China 
Africa 
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Re-Defining Water Security
Published in Velma I. Grover, Amani Alfarra, Water, Sustainable Development and the Nexus, 2019
Amani Alfarra, Islam Abdelgadir
'Productivism' accepts productivity and growth as ultimate goods for organising society. Source: Ozzie Zehner. 2012. Out of Water: From abundance to scarcity and how to solve the world's water problems, The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism edn., Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.
The water–man eristic dialectics for sustainable hydro-governance
Published in Water International, 2021
In the anthropocentric model, sometimes known as productivism, nature serves human society by providing natural assets, such as water, air, food and fossil energy. Hopefully, this natural capital is not only stocked on the planet but is also regenerated in the biosphere by complex natural and biochemical processes and ecosystem services. For example, freshwater resources are recycled through the hydrological cycle and forests are naturally regenerated. Man uses the natural capital to produce income from goods and services, such as water supply and sanitation, housing, transportation and infrastructure. This is the produced capital that man can develop through human capital, which consists of tools related to education, labour and technological innovation. By increasing his capital, man returns to nature, what economists call externalities (Figure 5a). These are different forms of water pollution, solid waste and land use (i.e., deforestation, agricultural activity, urbanization). In economic terms, the total economic progress made is monitored by global domestic product (GDP) per capita. In recent times, humanity has faced the so-called ‘impact inequality’, that is, the fact that human activities, linked to exponential population increase, have generated a demand for natural assets that exceeds the biosphere’s regeneration potential. Data show that since 1992, although average GDP has increased by 200%, the natural capital per person has been reduced by 40% (Dasgupta, 2021). Our ecological footprint continues to exceed nature’s regeneration potential: while in 1961 humanity needed 0.7 of our planet, in 2008, 1.5 planets were necessary to satisfy humanity (WWF, 2008). Concerning the overuse of natural water resources, the situation is locally visible, when groundwater overdraft exceeds not only the renewable groundwater resources but also drains part of surface water and groundwater stocks. As a result, groundwater levels are steadily declining, the flow of streams is reduced and aquifers are depleted.