Back to the Well
Rethinking the Future of Water
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Shortlisted for the Donner Prize and the Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award
Droughts, floods, and contamination of fresh water in the american Southwest, in the Great Lakes region, in Australia, in northern china, in the Middle East, and in India have broguht the critical issue of water supply to the forefront of public consciousness. In dozens of countries, ordinary citizens have cause to worry about what (or how much) will come out of their taps — if they even have taps — and who will make sure it is available, affordable, and safe.
In this refreshing examination of the fate and future of water, Marq de Villiers takes on some of the biggest questions and shibboleths of the century. Who owns water? is access to water a human right? Who is responsible for keeping water clean and ensuring it gets to the people who need it most? Is privatization of ownership and supply networks an evil or an extension of the public trust?
Fifteen years after the publication of Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource, his influential Governor General's Award-winning book on the water crisis, de Villiers returns with a clear-eyed assessment of the politics of water — from the personal and commercial uses of water to the impact of climate change and global conflicts. Examining how political ideologies often obscure the underlying issues, de Villiers makes the controversial suggestion that there is no global water crisis, but that water problems are fundamentally local and regional and can most effectively be addressed through local, rather than global, action.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Conventional wisdom holds that the world is nearing "peak water." De Villiers (Windswept) agrees that water problems persist but argues that they are more localized than global, and that local issues such as water shortages, pollution, ownership, and distribution are all "more tractable easier to solve, not harder" than worldwide ones. In five sections, he addresses water issues with equal parts caution and confidence. He writes that the state of groundwater, for example, is "dire" but hardly catastrophic, depending on the region. The same goes for the world's rivers, which are in big trouble, but not so far gone that they cannot be saved. More controversial will be de Villiers's claim that water privatization portends neither the doom expressed by neoliberal opponents nor the utopia envisioned by free-market cheerleaders. "Almost always," he notes, " privatization' means various degrees of partnership between public and private sectors." He takes similarly measured approaches to fracking (not enough is known about its long-term effects on water) and climate change (a cause of droughts but not the only one). This book will ruffle some feathers as well as open some minds, but for anyone who cares about the earth's most precious resource, it is worth the read.
