with a semester group project, as well as an individual final project/exam.

To understand the challenges the world faces with regard to its endangered water supplies, the course segments the discussion of water into four sections including:

1-An assessment of the world's resources and threats to its sustainable use.
A) A geographical analysis and discussion of the water stressed areas of the globe.
B) Fossil water: Where and why it is often not a renewable resource.
C) Water and prosperity, the key to fostering economic development?
D) Water and energy and industrial pollution…when the Cuyahoga River caught fire.

2-Technological solutions--how effective can they be?
A) Harnessing rivers, dam/reservoir building.
B) Water mitigation efforts: conservation and waste water management.
C) Desalination.

3-Water wars--will the scarcity of water lead to armed conflict? If so, where and why?
A) The politics of water management—from Owens Valley to the Metropolitan Water district.
B) Potential conflict along the Tigris and Euphrates.
c) Jordan and Israel, a festering problem?
D) Water woes in sub-Saharan Africa.

4-The business of water. If access to clean fresh water is an undeniable right of mankind, how will societies reconsile the privatization and commercializatiton of water.
A) Water and agriculture. Examining when growing cash crops becomes economically unsustainable.
B) Water management. Successes and failures of the public sector.
C) Private efforts to manage water. Pay as you go, is it socially correct?
D) Cashing in on water delivery. Examining Vivendi, Coca Cola and other global water companies.

Assessment

• Class Attendance and Participation--25%
• Midterm Examination (Qualitative)--25%
• Semester Group Project/In-Class Presentation--25%
• Final Project/Exam (Quantitative)--25%

Required Reading--(Resources without prices are free downloads.)

• Alexander Carius, Geoffrey Dabelko, Aaron Wolf, Water Conflict and Cooperation, ECSP Report, Issue 10, 2004
• Boccaletti, Guilio, Martin Stuchtey, Marc van Olst, Confronting South Africa’s water challenge, 2010, McKinsey Quarterly.
• Briscoe, John, Next-generation water policy for business and government, 2010, McKinsey Quarterly.
• Corcoran, E., C. Nelleman, E Baker, et al., Sick Water? The central role of wastewater management in sustainable development. 2010, UNEP, ISBN, 978-82-7701-075-5.
• ESCWA Water Development Report 3, Role of Desalination in Addressing Water Scarcity, United Nations, E/ESCWA/SDSP/2009/4, ISBN 978-92-1-128329-7, November 2009
• Fryer, James, An Investigation of the Marginal Cost of Seawater Desalination in California, 2010, Residents for Responsible Desalination, http://R4RD.org
• Robert Glennon, Water Follies, Island Press, ISBN-13: 978-1559634007, 2004 $9.99
• Heather Cooley, Julian Fulton, Peter Gleick, Water for Energy: Future Water Needs for Electricity in the Intermountain West, Pacific Institute, Oakland 2011, ISBN 13: 9781893790360
• Kaltenborn, B.P., Nellemann, C., Vistenes, I.I. (Eds) 2010, High mountain glaciers and climate change – Challenges to human livelihoods and adaptations. United Nations Environment Programme, GRID-Arendal, www.grida.no, ISBN: 978-82-7701-087-8
Printed by Birkeland Trykkeri AS, Norway
• MENA Water Outlook to 2050, World Bank, April 2011
• National Geographic Magazine, California's Pipe Dream, April 2010
• National Geographic Magazine, Global Fresh Water, September 2002
• National Geographic Magazine, Down the Drain, September 2002
• National Geographic Magazine, Middle East Water, May 1993 (not available on the web unless you have an archive subscription $19.99)
• National Geographic Magazine, Get the Salt Out, March 2010
• Use of Desalination and Renewable Energy to Close the Water Demand Gap in MENA, World Bank, March 2011
• Korsgaard and Schou, Economic valuation of aquatic ecosystems services in developing countries, Water Policy, 12 (2010) 20-31.
• Pacific Institute, Climate Change and the Global Water Crisis: What Business Needs to Know and Do, United Nations, May 2009
• Peter Rogers & Susan Leal, Running Out of Water, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2010, ISBN 9780230615649 ($9.99).
• Water Resources Issues in the ESCWA Region, United Nations House, E/ESCWA/SDPD/Technical Paper, 2 09-0447, December 2009.
• The Wall Street Journal, or The Financial Times, or The New York Times. Bring relevant articles to each class for discussion. 

