Water is at once the most ordinary and the most extraordinary substance because, without it, nothing else survives. Today, global pressures on freshwater raise the specter of pollution scares, irrigation shortages, rivers so massively dammed and diverted that they do not reach the sea, even of ‘water wars’ over dwindling supplies. This No-Nonsense Guide examines the world water crisis in its many dimensions, not least the re3cent tendency to try and manage water by handling over to private entrepreneurs not just the pipes, but the rivers, aquifers and rainfall supplying them. Water has always been regarded as a commons which nobody may own. As this basic principle erodes, Can people hold onto their to water- and to life?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Maggie Black
Maggie Black is a writer and editor on international development issues, including water resources management and public health, She has written extensively on water and sanitation for UNICEF, is the author of reports for WaterAid, the water and sanitation Project of the World Bank/ UNDP, the Global Water Partnership and the EC. She is also the author of water, Life Force, a lavishly illustrated celebration of water, published by New Internationalist Publications. A book on the drinking water crisis in India’s villages, Water: A Matter of Life and Health, will be published by OUP, Delhi in late 2004. Her visits to the Narmada Valley in India where large dams are being actively opposed, subsequently the subject of New Internationalist issue no.336, 2001, helped to inspire an earlier title in this series, The No-Nonsense Guide to International Development.
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