The current issue of Foreign Affairs contains James E. Nickum's review of three popular water books: Water, by Steven Solomon; Running Out of Water, by Peter Rogers and Susan Leal; and Bottled and Sold, by Peter H. Gleick.
I reviewed Solomon's book earlier this year; I thoroughly enjoyed it and recommend it highly. [Shill alert: I've since met Solomon and consider him a friend.] I have not yet read Gleick's book but it is on my list as soon as I recover from a condition known as WBO - Water Book Overdose. And neither have I read the Rogers-Leal book. Maybe some day. Here is David Zetland's review of it.
Back now to Nickum, who is a distinguished water resources economist who is a professor in Tokyo, Secretary General of the International Water Resources Association (IWRA), and Editor-in-Chief of its journal, Water International. What I liked about his reviews is that they are not isolated, but integrated, as he draws comparisons among the books and their messages.
Spoiler alert: here are Nickum's final two paragraphs:
Solomon trusts market forces; Gleick distrusts them; Rogers and Leal think they can be harnessed alongside the state's power to good effect. Given enough time, economics does seem to wind up dictating how water gets used, and not necessarily in twisted ways. Water is increasingly being used to irrigate high-value crops instead of low-value ones, and it is being redirected from farms to cities. In an open international system, trade not only expands national economies but also, in good Ricardian fashion, allows them to escape the limitations of local water supplies. Food grown in wetter areas can be exported to drier ones, allowing the local water to be used for higher-priority uses. The point of the 1,200-mile Grand Canal was to bring grain from the wet southern part of China to the dry north, which allowed water indigenous to the north to be stored for later use or left in the Yellow River in order to limit silt buildup and so prevent flooding. A similar logic lies behind the current rush by China and various Middle Eastern countries to purchase farmland in water-have countries, such as Brazil.
Nonetheless, it bears repeating that economics does not necessarily yield socially or even politically optimal solutions. As water experts say, water flows uphill to money. The rich and powerful, frequently the urban and industrial, have the biggest pumps. And there often is an inverse relationship between economic rationality and political rationality: the economic laws of scarcity push prices up even as the political laws of scarcity give officials a reason to keep prices down. Another complication is that water problems are irremediably connected, sometimes as a symptom and sometimes as a cause, to many other issues: globalization, demographics, governance, energy, health, the role of women and children, the environment. The world's water problems reflect all the world's problems.
The review is well worth your time, as are the books themselves.
"Although warnings that water crises, even water wars, are pending have a long history -- and a long history of being overblown -- there are increasing signs that the management of water resources worldwide is now reaching a tipping point." -- James E. Nickum, from his review
http://aguanomics.com/2010/08/running-out-of-water-review.html
Posted by: David Zetland | Monday, 25 October 2010 at 05:13 AM