Abstract This essay counters the growing tendency in current scholarship to attribute nearly all the enduring water scarcity problems to climate change. Focusing on Harare, Zimbabwe's capital city, this essay contends that recurrent water crises can only really be understood within the contentious, long, and complex history of water politics in the capital city from the colonial to the postcolonial period. Although the colonial and postcolonial states in Zimbabwe had very different ideological and racial policies, for various reasons, neither was willing nor able to provide adequate supplies of water to the urban poor even as water was abundant in the city's reservoirs. It posits that while the colonial government racialized access to water by restricting its use by urban Africans, the postcolonial government failed to change the colonial patterns of urban water distribution and did little to increase water supplies to keep pace with a swiftly growing urban population and a geographically expanding city.

中文翻译：

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哈拉雷城市为水资源短缺而斗争

摘要 本文反驳了当前学术界将几乎所有持久的水资源短缺问题都归因于气候变化的日益增长的趋势。本文以津巴布韦首都哈拉雷为中心，认为只有在首都从殖民时期到后殖民时期充满争议、漫长而复杂的水政治历史中，才能真正理解反复出现的水危机。尽管津巴布韦的殖民国家和后殖民国家有着截然不同的意识形态和种族政策，但由于各种原因，即使城市水库中的水源充足，也不愿意也无法为城市贫民提供充足的水供应。它假定，虽然殖民政府通过限制非洲城市人使用水来种族化获取水资源，