Replenish

ISLAND PRESSISBN: 9781642830101

The Virtuous Cycle of Water and Prosperity

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Sale price$72.99
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By Sandra Postel
Imprint: ISLAND PRESS
Release Date:
Format:
PAPERBACK
Dimensions:
229 x 152 mm
Weight:
420 g
Pages:
336

Description

We have disrupted the natural water cycle for centuries in an effort to control water for our own prosperity. Yet every year, recovery from droughts and floods costs billions of dollars, and we spend billions more on dams, diversions, levees, and other feats of engineering. These massive projects not only are risky financially and environmentally, they often threaten social and political stability. What if the answer was not further control of the water cycle, but repair and replenishment?
 
Sandra Postel takes readers around the world to explore water projects that work with, rather than against, nature's rhythms. In New Mexico, forest rehabilitation is safeguarding drinking water; along the Mississippi River, farmers are planting cover crops to reduce polluted runoff; and in China, “sponge cities are capturing rainwater to curb urban flooding.
 
Efforts like these will be essential as climate change disrupts both weather patterns and the models on which we base our infrastructure. We will be forced to adapt. The question is whether we will continue to fight the water cycle or recognize our place in it and take advantage of the inherent services nature offers. Water, Postel writes, is a gift, the source of life itself. How will we use this greatest of gifts?

Chapter 1. Water Everywhere and Nowhere
Chapter 2. Back to Life
Chapter 3. Put Watersheds to Work
Chapter 4. Make Room for Floods
Chapter 5. Bank It for a Dry Day
Chapter 6. Fill the Earth
Chapter 7. Conserve in the City
Chapter 8. Clean It Up
Chapter 9. Close the Loop
Chapter 10. Let It Flow
Chapter 11. Rescue Desert Rivers
Chapter 12. Share
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Reviews

"A remarkable story of rejuvenation."
New York Times Book Review
 
"Eschewing mere hand-wringing about climate change, this clear-eyed treatise hops around the world outlining real-world solutions that are already being implemented to affect change on the ground...Postel makes her case eloquently...Such inspirational examples, supplemented by an efficient overview of water-conservation ideas...give cause to celebrate small pockets of hope in our fight to save the planet's precious and vulnerable freshwater."
Booklist, starred review
 
"An informative, purposeful argument about why we must accept the moral as well as practical responsibility of water stewardship."
Kirkus
 
"Dams, levees, canals: humanity's battle with water is age-old...Sandra Postel's superb study demonstrates how working with wetlands and watersheds can turn that tide. Replenish cites scores of sustainable wins, from permeable pavements that control storm water in Kansas City, Missouri, to groundwater replenishment in rural Rajasthan, India."
Nature
 
"Heartening and inspiring...[Postel]'s strong narrative voice and reporter's instinct to buttress her story through quotes and firsthand accounts from affected people around the world make Replenish as readable as it is informative."
Civil Engineering
 
"If The Water Will Come gets you too depressed, here's the flip side: Postel's examination of water projects around the world that actually work. If safe drinking water, working watersheds, clean rivers and un-floodable cities matter to you, check this one out."
Environment Guru
 
"Confronts readers with some interesting and alarming facts about the global water cycle...Replenish can feel a little soul crushing, but Postel leavens it with successive chapters about the resilient nature of river systems. She highlights the ingenuity of people working with nature to restore our global water supply through regenerative agriculture, reclaimed wastewater, flood risk reduction, and efforts to let rivers flow freely."
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