Water Sustainability A Global Perspective

About this book

Using the latest mapping techniques this book examines water availability, the impact of climate change and the problems created for water management worldwide as well as possible solutions. The author combines both the physical and human aspects affecting the world's water resources.

Part one outlines the challenges and investigates the human factors: population growth; urbanization and pollution; the commercialization of water, including globalization and privatization; and the impacts of war, terrorism and the credit crunch.

The second part examines the physical aspects: the restless water cycle, the impact of past and future climate change and the problems change and unreliability create for water management whilst part three discusses current and future solutions including improved efficiency and water treatment systems, desalination, weather modification and rainwater harvesting, and improved legal and administrative frameworks. The book concludes by asking how far technical and financial innovations can overcome the limitations of climatic resources and examining the human and environmental costs involved in such developments.

Contents

1 A looming crisis

Part I Status and challenges
2 Rising demand and dwindling per capita resources
3 Water and poverty
4 Governance and finance
5 Pollution and water-related disease
6 Water, land and wildlife
7 Dams and diversions
8 Trading water - real and virtual
9 Water, war and terrorism
10 The threat of global warming

Part II Nature's resources
11 The restless water cycle
12 Shrinking freshwater stores

Part III Towards sustainability
13 Cutting demand
14 Increasing supplies
15 Cleaning up and protecting the aquatic environment
16 Using seawater
17 Controlling the weather
18 Improved monitoring and data management
19 Improving prediction and risk assessment
20 Improving management and justice
21 Aid for the developing world

Conclusions
22 Is sustainability achievable?

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Biography

Professor Tony Jones is one of the world's foremost experts on water sustainability, Chair of the International Geographical Union's Commission for Water Sustainability, and works with both the UN and Nato on issues relating to global water supplies. He has also acted as editor for GeoJournal, Physical Geography and Area.