{"id":677,"date":"2018-07-12T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-07-12T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/?p=677"},"modified":"2023-11-24T17:09:41","modified_gmt":"2023-11-24T22:09:41","slug":"when-the-rivers-run-dry-water-the-defining-crisis-of-the-twenty-first-century-fred-pearce-2006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2018\/07\/when-the-rivers-run-dry-water-the-defining-crisis-of-the-twenty-first-century-fred-pearce-2006\/","title":{"rendered":"<i>When the Rivers Run Dry: Water&#8212;the Defining Crisis of the Twenty-First Century<\/i> &#8211; Fred Pearce, 2006"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Alas, the <a href=\"https:\/\/salticid.com\/mailman\/listinfo\/forbes_nature_environment_salticid.com\">Nature and Environment book group<\/a> didn&#8217;t think much of this book. There&#8217;s a revised edition coming out soon (August 2018), but unless it&#8217;s completely rewritten and restructured, it&#8217;s going to have some of the same failings; its age was only part of the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I learned a <em>lot<\/em> of interesting but somewhat disconnected things. No notes! No bibliography!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Like many books about water, there&#8217;s a lot of focus on waste. At the end of chapter 26 Pearce finally addresses what happens if everyone \u201csaves\u201d water: \u201c&#8230;in many river basins, most of the \u2018wasted\u2019 water would actually have moved on through the water cycle, either returning to rivers, from where someone downstream would capture it, or percolating underground, from where the same farmer or his neighbor might later pump it back to the surface.\u201d Nothing on fracking, unfortunately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">In this book I learned<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>&#8220;Salt cedar, also known as tamarisk, is a nasty and extremely tough shrub, able to withstand fire and drought, flood and searing desert heat. A single plant can drink more than 265 gallons of water a day.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Treaties and laws can \u201callocate more water than actually exists\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Green revolution crops need more water (kind of makes sense!)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Mining fossil water described as \u201cfarming water\u201d (see quote about Tirupur, below) &#8211; classic tragedy of the commons<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>dairy \u201cwhite revolution\u201d in Gujarat: \u201ctwo districts alone are exporting from the state 1.2 million acre-feet of virtual water a year in the form of milk\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Libya\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Great_Man-Made_River\">Great Manmade River<\/a>\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>arsenic and fluoride (naturally occurring) can make groundwater poisonous<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>dams are incredibly inefficient, turning fertile floodplains into dust bowls<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Naga_fireball\">Naga fireballs<\/a> in the Mekong<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Qanat\">Qanats<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ab_anbar\">ab-anbars<\/a> &#8211; amazing! I want to visit one!<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The history of the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Salton_Sea\">Salton Sea<\/a> encapsulates many of the mistakes people make in trying to control water <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u201c[The <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bon_Om_Touk\">Bon Om Touk<\/a>] festival has taken place since the twelfth century, always at the full moon in late October or early November. It is a celebration of one extraordinary fact about the river on which it takes place. The Tonle Sap is one of the few rivers in the world that reverses its flow. It does it every year, right in front of the palace.\u201d (Phnom Penh, Cambodia)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Sussex <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dew_pond\">dew ponds<\/a>: they use a \u2018secret process\u2019 to insulate the clay bottom. \u201cThe straw insulated the clay, keeping it colder than the soil beneath at night. The stones, which shed heat quickly at night, lowered the temperature further. Once a successful dew pond was created, it would, in effect, generate its own water from the air.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u201cOn a cool, still night, the air can be so saturated with moisture that even modest air movements, such as sound waves, can condense the moisture and produce raindrops. In the mountains of Yunan in southern China, villagers have a tradition of yelling loudly in the hope that it will stimulate rain. The louder they shout, it is said, the more it rains.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Stenocara_gracilipes\">Stenocara gracilipes<\/a><\/em>: \u201cIn Namibia \u2026 a beetle in the desert [was discovered] that has evolved a bobbled upper surface to its body with a pattern that is supremely efficient at capturing moisture from passing fogs. The hexagonal pattern of tiny peaks and troughs appears to push tiny droplets together to form larger droplets, which then roll off the beetle\u2019s back and into its mouth.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Raj-Samadhiyala, a village in&nbsp;Gujarat where water conservation is a top priority: \u201c&#8230;On the paths there were thousands of fruit trees, where most villages are treeless. Under their shade were piles of mangoes and watermelons. And out among the small fields growing wheat and vegetables and groundnuts, there were the ponds&#8212;lots of them. \u2026 Nobody is allowed to take water directly from the ponds, and farmers are banned from growing the thirstiest crops, like sugarcane.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Short quotes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Tirupur: \u201cThese villagers in this toxic wilderness were buying their water, at the price of a rupee per pot, from the people who sucked dry the precious underground reserves of Mandaba. The same people who were keeping the dye factories in business, producing the effluent that poisoned their fields and wells for miles around, were making a further tidy profit out of the misery caused by their pollution. The tragedy of Tamil Nadu\u2019s disappearing water supplies was complete.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u201cThe Colorado is both legally and hydrologically one of the most regulated rivers in the world. But it is becoming clear that the legal and the hydrological no longer mesh.