Ideological and volume politics behind cloud water resource governance - Weather modification in China
Journal
Geoforum
Journal Volume
85
Pages
225-233
Date Issued
2017
Author(s)
Abstract
Weather modification operations are the intntional alteration of weather and cloud water conditions using technologies such as cloud seeding. Post-socialist authoritarian China is the world's leading user of state power for rainfall enhancement through weather modification, with diverse purposes including agriculture production, water security, ecological preservation, and mega events. We argue that weather modification in China needs to be understood as a facet of ecological modernization, in which the authoritarian state believes that precipitation can be controlled through the use of advanced technologies, thus transforming clouds into a kind of cloud water resource. Two political dimensions are highlighted to understand precipitation control and utilization of cloud water: the first is a new ideological politics of the changing human-weather relationship from ‘adaptation to the weather’ to ‘taming the weather”; the second is volume politics that presents unique characteristics of airborne water as opposed to terrestrial and groundwater. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd
Subjects
Authoritarian environmentalism; Cloud water resource; Ecological modernization; Taming the weather; Volume politics; Weather modification
Other Subjects
cloud seeding; environmentalism; governance approach; modernization; political ideology; rainfall; state role; water management; water resource; China
Type
journal article