Sandra Postel

In the realm of US environmental history, the role of Marjorie Spock in the banning of DDT, the research underpinning Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, and the advance of citizen-led environmental legal action is often overlooked or underappreciated. This article aims to fill that gap.

We present an improved water-scarcity metric we call water depletion, calculated as the fraction of renewable water consumptively used for human activities. We employ new data from the WaterGAP3 integrated global water resources model to illustrate water depletion for 15,091 watersheds worldwide, constituting 90% of total land area. Our analysis il...

Access to water is essential for human survival, much less human advancement. The great early human civilizations-from the ancient Egyptians to the Mesopotamians to the early Chinese-sprung up and flourished alongside rivers. Without sufficient water to drink and to grow food, no society-however advanced-can last.

The World Commission on Dams (WCD) report documented a number of social and environmental problems observed in dam development projects. The WCD gave particular emphasis to the challenges of properly resettling populations physically displaced by dams, and estimated the total number of people directly displaced at 40-80 million. Less attention has...

The challenge of formalizing agreements for sharing water among nations grows more urgent each year. Equally pressing, but less well recognized, is the challenge of developing strategies for sharing water with nature. Rivers, lakes, and wetlands are in declining health because the traditional approach to water development has failed to protect thei...

Rivers provide a special suite of goods and services valued highly by the public that are inextricably linked to their flow dynamics and the interaction of flow with the landscape. Yet most rivers are within watersheds that are stressed to some extent by human activities including development, dams, or extractive uses. Climate change will add to an...

he water strategies of the 20th century helped to supply drinking water, food, flood control and electricity to a large portion of the human population. These strategies largely focused on engineering projects to store, extract and control water for human benefit. Indeed, it is hard to fathom today's world of 6.6 billion people and more than $65 tr...

Aquatic ecosystems provide irreplaceable benefits, including water supplies, food for people and wildlife, water purification and filtration of pollutants, flood and drought mitigation, even recreational opportunities. As the economic and ecologic services provided by aquatic ecosystems gain more recognition and the deleterious effects of mismanagi...

When the Rivers Run Dry. Water--The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-First Century. Fred Pearce. Beacon Press, Boston, 2006. 336 pp. $26.95. ISBN 0-8070-8572-3. Weaving together scientific, economic, and historical aspects of water resources, the author argues that the solution to the growing worldwide shortage of water lies in greater efficiency and...

Healthy freshwater ecosystems provide numerous life-support services-offering, for example, fish and other foods, water supplies for crop irrigation, water purification and supply, and flood and storm damage mitigation. The key is to find innovative ways to protect them.

Healthy freshwater ecosystems provide numerous life-support services offering, for example, fish and other foods, water supplies for crop irrigation, water purification and supply, and flood and storm damage mitigation. The key is to find innovative ways to protect freshwater ecosytems, including but not limited to ecosystems in Quito and Boston.

Rivers, lakes, wetlands, and other freshwater ecosystems provide a host of benefits to society, from supplying water and fish to mitigating floods, recharging groundwater, purifying drinking water, and providing habitats for myriad species. But because commercial markets rarely put a price on these "ecosystem services," and because governments are...

Healthy watersheds provide valuable services to society, including the supply and purification of fresh water. Because these natural ecosystem services lie outside the traditional domain of commercial markets, they are undervalued and underprotected. With population and development pressures leading to the rapid modification of watershed lands, val...

A fundamentally new approach to water and human development will be needed during this new century if we are to secure sufficient freshwater to meet the needs of some 9 billion people while at the same time protecting the critical ecosystem services upon which the human economy depends. Signs of unsustainable water use — including falling water tab...

The world is moving into a period of widespread water stress and competition, with enormous implications for food security, the health of the aquatic environment, and social and political stability. In the second half of the 20th Century water demand more than tripled, the major factor being irrigation for food production. Over the same period, the...

Remember the last time two nations went to war over water? Probably not, since it was 4,500 years ago. But today, as demands for water hit the limits of a finite supply, conflicts are spreading within nations. And more than 50 countries on five continents might soon be spiraling toward water disputes unless they move quickly to strike agreements on...

Renewable fresh water comprises a tiny fraction of the global water pool but is the foundation for life in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. The benefits to humans of renewable fresh water include water for drinking, irrigation, and industrial uses, for production of fish and waterfowl, and for such instream uses as recreation, transportation,...

Despite the impressive gains in global food production over the last half century, an estimated 790 million people remain hungry. Many of the chronically hungry are poor farm families, who have neither the means to produce the food they need nor sufficient income to purchase it. For them, access to irrigation writer, or the means to use the water t...

Despite the impressive gains in global food production over the last half century, an estimated 790 million people remain hungry. Many of the chronically hungry are poor farm families, who have neither the means to produce the food they need nor sufficient income to purchase it. For them, access to irrigation water, or the means to use the water th...

Fresh water is a renewable resource, but it is also finite. Around the world, there are now numerous signs that human water use exceeds sustainable levels. Groundwater depletion, low or nonexistent river flows, and worsening pollution levels are among the more obvious indicators of water stress. In many areas, extracting more water for human uses j...

As global population mushrooms, water managers must adopt new strategies to make the most of limited supplies. Freshwater is renewable but finite. Over the next 50 years, world population growth will reduce the renewable water supply per capita by approximately one third. By 2025, an estimated 3 billion people—38 percent of the projected global pop...

