Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource (Hardcover)

by Marq De Villiers (Author) "THE LITTLE MOKORO, a boat roughly hewn from a mopane log, drifted slowly through the waters of the Okavango Delta..." (more)
Key Phrases: most hydrologists, fossil aquifers, last oasis, United States, Great Lakes, Middle East (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Water is a thought-provoking, eloquent look at the importance of this vital resource to humankind, encompassing ecological, historical, and cultural perspectives. Marq de Villiers reports from hot spots as diverse as China, Las Vegas, and the Middle East, where swelling populations and unchecked development have stressed fresh water supplies nearly beyond remedy. Political struggles for control of water rage around the globe and threaten to erupt into military conflicts that will decide the fates of governments and nations. Rampant pollution poses an equally dire ecological threat - every year Canadians dump seven times more used motor oil into our waterways than the EXXON VALDEZ spilled in Alaska. With one eye to these looming crises and the other to the history of our utter dependence on this, our planet's most precious commodity, de Villiers has crafted a powerful narrative about the lifeblood of civilizations, the global consequences of human thirst, and solutions that may avert the coming water wars. Informative, insightful, and entertaining, de Villiers's work will be the standard book on global water issues for years to come, and it deserves to be read by everyone who has ever turned on a tap.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company; 1 edition (January 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618030093
• ISBN-13: 978-0618030095
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,043,108 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Water Chronicles, August 25, 2000

By	charles sharpless (Durham, NC (USA)) - See all my reviews

"Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource," by Marq De Villers is a thorough summary of facts and figures pertinent to water allocation and use in the coming century. The topics covered include descriptions of natural supplies, issues surrounding irrigation and pollution, the politics of water, and what the future may hold. If you weren't aware that there are serious problems to be dealt with in water management, this book will serve as a solid introduction. For those of you acquainted with water issues, this information will come as no surprise.

What is surprising, however, is the level-headed, even-handed tone of the book. All too many books written by non-scientists about natural resource use and misuse are filled to the brim with political polemic. De Villiers, however, has simply offered the facts, surrounded by a narrative of travels and experiences with characters from the world of water. He's just as quick to expose the fallacies of the "water miners" as he is to point out the absurdities of "eco-facism." Just the facts, please, and all wrapped into a tidy, enjoyably written bundle.

My only complaints about the book are academically picky. First, the units De Villiers chooses to use for water volumes, while all standard, are not consistent. Often he speaks of cubic meters, while not a page later he is talking of acre-feet. A few times, he even uses units of kilograms. These are generally appropriate to the topic at hand, but a conversion table should be provided in an appendix. Second, the index is not nearly complete enough. For example, while there are many places in the text where the price of water is discussed, the only reference in the index is to "Water Pricing Policies," which is a very short segment on how pricing affects demand. If you wanted to know what price farmers were paying for water in the western US, you're going to have to search page-by-page.

I would recommend this book to everyone except the most jaded water supply professionals. It covers an important topic and is very timely. If you use water, you should read this book.

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Easy to Swallow, but with No Additives, September 12, 2002

By	doomsdayer520 (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource (Paperback)

This easy to read and conversational book can be used as an introduction to the fate of water supplies around the world and their impact on human societies. de Villiers takes us on a chapter-by-chapter dissertation first on the technical aspects of water issues, such as the mechanics of groundwater and dams. Then we proceed to selected examples of water crises around the globe, such as China's dilemma of having too much where it's not needed and too little where it is needed, or the hideous catastrophe of the Aral Sea in the former USSR.

The author takes an admirably middle-of-the-road stance here and usually lets the facts speak for themselves, with just a little bit of opinionating. But his opinions are still quite moderate and level-headed, as he doesn't align himself with either unyielding environmentalists or extreme free trade proponents, both of which he accurately condemns as having very narrow outlooks on the real world. Some of de Villiers' key observations concern the water wars that will probably start erupting in coming years in dry regions of the world. Two countries will probably spend more money in a single day of war than it takes to improve water supplies for both of them for decades to come. Also, de Villiers drives home the point that the worrisome decline of fresh water around the globe is not due to greedy businessmen, corrupt politicians, or greens who refuse to let it be used. It's just the natural outcome of humans living like humans. Therefore real human cooperation across all societies is necessary to address the problem.

Unfortunately, the author's chapter-by-chapter approach serves only as an introduction to separate topics of interest, without very much substance behind each one. Also, this subject requires harder economics, politics, and sociology than de Villiers provides here. Therefore this book can best be used as an introduction to these issues before you dive into much more specific books like "Rivers of Empire" by Worster or "Cadillac Desert" by Reisner (focusing on the American West), or the works of the Worldwatch Institute for the international story.

38 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant--Puts Water in Context of War, Peace, and Life, October 2, 2000

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

I rank this book as being among the top ten I have read in the decade, for the combined reason that its topic concerns our survival, and its author has done a superior job of integrating both scholarly research (with full credit to those upon whose work he builds) and what must be a unique background of actually having traveled to the specific desolate areas that comprise the heart of this book-from the Aral Sea ("the exposed seabed, now over 28,000 square kilometers, became a stew of salt, pesticide residues, and toxic chemicals; the strong winds in the region pick up more than 40 million tons of these poisonous sediments each year, and the contaminated dust storms that follow have caused the incidence of respiratory illnesses and cancers to explode.") to the heart of China ("According to China's own figures, between 1983 and 1990 the number of cities short of water tripled to three hundred, almost half the cities in the country; those who problem was described as 'serious' rose from forty to one hundred." The author provides a thoughtful and well-structured look at every corner of the world, with special emphasis on the Middle East, the Tigris-Euphrates System, the Nile, the Americas, and China; and at the main human factors destroying our global water system: pollution, dams (that silt up and prevent nutrients from going downstream or flooding from rejuvenating the lower lands), irrigation (leading to salination such that hundreds of thousands of acres are now infertile and being taken out of production), over-engineering, and excessive water mining from aquifers, which are in serious danger of drying up in key areas in the US as well as overseas within the next twenty years. The author provides a balanced and well-documented view overall. His final chapter on solutions explores conservation, technical, and political options. Two statements leapt off the page: first, that it is the average person, unaware of the fragility of our water system, that is doing the most damage, not the corporations or mega-farms; and second, that for the price of one military ship or equipped unit ($100 million), one can desalinate 100 million cubic meters of water. The bottom line is clear: we are close to a tipping point toward catastrophe but solution are still within our grasp, and they require, not world government, but a virtual world system that permits the integrated management of all aspects of water demand as well supply. This book should be required reading for every college student and every executive and every government employee at local, state, and federal levels; and every citizen.