This conference took place on March 11, 2014.
Water is a natural, social, political, and technological resource, of crucial importance to the development and co-habitation of the region shared in tension by Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians, and others.With this conference, we hope to move water and environmental scholarship forward, by creating a space for engagement among scholars, practitioners, and the public about key Israeli and Palestinian water issues. The panels and presentations bring together scholars from political science, law, history, geography, peace and conflict studies, anthropology, science and technology studies, ecology, and hydrology to explore the power and possibilities of water and nature in Israeli and Palestinian environmental and socio-political landscapes. An environmental perspective maintains the focus on water but allows water to trace the flow of discussion into other significant processes and histories — impacting borders, access, and control. A multidisciplinary environmental perspective also allows us to examine water as a continuum between nature and culture and to consider how we use and think about water as a substance and as a resource. While focused primarily on Israeli and Palestinian waterways, this conference will have far reaching implications for how we think about water and environmental policy everywhere.