Water: A Shared Responsibility: United Nations World Water Development Report 2

Recent years have seen many changes in human reproduction resulting from state and medical interventions in childbearing processes. Based on empirical work in a variety of societies and countries, this volume considers the relationship between reproductive processes (of fertility, pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period) on the one hand and attitudes, medical technologies and state health policies in diverse cultural contexts on the other.

Named "Outstanding Academic Title" by Choice magazine. A joint undertaking of the 24 UN agencies comprising UN-Water, and in partnership with governments and other entities concerned with freshwater issues, this volume, covering as it does all regions and most countries of the world, provides an up-to-date global overview of the state and uses of freshwater, critical water-related problems, and societies' coping mechanisms. Drawing on an extensive database, expert analysis, case studies, and hundreds of graphic elements, it is the most comprehensive undertaking to date of freshwater assessment, providing a mechanism for monitoring changes in the resource and its management and progress towards achieving development targets, particularly the Millennium Development Goals. Building on the conclusions of the first United Nations World Water Development Report, Water for People, Water for Life (2003), the 2006 Report confirms the ongoing, serious and growing water crisis-essentially a crisis of governance-and points to a prevalent lack of capacity and knowledge base as today's primary obstacles to achieving the necessary levels of water governance. This volume proposes a more integrated vision of water resources management to respond to changing environmental and socio-economic conditions. Includes CD-Rom

Maya Unnithan-Kumar is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Sussex. Her research in the early 1990s focused on kinship and gender relations in northwest India and appeared as Identity, Gender and Poverty (Berghahn Books 1997).