When the Rivers Run Dry: Water--The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-First Century (Hardcover)

by Fred Pearce (Author) "Few of us realize how much water it takes to get us through the day..." (more)
Key Phrases: western aquifer, underground water reserves, virtual water, West Bank, Yellow River, Aral Sea (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Veteran science writer Pearce (Turning Up the Heat) makes a strong—and scary—case that a worldwide water shortage is the most fearful looming environmental crisis. With a drumbeat of facts both horrific (thousands of wells in India and Bangladesh are poisoned by fluoride and arsenic) and fascinating (it takes 20 tons of water to make one pound of coffee), the former New Scientist news editor documents a "kind of cataclysm" already affecting many of the world's great rivers. The Rio Grande is drying up before it reaches the Gulf of Mexico; the Nile has been dammed to a trickle; reservoirs behind ill-conceived dams sacrifice millions of gallons of water to evaporation, while wetlands and floodplains downriver dry up as water flow dwindles. In India, villagers lacking access to clean water for irrigation and drinking are sinking tube wells hundreds of feet down, plundering underground supplies far faster than rainfall can replace them—the same fate facing the Ogallala aquifer of the American Midwest. The news, recounted with a scientist's relentless accumulation of observable fact, is grim. Maps. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* From the Amazon to the Nile, the Congo to the Colorado, the rivers of the world are running dry. Forget oil: nations have gone to war over water rights and access in the past, and may be forced to do so again as the availability and purity of this vital resource continues to decline. Unlike fossil fuels, water is considered a renewable resource, an erroneous belief that has contributed to its abuse and misuse by superpowers and Third World countries alike. Yet as aquifers are tapped to extinction, rivers dammed to depletion, and wetlands converted to deserts, societies continue to employ the profligate water management techniques that created the current dire situations. Former New Science news editor Pearce cogently presents the alarming ways in which this ecological emergency is affecting population centers, human health, food production, wildlife habitats, and species viability. Having crisscrossed the globe to research the economic, scientific, cultural, and political causes and ramifications of this underpublicized tragedy, Pearce's powerful imagery, penetrating analyses, and passionate advocacy make this required reading for environmental proponents and civic leaders everywhere. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 324 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press (March 9, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807085723
• ISBN-13: 978-0807085721
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #226,519 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fresh Water: The Defining Crisis of the 21st Century, April 19, 2006

By	Cactusman "Jan" (Arizona USA) - See all my reviews

British author Fred Pearce has collected together some of the most interesting, nerve-wracking, disappointing, and infuriating stories and statistics on water politics worldwide into this gripping volume, titled When the Rivers Run Dry. The depth with which Pearce treats the subject and the diversity of angles from which he approaches the issues facing water management (and rather more often the appalling mismanagement) makes this book required reading for those who wish to be environmentally literate.

Actually, let me elevate that statement to say instead that this book should be required reading for anyone over the age of 15, regardless of their language or nationality or cultural background. Many people think that water comes from the tap in the same way that milk comes from the carton, and this simplistic ignorance is dangerously impermissible in a supposedly educated society. Pearce's work is illuminating and educational while also being an engaging read, and given the fact that water is even more fundamental to life than oil is, everyone should know much more than they generally do about the water cycle. More to the point, we need to know how that cycle supports human life and civilization, and how it is being disrupted and abused for selfish political gains, economic control, and narrowly commercial self-interest.

This abuse is being perpetrated by a handful of breathtakingly arrogant government bureaucrats, working in concert with wonkish engineers disconnected from ecological realities and corporate thieves seeking to commandeer common and collectively-held resources for their own private empires. Prepare to be shocked, dismayed, and appalled as you read about what has happened to the world's rivers, lakes, marshes, and estuaries. Worse yet, you'll likely be disheartened by what is planned for the future. Said future looks grim unless the world's people wake up to what is happening and disallow the destructive centralized planning that is threatening to wreak massive negative change upon what remains of the world's freshwater ecological systems.

No nation is exempt from the potable fresh water crisis, although the most immediate and well-publicized dilemmas are occurring in arid and semiarid regions. It is indeed logical that water is one of the most embattled resources in arid regions, but Pearce demonstrates that even rivers in abundantly wet areas suffer under environmental strains as varied as climate change, hydroelectric projects, and pilfering for export to drier neighboring climates. From Cambodia to Israel, and from Mexico to Germany, Pearce dedicates chapters to specific types of water-related problems that will astound you and will hopefully act as a wake-up call to action before it is too late.

Lest I give the impression that the book is nothing but doom and gloom, it is important to state that the final few chapters end on a positive note, with success stories and reversals of major and catastrophic disruptions giving a glimpse of light at the end of the dark water tunnel. Solutions with widespread applicability to many neighborhood situations are explored, and there is always the possibility of small local movements turning into global grassroots phenomena. One can take heart in the tentative steps towards sustainable water use being made in places like rural India and downtown Los Angeles even as the looming specters of unparalleled water shortages cast long shadows over those regions.

