Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit

by Vandana Shiva

Overview

Acclaimed author and award-winning scientist and activist Vandana Shiva lucidly details the severity of the global water shortage, calling the water crisis “the most pervasive, most severe, and most invisible dimension of the ecological devastation of the earth.” She sheds light on the activists who are fighting corporate maneuvers to convert the life-sustaining resource of water into more gold for the elites and uses her knowledge of science and society to outline the emergence of corporate culture and the historical erosion of communal water rights. Using the international water trade and industrial activities such as damming, mining, and aquafarming as her lens, Shiva exposes the destruction of the earth and the disenfranchisement of the world's poor as they are stripped of rights to a precious common good. Revealing how many of the most important conflicts of our time, most often camouflaged as ethnic wars or religious wars, are in fact conflicts over scarce but vital natural resources, she calls for a movement to preserve water access for all and offers a blueprint for global resistance based on examples of successful campaigns.

Featuring a new introduction by the author, this edition of Water Wars celebrates the spiritual and traditional role water has played in communities throughout history and warns that water privatization threatens cultures and livelihoods worldwide.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781623170721
Publisher:	North Atlantic Books
Publication date:	07/26/2016
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	752,919
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Vandana Shiva is a physicist, world-renowned environmental thinker and activist, and a tireless crusader for economic, food, and gender justice. She is the author and editor of many influential books, including Making Peace with the Earth, Earth Democracy, Soil Not Oil, Stolen Harvest, Biopiracy, and Globalization’s New Wars. Dr. Shiva is the recipient of more than twenty international awards, among them the Right Livelihood Award (1993); the John Lennon-Yoko Ono Grant for Peace (2008); The Sydney Peace Prize (2010); and the Calgary Peace Prize (Canada, 2011). In addition, she is a board member of the World Future Council and one of the leaders and board members of the International Forum on Globalization (whose other members include Jerry Mander, Edward Goldsmith, Ralph Nader, and Jeremy Rifkin). She travels frequently to speak at conferences around the world.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Introduction to the Second Edition xv

Introduction Converting Abundance into Scarcity 1

Chapter 1 Water Rights: The State, the Market, the Community 19

Chapter 2 Climate Change and the Water Crisis 39

Chapter 3 The Colonization of Rivers: Dams and Water Wars 53

Chapter 4 The World Bank, the WTO, and Corporate Control Over Water 87

Chapter 5 Food and Water 107

Chapter 6 Converting Scarcity into Abundance 119

Chapter 7 The Sacred Waters 131

Appendix 141

Index 147

About the Author 157

Editorial Reviews

An excellent starting point for anyone who wants to understand the forces driving water scarcity today and threatening its future supply.”
—Women’s Review of Books
 
“A chilling, in-depth examination of the rapidly emerging global crisis.”
—In These Times
 
“Shiva is a burst of creative energy, an intellectual power.”
—The Progressive
 
“One of the world’s most prominent radical scientists.”
—The Guardian

From the Publisher