During the last three decades, the depletion of underground water reserves, known as aquifers, has spread from isolated pockets of the agricultural landscape to large portions of the world's irrigated land. Many farmers are now pumping groundwater faster than nature is replenishing it, causing a steady drop in water tables. Just as a bank account d...

Unique among strategic resources and commodities, fresh water has no substitutes for most of its uses. It is essential to food production, a key ingredient in most industrial operations, and a prerequisite for human health and for life itself. Fresh water systems also provide vital ecological services that, while often hidden and easy to take for g...

Incluye índice Incluye bibliografía Recorrido histórico sobre el papel de la escasez de agua y problamas de irrigación en la caída de diversas civilizaciones.

A major challenge for 21st-century water management is to satisfy growing human demands for water while protecting the aquatic ecosystems upon which regional economies and life itself depend. In arid regions with rapidly growing populations and economies, the task can appear daunting. In this article, we attempt to demonstrate that the unique biolo...

is a Pew Fellow in Conservation and the Environment and directs the Global Water Policy Project in Amherst, MA 01002-3440. Her research focuses on international water and sustainability issues. This year marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of Thomas Malthus's famous essay postulating that human population growth would outstrip the earth'...

Although water is renewable, it is also finite. The amount of fresh water that can sustainably be supplied to farmers is nearing its limits. At least 214 rivers flow through two or more countries, but no enforceable law governs the allocation and use of international waters. As world population expands by 2.6 billion over the next 30 yr, water prob...

Humanity now uses 26 percent of total terrestrial evapotranspiration and 54 percent of runoff that is geographically and temporally accessible. Increased use of evapotranspiration will confer minimal benefits globally because most land suitable for rain-fed agriculture is already in production. New dam construction could increase accessible runoff...

This article examines the decline of the major rivers of the world, some so constricted that the water no longer reaches its natural destination. The result is now, and could be even greater in the future, a failure of ecosystems and economies. The human interferences which have lead to decline of rivers are discussed: irrigation, large-scale hydro...

Sumario: The shape of a sustainable economy -- Instruments of change -- The challenge ahead.

Wars have been waged over oil and gold, but it is water that now poses the greatest potential for provoking conflict among nations-and the greatest need for new guarantees of cooperation. Athough water is a renewable resource, it is also a finite one. Nearly 40 percent of the world's population depends on river systems shared by two or more countri...

PIP We continue to expand a water supply that has ecological and economical limits. Drip irrigation techniques, rainwater harvesting, and use of water=saving plumbing fixtures can help solve our water shortage problem. The core of the predicament is that society is no longer connected to water's life=giving qualities. Modern society does not respec...

Introducción. Durante gran parte de este siglo los debates económicos se han centrado en la cuestión de si el capitalismo o el socialismo es el mejor procedimiento para la organización de una economía industrial moderna. Esa dsicusión parece haber terminado porque las naciones de Europa Oriental avanzan con rapidez hacia los mecanismos del mercado...

Unless actions are taken soon to put an end to today's cut-and-run style of forestry, little of the earth's natural forest heritage will remain for the next generation. The basic challenge is to halt the rapid mining of irreplaceable old-growth stand, hasten the transition to sustainably managed secondary forests and tree plantations, and reduce wo...

Although demand continues to rise, regional shortages of water and mounting environmental damage have put the brakes on water development in some areas. International and interregional conflicts over an increasingly precious commodity are mirrored by competition between agriculture and urban areas. Briefly reviews the situation in the Middle East,...

Today, one third of the global harvest comes from the 17% of the world's cropland that is irrigated. Since the late 70s expansion has slowed down markedly, and lending for irrigation by the major international donors has declined sharply over the last decade. This paper discusses the unsettling prospects of rising irrigation costs, worsening enviro...

The use of pesticides in agriculture and the discarding of industrial chemical waste into the air, soil, and water constitute two major pathways of human exposure to toxic substances. It is argued that these practices release hundreds of millions of tons of potentially hazardous substances into the environment each year. Speculation continues into...

Presents the rationale for a more careful use of the global water resource and using examples and case histories from around the world describes 4 areas in which efficiency in water use should be improved. There should be increased investment in irrigation technology and techniques; new cropping patterns need to be developed and efficient ones adop...

El ciclo hidrológico —la circulación del agua entre el mar, la atmósfe-ra y la tierra, impulsada por la energía del sol— es un recurso insusti-tuible que la actividad humana está perturbando de forma peligrosa. Una proporción mínima del agua de la Tierra —menos de la centési-ma parte del 1%— es agua dulce que se renueva con el ciclo hidro-lógico, a...

Traducción de: Dividing the waters : Food security, ecosystem health and the new politics of scarcity Incluye bibliografía

Traducción de: Saving the planet Incluye bibliografía e índice

Traducción de: State of world Incluye bibliografía

Traducción de: Saving the planet. How to shape an environmentally sustainable global economy Incluye bibliografía

"For at least three decades, Americans have had some inkling that we face an uncertain energy future, but we’ve ignored a much more worrisome crisis—water. Cheap and seemingly abundant, water is so common that it’s hard to believe we could ever run out. Ever since the Apollo astronauts photographed Earth from space, we’ve had the image of our home...