Water is central to all life, but we use it to destroy. Water can nourish, but we use it to starve. It can cleanse and unify, but we ensure it contaminates and divides. The consequences of continuing to desecrate or beginning to restore water's inner grace are tremendous—and will reflect as much on us as portend our future. Drawing upon twenty-five years of professional work as a water engineer, negotiator, and scholar, Mark Zeitoun provides a unique insider's account of this phenomenon. H...

Water Conflicts applies cutting-edge thinking to identify pathways that can transform complex water conflicts. It challenges existing power-blind and politics-lite analysis that is very deeply-held and recurring in debates that suggest causal links between scarcity and violence-or peace. This book presents a much needed revision of transboundary water analysis, leading to a rethink on the way water is used and contested, with a focus on harm experienced both by the most vulnerable...

The purpose of this book is to present an overview of the latest research, policy, practitioner, academic and international thinking on water security—an issue that, like water governance a few years ago, has developed much policy awareness and momentum with a wide range of stakeholders. As a concept it is open to multiple interpretations, and the authors here set out the various approaches to the topic from different perspectives.Key themes addressed include:Water se...

A powerful investigation into the chances for humanity's future from the author of the bestseller The World Without Us.In his bestselling book The World Without Us, Alan Weisman considered how the Earth could heal and even refill empty niches if relieved of humanity's constant pressures. Behind that groundbreaking thought experiment was his hope that we would be inspired to find a way to add humans back to this vision of a restored, healthy planet...

"I read this wide-ranging and thoughtful book while sitting on the banks of the Ganges near Varanasi—it's a river already badly polluted, and now threatened by the melting of the loss of the glaciers at its source to global warming. Four hundred million people depend on it, and there's no backup plan. As Steven Solomon makes clear, the same is true the world over; this volume will give you the background to understand the forces that will drive much of 21st century history." —Bill McKibben...

**“The MOST IMPORTANT BOOK I imagine I'll ever read.”—Mary RoachFROM AN AWARD-WINNING SCIENCE JOURNALIST comes an urgent investigation of environmental migration—the most underreported, seismic consequence of our climate crisis that will force us to change where—and how—we live.“An IMPORTANT and PROVOCATIVE start to a crucial conversation.” —Bill McKibben**“We are facing a species emergency. We can survive, but to do so will require a planned and deliberate migr...

From Africa to Asia and Latin America, the era of climate wars has begun. Extreme weather is breeding banditry, humanitarian crisis, and state failure.In Tropic of Chaos, investigative journalist Christian Parenti travels along the front lines of this gathering catastrophe--the belt of economically and politically battered postcolonial nations and war zones girding the planet's midlatitudes. Here he finds failed states amid climatic disasters. But he also ...

*A Financial Times Best Book of the Year*A “provocative” (Booklist) and compelling look at the powerful global forces that will cause billions of us to move geographically over the next decades, ushering in an era of radical change.In the 60,000 years since people began colonizing the continents, a recurring feature of human civilization has been mobility—the ever-constant search for resources and stability. Seism...

So much to read, so little time? This brief overview of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind tells you what you need to know—before or after you read Yuval Noah Harari's book.Crafted and edited with care, Worth Books set the standard for quality and give you the tools you need to be a well-informed reader.This short summary and analysis of Sapiens includes:Historical contextChapter-by-chapter overviewsChar...

**“A primal account of an unstifled world.” —Bill McKibben“A dazzling command of science and relentless faith . . .” —Naomi KleinA wide-ranging collection of essays from leading environmental commentator on how politics and big business threaten our daily lives, our society, and the planet**Without countervailing voices, naming and challenging power, political freedom withers and dies. Without countervailing voices, a better world can never materialise. Without c...

In this urgent time, World on the Edge calls out the pivotal environmental issues and how to solve them now.We are in a race between political and natural tipping points. Can we close coal-fired power plants fast enough to save the Greenland ice sheet and avoid catastrophic sea level rise? Can we raise water productivity fast enough to halt the depletion of aquifers and avoid water-driven food shortages? Can we cope with peak water and peak oil at the same...

The world is about to run out of cheap oil and change dramatically. Within the next few years, global production will peak. Thereafter, even if industrial societies begin to switch to alternative energy sources, they will have less net energy each year to do all the work essential to the survival of complex societies. We are entering a new era, as different from the industrial era as the latter was from medieval times.In The Party's Over , Richard Heinberg places this mo...