Water has long been the object of political ambition and conflict. Recent history is full of leaders who tried to harness water to realize national dreams. Yet the people who most need water--farmers, rural villages, impoverished communities--are too often left, paradoxically, with desiccated fields, unfulfilled promises, and refugee status.
It doesn't have to be this way, according to Fred Pearce. A veteran science news correspondent, Pearce has for over fifteen years chronicled the development of large-scale water projects like China's vast Three Gorges dam and India's Sardar Sarovar. But, as he and numerous other authors have pointed out, far from solving our water problems, these industrial scale projects, and others now in the planning, are bringing us to the brink of a global water crisis.
Pearce decided there had to be a better way.
To find it, he traveled the globe in search of alternatives to mega-engineering projects. In Keepers of the Spring, he brings back intriguing stories from people like Yannis Mitsis, an ethnic Greek Cypriot, who is the last in his line to know the ways and whereabouts of a network of underground tunnels that have for centuries delivered to farming communities the water they need to survive on an arid landscape. He recounts the inspiring experiences of small-scale water stewards like Kenyan Jane Ngei, who reclaimed for her people a land abandoned by her government as a wasteland. And he tells of many others who are developing new techniques and rediscovering ancient ones to capture water for themselves.
The solution to our water problems, he finds, may not lie in new technologies but in recovering ancient traditions, using water more efficiently, and better understanding local hydrology. Are these approaches adequate to serve the world's growing populations? The answer remains unclear. But we ignore them at our own peril.
PART I. Riding the Water Cycle Introduction Chapter 1. Megawater Chapter 2. Hydraulic Civilizations
PART II. Replumbing the Planet Chapter 3. Egypt's Source of Everlasting Prosperity? Chapter 4. Killing the Nigerian Floodplains Chapter 5. A New Force of Nature Chapter 6. Libya's Great Man-Made River Chapter 7. A Second Front in the Green Revolution Chapter 8. The Devil's Water Chapter 9. A Salty Hell
PART III. The Keepers Chapter 10. The Last of a Dying Breed? Chapter 11. Hidden Wonders of the Ancient World Chapter 12. Common Monuments to Human Perseverance Chapter 13. America's Lost Hydraulic Civilizations Chapter 14. How to Catch the Rain Chapter 15. The People's Green Revolution Chapter 16. Trickles and Floods Chapter 17. Making Water from Thin Air Chapter 18. Restoring African Hydrology Chapter 19. Reviving the Wetlands Conclusion Chapter 20. Battle for the New Agenda
