The Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity

by Sandra Postel

Overview

For decades now we have wasted and mismanaged the world's water supplies. This book examines the economic, ecological and political factors affecting fresh water supply. It emphasises that the technology and know-how for effective water husbandry does exist. It shows how investing in water efficiency, recycling and conservation help meet demands.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138474505
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	08/25/2017
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Sandra Postel lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she directs the Global Water Policy Project. She is a Pew Fellow in Conservation and the Environment and a former vice president for research at the Worldwatch Institute. Her previous book, Last Oasis, now appears in eight languages and was the basis for a PBS television documentary.

Table of Contents

An Illusion of Plenty

I Trouble on Tap - Signs of Scarcity - Engineering's Promise - Bread and Water - Paradise Lost - Hydropolitics - A World Heating Up

II Living Within Water's Limits - Thrifty Irrigation - Small-Scale Solutions - Wastewater No More - Industrial Recycling - Conserving in Cities

III Toward Water Security - Pricing, Markets and Regulations - A Water Ethic

Editorial Reviews

Rule one for repent-now tracts is read them backward. The last chapter in this Worldwatch polemic sketches the hell in store for sinners (in this case, water wasters), along with inducements to change their behavior. The way to avoid wars, food shortages, and ecological catastrophe, according to Postel, is to reduce profligate farm and urban water consumption. This is achieved through microtechnologies (drip irrigation, for example) combined with sharply increased prices. Postel advances this argument in the name of creating a market--most water is controlled and sold by government monopolies. But her imagined "market" is simply price control on a higher level. Which probably explains her fondness for a legal notion aborning in California: a "public trust doctrine," by which certain goals (e.g., full-flow rivers) that are deemed (litigated?) to be paramount assets are entrusted to government. To be sure, Postel inveighs with stats against patent disasters, such as aquifer depletion or the desertification of the Aral Sea. The combination of sweet reason with a slant, however, is apt to interest policy entrepreneurs rather than the widest public.

Gilbert Taylor

Postel, vice president for research of the Worldwatch Institute, examines the worldwide limits--ecological, economic, and political--of water, and discloses existing methods to make water go further, decreasing the likelihood of both scarcity and conflict. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

Imagine America going to war over water. Don't think it will ever happen? Think again. Water scarcity is a real problem, one which is growing exponentially. That fact water seems so readily available and inexpensive (the "illusion of plenty" as the author states it), and people's overuse and lack of respect towards this life-sustaining resource are only some of the causes for the water crisis. Sandra Postel has written a stunning account which discloses the atrocious amount of neglect and mismanagement of water. Fortunately, there are solutions which offer hope for restoring and sustaining our essential lifeline, all of which are economically and environmentally friendly. Last Oasis is a red flag to farmers, industry and families, warning us that if the alternatives are not enacted, we are, most assuredly, destined for a worldwide crisis.
—SH

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