The quality and availability of fresh water are of critical importance to human and ecosystem health. Given its central role in the functioning of all living systems, water is arguably the most important of all natural resources.Produced biennially, The World's Water provides a timely examination of the key issues surrounding freshwater resources and their use. Each new volume identifies and explains the most significant current trends worldwide, and offers the best data a...

“[Brown’s] ability to make a complicated subject accessible to the general reader is remarkable.”—Katherine Salant, Washington PostAs fossil fuel prices rise, oil insecurity deepens, and concerns about climate change cast a shadow over the future of coal, a new energy economy is emerging. Wind, solar, and geothermal energy are replacing oil, coal, and natural gas, at a pace and on a scale we could not have imagined even a year ago. For the first time since the Industrial R...

“Lucid, quietly urgent, and relentlessly logical . . . this is Bigthink with a capital B.” —The New York Times Book Review“Common Wealth explains the most basic economic reckoning that the world faces.” —Al Gore, winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize and former vice president of the United StatesIn Common Wealth, Jeffrey D. Sachs-one of the world's most respected economists and the author of The New York Times

Hunger is a daily reality for a billion people. More than six decades after the technological discoveries that led to the Green Revolution aimed at ending world hunger, regular food shortages, malnutrition, and poverty still plague vast swaths of the world. And with increasing food prices, climate change, resource inequality, and an ever-increasing global population, the future holds further challenges.In One Billion Hungry, Sir Gordon Conway, one of the world's fo...

Water is our planet’s most precious resource. It is required by every living thing, yet a huge proportion of the world’s population struggles to access clean water daily. Agriculture, aquaculture, industry, and energy all depend on it - yet its provision and safety engender widespread conflict; battles likely to intensify as threats to freshwater abundance and quality, such as climate change, urbanization, new forms of pollution, and the privatization of control, continue to grow.B...

"How to build a more just world and save the planet....We should all heed Brown's advice."—Bill ClintonIn this updated edition of the landmark Plan B, Lester Brown outlines a survival strategy for our early twenty-first-century civilization. The world faces many environmental trends of disruption and decline, including rising temperatures and spreading water shortage. In addition to these looming threats, we face the peaking of oil, annual population growth of 70 million, a widenin...

A detailed look at the water industry and the trends that can lead to investment opportunitiesWater has quickly grown into a big global business, with annual revenues in the United States alone reaching over $200 billion. In the years ahead, companies as well as governments must find innovative ways to address important issues within this field without sacrificing basic needs, such as safety of drinking water or the reliability of water for energy production. Nobod...

This timely book provides a wealth of information to help city managers, policy analysts, and government administrators identify relevant urban environmental problems and an array of potential solutions, analyze policy solutions and outcomes, and communicate with the public regarding urban environmental problems and policies.

Do we have the resources to produce enough food for an expected world population of over 9 billion in 2050? Are modern agricultural practices sustainable? Do we have enough fresh water? What do we understand about climate change? Can we decarbonize the world economy? Can we save the oceans? Are genetically modified crops bad for the environment? Are we entering a new era of resource wars? These are some of the questions addressed in this ambitious and comprehensive book by Ingrid Bryan.

The EPA was established to enforce the environmental laws Congress enacted during the 1970s. Yet today lethal toxins still permeate our environment, causing widespread illness and even death. Toxic Loopholes investigates these laws, and the agency charged with their enforcement, to explain why they have failed to arrest the nation's rising environmental crime wave and clean up the country's land, air and water. This book illustrates how weak laws, legal loopholes and regulatory negligence ...

This book evaluates the history, the present and the future of water markets on 5 continents, beginning with the institutional underpinnings of water markets and factors influencing transaction costs. The book examines markets in seven countries and three different U.S. states, ranging from village-level water markets in Oman to basin wide formal water markets in Australia's Murray-Darling River basin.Introductory chapters on the background of water markets and on transaction costs...

In 1543, Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus challenged the view that the sun revolved around the earth, arguing instead that the earth revolved around the sun. His paper led to a revolution in thinking.In Lester Brown's brilliant and invigorating account of the industrial economy, he shows how a rethink of its fossil fuel-based, throwaway ethos is necessary to ensure that it works with, not against, the natural environment.The issue now is whether the environment is part...