Gardening the World

Around the world, intensifying development and human demands forfresh water are placing unsustainable pressures on finiteresources. Countries are waging war over transboundary rivers,and rural and urban communities are increasingly divided asirrigation demands compete with domestic desires. Marginal groupsare losing access to water as powerful elites protect their owninterests, and entire ecosystems are being severely degraded.These problems are particularly evident in Australia, with...
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Around the world, intensifying development and human demands forfresh water are placing unsustainable pressures on finiteresources. Countries are waging war over transboundary rivers,and rural and urban communities are increasingly divided asirrigation demands compete with domestic desires. Marginal groupsare losing access to water as powerful elites protect their owninterests, and entire ecosystems are being severely degraded.These problems are particularly evident in Australia, with itsindustrialised economy and arid climate. Yet there have beenrelatively few attempts to examine the social and culturalcomplexities that underlie people's engagements with water. Basedon long-term ethnographic fieldwork in two major Australian rivercatchments (the Mitchell River in Cape York, and the BrisbaneRiver in southeast Queensland), this book examines their majorwater using and managing groups: indigenous communities, farmers,industries, recreational and domestic water users, andenvironmental organisations. It explores the issues that shapetheir different beliefs, values and practices in relation towater, and considers the specifically cultural or sub-culturalmeanings that they encode in their material surroundings. Throughan analysis of each group's diverse efforts to 'garden theworld', it provides insights into the complexities of human-environmental relationships.