Last oasis : facing water scarcity
"It is no coincidence that human civilization sprang from river valleys and floodplains. Access to water has been crucial to our food security and to the growth of cities and industries. In recent times, the fortunate have come to take water for granted: Endless supplies seem to flow from dams, reservoirs, wells, and diversion projects." "But for decades now we have wasted and mismanaged the world's water. Engineering projects, ever larger as demands spiral upward, have created an illusion of plenty even in the midst of scarcity. Gross underpricing has concealed the need for careful management. We have come to view water strictly as a resource that is there for the taking, rather than as a living system that drives the natural world on which we depend." "We are entering a new era - an era of water scarcity. The signs are evident the world over: shrinking lakes and seas, depleted river flows, and falling groundwater levels. Chronic shortages could unfold this decade in much of Africa, northern China, pockets of India, Mexico, the Middle East, and parts of western North America." "Already 26 countries have too little water to support their populations sustainably. We hear rumblings of potential war over water in the Middle East. And competition for supplies is brewing between city-dwellers and farmers around Beijing, New Delhi, Phoenix, and other water-short areas." "In this, the third volume in the Worldwatch Environmental Alert Series, Sandra Postel examines the limits - ecological, economic, and political - of water. Postel, vice president for research of the Worldwatch Institute, writes with authority and clarity of these emerging threats to our future. And, perhaps most important, she offers a disarmingly sensible way out of such struggles."
Print Book, English, ©1992
1st ed
W.W. Norton, New York, ©1992