Other Resources

• Barlow, Maude, Blue Covenant: The global water crisis and the coming battle for the right for water, New Press, 2009. $16.95
• Borrego Water District
• California Dept. of Water Resources – Integrated Regional Water Management website
• Colin Chartes and Samyuktha, Solving the World's Water Problems, FTPress, ISBN: 978-0-13-259969-6, ($1.99)
• Colin Chartes and Samyuktha Varma, Climate Change and Water Supply, FTPress, ISBN: 978-0-13-259969-6, ($1.99)
• "The Atlas of Water, Second Edition: Mapping the World's Most Critical Resource"
Black, Maggie; Paperback; $18.72
• Libecap, Gary D., Chinatown Revisited: Owens Valley and Los Angeles—Bargaining Costs and Fairness Perceptions of the First Major Water Rights Exchange, Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, May 4, 2008
• National Geographic Magazine website, Freshwater
• Residents for Responsible Desalination, http://R4RD.org
• Water Wikinet
• Yudelson, Jerry, Dry Run, Preventing the Next Urban Water Crisis, New Society, 2010.
• Jia Haujun, Zhang Yajun, Nuclear Desalination Plant Coupled with 200MW Heating Reactor,Proceedings, International Symposium on the Peaceful Applications of Nuclear Technology in the GCC Countries, Jeddah 2008
• UN World Water Development Report, Vol 3, 2009.
• UNESCO Water website

Suggested Supplementary Reading

Time permitting we will supplement the readings above with additional Harvard Business School cases including:

• Karthik Ramanna, George Serafeim, Also Sesia, Urban Water Parters, HBS Case 9-111-016, October 26, 2010.
• Water Funds: Financing Nature's Ability to Protect Water Supplies, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Case OIT-104, 1/11/11

I will also post supplementary reading on the blackboard. Check before class.

Class Attendance

All students must attend class regularly. Your contribution to classroom learning is essential to the success of the course. Any more than two (2) absences (with an explanation or not) during the Fall and Spring and one (1) absence during the summer will likely lead to a need to withdraw from the course or a failing grade.

I expect you to be prepared for every class by doing the assigned readings. I will open each class by asking you to summarize the topic of the day and to relate news stories you have clipped to present or past discussions.

Incompletes are only granted in extreme cases such as illness or other family emergency and only where almost all work for the semester has been successfully completed. A student’s procrastination in completing his/her paper is not a basis for an Incomplete.

Semester Project/In-Class Presentation/Final Project

We will examine a wide variety of water related issues in this class. To give you an opportunity to become an expert on a particular topic, and to develop your oral and written communications skills, each of you will form teams of 4 to 5 students and complete an in-depth examination of a particular water issue. Each team will present its findings to the class. Form teams by the third class with specific proposals for appropriate semester projects. We will either complete an individual semester final project or exam to be determined.

Getting it done

I have an affinity for numbers…and I expect you to develop the same in this class. If your work is short on numbers…something is wrong. A strong grasp of, and comfort with, the numbers is crucial in this class and in your careers going forward.

The professional community places a tremendous premium on executives that can present well. Accordingly, each of you will have plenty of opportunity to do so.

It is the express policy of the class that no late assignments will be accepted under any circumstances. I expect each student to bear individual responsibility for his or her work and to uphold the ideal of academic integrity. All written work must be submitted via the assignment tool on Blackboard.

Plagiarism is presenting someone else’s work as though it were one’s own. More specifically, plagiarism is to present as one’s own a sequence of words quoted without quotation marks from another writer; a paraphrased passage from another writer’s work; creative images, artwork, or design; or facts or ideas gathered, organized, and reported by someone else, orally and/or in writing and not providing proper attribution. Since plagiarism is a matter of fact, not of the student’s intention, it is crucial that acknowledgement of the sources be accurate and complete. Even where there is no conscious intention to deceive, the failure to make appropriate acknowledgment constitutes plagiarism. Penalties for plagiarism range from failure for a paper or course to dismissal from the University.

If for whatever reason the course is progressing in a way that causes you concern, please advise immediately. I look forward to a wonderful semester.

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