Lyla Mehta (ed) - The Limits to Scarcity: Contesting the Politics of Allocation

London Washington, DC

First published in 2010 by Earthscan

Copyright Lyla Mehta, 2010

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ISBN: 978-1-84407-457-0 hardback
ISBN: 978-1-84407-542-3 paperback

Typeset by Composition and Design Services
Cover design by Susanne Harris

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The limits to scarcity : contesting the politics of allocation / edited by Lyla Mehta.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-84407-457-0 (hbk.) ISBN 978-1-84407-542-3 (pbk.) 1. Scarcity. 2.
Welfare economics. 3. Supply and demand. 4. Resource allocation. I. Mehta, Lyla.
HB846.L56 2010
338.521dc22 2010019662

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For Wolfgang Sachs

Lyla Mehta

Lyla Mehta

Lyla Mehta

Nicholas Xenos

Betsy Hartmann

Lyla Mehta

Ben Fine

Fred Luks

Sajay Samuel and Jean Robert

Michael Thompson

Lyla Mehta

Nicholas Hildyard

Ian Scoones

Erik Millstone

Bruce Lankford

Jasveen Jairath

Dipak Gyawali and Ajaya Dixit

Lyla Mehta

Cultural categories of objects and the possible transfers between them

The three degrees of freedom and the five need-and-resource managing strategies

Nutrient depletion in Africa

Resource flow diagram, Wolayta, Ethiopia

US wheat prices, annual averages, 18661998

Scale and time acting on water sharing options

Supply and demand curves deemed to be in broad equilibria

Varying supply, demand and share management under a variable climate

Detail demonstrating modification of shares in a declining supply

A conceptual framework of scarcity response

View from plural rationalities: Abundance, scarcity or depletion?

Framework of supply management as a scarcity response

Framework of demand management as a scarcity response

Framework of share management

Comparing approaches for managing dynamic supply in sub-catchments

Four types of goods

Ajaya Dixit
Executive Director
Institute for Social and Environmental Transition Nepal (ISET-N)
GPO Box 3971
Kathmandu
Nepal

adbaluwatar@ntc.net.np

Ajaya Dixit is an analyst of water resources and environment themes in Nepal and South Asia. He is the founder of Nepal Water Conservation Foundation (NWCF) and editor of Water Nepal, a journal addressing interdisciplinary water and development issues. He taught hydraulics and water resources engineering at Tribhuvan University's Institute of Engineering until 1989. He was educated at Regional Engineering College Rourkela, India (1977) and University of Strathclyde, Glasgow (1981).

He serves as chairman of the board of directors of Nepal Water for Health (NEWAH), a Nepali NGO that that has helped develop drinking water supply, sanitation and hygiene services to about 1 million people. He has written extensively on water resources, trans-boundary cooperation, flood management, environment and developmental issues and is the author of