Anyone who has ever read Cadillac Desert, Marc Reisner's seminal book on water politics in the Western United States, will want to read Fred Pearce's When The Rivers Run Dry. This is a definitive work on worldwide water issues, and ought to take its place in the annals of environmentalist and social justice literature as the message filters through the aquifers of the public's subconscious. Tapping the well of knowledge where water is concerned is going to be critical to global survival. We are all in the same boat, so to speak.

47 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars First-Person Account, No Notes, June 11, 2006

By	Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

This is a good book if you like first-person accounts with no notes that fail to mention other stellar works. I confess to being spoiled by Marc de Villers "WATER: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource," and by David Helvarg's "Blue Frontier: Dispatches from America's Ocean Wilderness" as well as William Langewiesche's "The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime."

It also falls second to "The Winds of Change" and to "The Weather Makers" (I tend to read books in sets to tease out varying perspectives), and ties with "Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum."

The author's most exciting idea, absolutely worthy of global implementation, is to call for the marking of all products with their "water content." He is stunningly education, truly original within my reading as reviewed at Amazon when he itemizes the amount of water needed to create a pound of rice or any of a number of other products. I would advise any future leader to demand that products be labeled as to their water content, their oil content, and their chlorine content (see my review of Joe Thorton's "Pandora's Poison: Chlorine, Health, and a New Environmental Strategy."

The author notes that the US is exporting ONE THIRD of its water in the form of products that consumed that amount of water.

Other highlights from this book, for me personally:

Six water winners are Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Indonesia, and Russia, with Mongolia as a water wild card.

Treaties about water are out of date. Technologies, including cement as an answer for re-directing water, are mis-directed.

97% of the world is sea water--this suggests that we need a MASSIVE global desalination program to protect aquifers from further salination and deterioration (from my own experience: $100M will buy a desalination plant capable of desalinating 100M cubic meters of water a year, or Navy ship or an Army brigade with tanks and artillery, or 1000 diplomats, or 10000 Peace Corps missions, or a day of war over water. It's about trade-offs, and we and not making them wisely.

Kashmir is about Pakistan's Achilles heel, water.

India is on a path to destruction. "Water mines" are selling water for $4.00 (four dollars) a TRUCK TANKER LOAD, and basically mining India dry. When the author comments about a "spate of suicides" among Indian farmers, he fails to mention that this number runs toward 2,000 a year dead by their own hand. He predicts aquifer busts in India and China within 20 years, at which point, as other authors discuss more ably, disease, migrations, crime, and poverty will be as plagues unto those two nations.

Dams produce methane from rotting vegetation, with 8X the greenhouse effect of a coal powered plan of the same capacity. This should in the author's view change the Kyoto calculations. The author is very strong on this point, and suggests that breaking down dams and not building more (e.g. China) should be right up there with global warming as issues for action.

He notes that the 6 day war in the Middle East was about water, but neglects to mention that Israeli agriculture is using up 50% of the water stolen from the Arabs through underground pipes, yet produces less than 5% of Israel's GDP.

I was most taken with the author's discussion of "barefoot science" which emerging during his discussion of toxic or poisoned water such as found in Bangladesh. He cites with great admiration one individual who went from village to village testing wells, with very crude tools, providing reliable estimates of toxicity for 10 cents per well.

A fine book, some excellent insights, but it did leave me a bit cranky. Marq de Villier's book is still the best in class.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Global Water Crisis Spelled-out, January 3, 2007

By	Bugs "Patrick" (Los Angeles, Ca.) - See all my reviews

Fred Pearce has traveled the world researching and documenting water issues for over 20 years and in this alarming book, he has spelled-out current trends of misuse of our precious water resources. Aquifers, lakes, and rivers are being drained faster than can be replenished. Worse yet, these bodies of water in many areas are being infiltrated by sewage, toxic chemicals and sea water rendering them useless for future use. Unnecessary dam construction, lake and river diversions goes on despite an abundance of historical and scientific facts demonstrating the adverse effects they cause-- displacing millions of people; flooding useable land while drying-up downstream environs and altering historic weather patterns.

Pearce finishes the book on a lighter note by relating the many sustainable alternatives to depleting aquifers, dam building, and lake diversions, although at current usage, one wonders if this will help reduce the rate of depletion and escalating environmental damage. Pearce makes it clear that we humans must immediately come up with a new world-wide ethic on water consumption and distribution before we hit the point of no return.

After reading this fine, in-depth expose' of the world water crisis, I was reminded of the potent quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin: "When the well runs dry, we shall know the value of water" (one of many variations spelling-out the same profound message).