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;By trying to turn the complex hydrology of rivers into the simple mechanics of a water pipe, engineers have often created danger where they promised safety and intensified the floods they intended to prevent.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u201cThe Six-Day War was\u2026 the first modern water war. \u2026 Israel today uses far more water than falls on its territory, and it has been able to do so because of its occupation of the West Bank, which gives it control of the western aquifer, and the Golan Heights, which gives it control of the Jordan River.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&nbsp;Africa described as \u201ca continent of haphazard boundaries largely created in the days of imperial rule and maintained because anything else would bring chaos\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>About the notion of sending waters from the north-flowing Ob and Yenisei to water cotton and maybe revive the Aral Sea: \u201cyou cannot keep a bad megaproject down\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;Money thrown at problems often produces the wrong solution.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;Attempts to tame [the Rhine] began in earnest in the nineteenth century, with &#8216;rectification&#8217; works undertaken by the German engineer Johanna Tulla. \u2026Tulla forced the river into a single, well-defined, permanent channel. &#8216;As a rule,&#8217; he declared, &#8216;no stream or river needs more than one bed.&#8217; Nature never intended that this should be so, but Tulla\u2019s maxim has become the rule that almost every river engineer follows.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u201cThe good news is that we never destroy water. .. [S]omewhere, sometime, it will return, purged and fresh, in rain clouds over India or Africa or the rolling hills of Europe. \u2026 Water is the ultimate renewable resource.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">About dams<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>\u201cWater, as they say in the American West, flows uphill to money.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u201cIf nothing else, dams have proved an exceptionally effective technology for turning the unruly flow of rivers into private or state property.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u201cOn rivers like the Colorado, the Volta in West Africa, and the Nile, the big dams can hold two or three times the actual annual flow. And yet they remain an essentially experimental technology. Their hydrological, ecological, and social effects have been huge. But for many years their status as symbols of modernism insulated them from serious appraisal. \u2026 Only since the late 1990s have serious steps been taken internationally to establish whether their benefits outweigh the environmental, social, and economic costs.\u201d <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>There are few \u201cuntamed rivers\u201d left, primarily in empty areas.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Hydroelectric dam in the Amazon: \u201cThe rotting vegetation in the flooded forest is producing huge amounts of methane\u2026 The reservoir was created in the 1980s to provide pollution-free electricity for the capital of the Amazon, but by Fearnside\u2019s calculations, it produces methane with eight times the greenhouse effect of a coal-fired power station with a similar generating capacity.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u201cMost dams are built with the promise that they will capture floodwaters from the rivers they barricade. But one of the secrets of dams is how often they make floods. This happens because of the contradictory hydrological requirements of the different uses to which dams are put.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Water in China<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>\u201cControlling [the Yellow River] floods has always been the single most important activity of Chinese governments. Many historians argue that it is the single most important reason for the creation and survival over the millennia of the vast Chinese state with its draconian powers. The Chinese sum up the relationship in a word: <em>zhi<\/em>, which means both &#8216;to regulate water&#8217; and &#8216;to rule.&#8217;\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u201cIn ancient times, if the river shifted ground, the emperor was thought to have lost the mandate of heaven and could no longer rule.\u201d <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Karl Wittfogel is quoted as calling it a \u201chydraulic civilization.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u201cThe [Loess Plateau] is the source of 90 percent of the silt in the world\u2019s siltiest river. Nowhere on earth loses as much to erosion. This is because the Loess Plateau is not a proper mountain range at all. There is no underlying geology. It is just&nbsp;a huge pile of loose sand, several hundred yards thick and covering an area five times the size of Louisiana.<br \/>The sand blew here from a distant desert thousands of years ago and has been left out in the rain ever since.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li> \u201cThe Chinese, brought up on the wisdom of managing the Yellow River, sensibly have an idiom, \u2018when the river runs clear.\u2019 It means \u2018never.&#8217;\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Longer quote<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is too easy to see communities that depend on natural wild resources and the vagaries of untamed rivers as somehow left behind by progress. The truth, quite often, is the opposite. It is they who have unlocked the truth about how to make the maximum use of natural resources. It is the urban sophisticates with their engineering degrees who haven\u2019t got a clue.&nbsp; \u2026 When the rivers run dry, it does not need to be a disaster, provided societies can adapt to cope with it. And the traditional attributes of flexibility associated with communities living on wetlands serve remarkably well. One of the ironies is that we have grown disturbingly good at disrupting river flows while losing our capacity for coping with, let alone prospering from, the consequences.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alas, the Nature and Environment book group didn&#8217;t think much of this book. There&#8217;s a revised edition coming out soon (August 2018), but unless it&#8217;s completely rewritten and restructured, it&#8217;s going to have some of the same failings; its age was only part of the problem. I learned a lot of interesting but somewhat disconnected [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature-and-environment-book-group","category-quote-dump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3684,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677\/revisions\/3684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}