When the rivers run dry

by Fred Pearce. Beacon Press, 2007.

What happens when the water runs out? That’s the big question environment journalist Fred Pearce tackles in this frightening book. The world is running out of drinking water, as ancient reservoirs are tapped and squandered. Pearce has travelled widely looking at how countries use and misuse fresh water. Crops fail, pollution spreads, dams burst and precious wetlands are drained. By 2025 three billion people may face chronic water shortages.

Australia is among the countries Pearce looks at, and the problems facing the Murray-Darling Basin are bluntly expressed, but they pale into insignificance beside the problems faced by China, the Mekong Delta, and the countries surrounding the Aral Sea. It is time to manage the water cycle better and to treat fresh water as our most precious resource. It’s not all doom and gloom, because some communities are rediscovering old ways of harvesting rainwater which don’t rely on large-scale 20th century engineering.

What makes this book such a standout is that although it tackles a hugely complex subject, it is written in an immediately accessible style that can be read at the speed of a novel. It is a very important subject, and Pearce has written an important book to match.

- John.