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Since the beginning of the reservation era, the bitter conflict between Indians and non-Indians over water rights was largely confined to the courtroom. But in the 1980s the federal government began to emphasize negotiated settlements over lawsuits, and the settlements are changing water rights in fundamental ways—not only for tribes but also for non-Indian communities that share scarce water resources with Indians.In Native Waters, Daniel McCool describes the dramatic impact these settlements are having both on Indian country and on the American West as a whole. Viewing the settlements as a second treaty era, he considers whether they will guarantee the water future of reservations—or, like treaties of old, will require tribes to surrender vast resources in order to retain a small part of their traditional homelands. As one tribal official observed, "It's like your neighbors have been stealing your horses for many years, and now we have to sit down and decide how many of those horses they get to keep."Unlike technical studies of water policy, McCool's book is a readable account that shows us real people attempting to end real disputes that have been going on for decades. He discusses specific water settlements using a combination of approaches—from personal testimony to traditional social science methodology—to capture the richness, complexity, and human texture of the water rights conflict. By explaining the processes and outcomes in plain language and grounding his presentation in relevant explanations of Indian culture, he conveys the complexity of the settlements for readers from a wide range of disciplines.Native Waters illustrates how America is coming to grips with an issue that has long been characterized by injustice and conflict, seeking to enhance our understanding of the settlements in the hope that this understanding will lead to better settlements for all parties. As one of the first assessments of a policy that will have a pervasive impact for centuries to come, it shows that how we resolve Indian water claims tells us a great deal about who we are as a nation and how we confront difficult issues involving race, culture, and the environment.

The remote Colorado Plateau and Great Basin portions of the Intermountain West are areas of spectacular natural beauty and diversity. Due to inaccessibility, however, scientific study of many aspects of the region's natural history has lagged.

Natural History of the Colorado Plateau and Great Basin provides an up-to-date summary of the region's geology, climates, and biology, including thorough treatments of the area's insects, fish, and reptiles. Also discussed are the ecology and distribution of prehistoric human cultures in the region; how modern humans have used (and abused) resources in the Intermountain West; and the impact of post-Pleistocene environmental changes on genetics of disjunct populations of conifer trees.

Written by a diverse group of acknowledged experts, Natural History of the Colorado Plateau and Great Basin offers invaluable background information for all students and resource managers who want to work in or visit the Intermountain West.

Contemporary development debates in Latin America are marked by the pursuit of economic growth, technological improvement and poverty reduction, and are overshadowed by growing concerns about the preservation of the environment and human rights. This collection’s multidisciplinary perspective links local, national, regional and transnational levels of inquiry into the interaction of state and non-state actors involved in promoting or opposing natural resource development. Taking this approach allows the book to contemplate the complex panorama of competing visions, concepts and interests grounded in the mutual influences and interdependencies which shape the contemporary arena of social-environmental conflicts in the region.

Drawing on case studies developed over a two-year period, 1987–1989, by Fellows in the Program in International Development Policy at Duke University, including experienced representatives from developing countries, the World Bank, and scholars, the authors integrate the growing interest in environmental protection and resource conservation into the existing body of knowledge about the political economy of developing countries.
This book is about the links that tie resource use, environmental quality, and economic development, and the way in which those links are affected by the distribution of income and resource ownership. The links may be relatively simple, as in the case of peasant farmers too poor to conserve resources for the future and with nothing to gain from sound environmental practices. Or they may be very complex—as the authors find when they demonstrate how achievement of higher incomes by the rich can increase environmentally destructive behavior by the poor. Many of the links in some way involve rural land use, whether for agriculture or forestry. Natural Resource Policymaking in Developing Countries argues that the policies that matter are not merely those dealing with resources and the environment, but a much broader set that includes income distribution and asset ownership.

China’s westernmost province of Xinjiang has experienced escalating cycles of violence, interethnic strife, and state repression since the 1990s. In their search for the roots of these growing tensions, scholars have tended to focus on ethnic clashes and political disputes. In Natural Resources and the New Frontier, historian Judd C. Kinzley takes a different approach—one that works from the ground up to explore the infrastructural and material foundation of state power in the region.
 
As Kinzley argues, Xinjiang’s role in producing various natural resources for regional powers has been an important but largely overlooked factor in fueling unrest. He carefully traces the buildup to this unstable situation over the course of the twentieth century by focusing on the shifting priorities of Chinese, Soviet, and provincial officials regarding the production of various resources, including gold, furs, and oil among others. Through his archival work, Kinzley offers a new way of viewing Xinjiang that will shape the conversation about this important region and offer a model for understanding the development of other frontier zones in China as well as across the global south.

Nevada's relatively brief history (it became a state in 1864) has been largely a story of the exploitation of its natural resources. Mining has torn down mountains and poisoned streams and groundwater. Uncontrolled grazing by vast herds of sheep and cattle has denuded grasslands and left them prey to the invasion of noxious plant species and vulnerable to wildfire. Clear-cut logging practices have changed the composition of forests and induced serious soil erosion. More recently, military testing, including hundreds of atomic blasts to determine the efficacy of nuclear weapons, has irreversibly polluted expanses of fragile desert landscape. And rampant development throughout the state over the past four decades, along with the public's growing demand for recreational facilities, has placed intolerable demands on the arid state's limited water resources and threatened the survival of numerous rare plant and animal species. Veteran historian and Nevada native James W. Hulse considers the state's complex environmental history as a series of Faustian bargains between the state's need for economic development and the industries, government agencies, and individuals that have exploited Nevada's natural resources with little concern for the long-term consequences of their activities. His survey covers all these issues, and examines public attitudes about the environment and the role of federal and state agencies in creating, interpreting, and enforcing environmental policies.

According to Wikipedia: "A wicked problem is one that is impossible or difficult to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize.  The term 'wicked' refers to such a problem's resistance to resolution, not to an evil nature.  Classic examples of wicked problems include economic, environmental, and political issues.”
 
We now live in a world full of wicked problems, most of them urgent challenges calling out for creative, democratic, and effective solutions.  Ed Weber, Denise Lach, and Brent Steele, of the Oregon State University School of Public Policy, solicited papers from a wide variety of accomplished scholars in the fields of science, politics, and policy with significant research experience to address this challenge.  The resultant collection focuses on major contemporary environmental and natural resource policy issues, and proposes an assortment of alternative problem-solving methodologies to tackle such problems. 
 
New Strategies for Wicked Problems will appeal to scholars, students, and decision-makers wrestling with wicked problems and “post-normal” science settings beyond simply environmental and natural resource-based issues.  It will provide much needed guidance to policymakers, citizens, public managers, and various stakeholders who are struggling with wicked problems in their professional lives.

Other Contributors:
Tanya Heikkila
Helen Ingram
Ann C. Keller
Bob Lackey
Anna Pakenham Stevenson
Christopher M. Weible
Daniel R. Williams