The world's water 1998-1999 : the biennial report on freshwater resources

Freshwater resources around the world have been overused, polluted, fought over, and squandered with little regard for the human and ecological consequences. This book, an essential reference for water resource specialists, resource economists, planners, students and anyone concerned with water issues, is a comprehensive reference on world wide freshwater resources and the political, economic, scientific, and technological issues associated with them. It reviews several new institutional developments in the world of water; describes progress made in defeating endemic, and sometimes epidemic, water-related diseases; reviews concerns about regional conflicts over water and the implications of global climatic change; offers an update on the ongoing debate over large dams with details about the Three Gorges project in China and the Lesotho Highlands Project in southern Africa; and offers insights into the changing water-development paradigm. The Water Briefs section contains updates to scientific discoveries related to freshwater, information on new technologies or trends, the text of important water agreements or laws, and the latest information on Internet resources devoted to freshwater issues. The edition ends with an essay offering a positive vision of future sustainable water use. The book provides the most up-to-date data available on water resources and their use and includes more than fifty charts, tables and maps that present current data on a range of factors such as the availability and use of water, numbers of threatened and endangered aquatic species, and dam and desalination capacity world wide.