Water Resilience for Human Prosperity
Cambridge University Press, 3/27/2014
EAN 9781107024199, ISBN10: 1107024196
Hardcover, 311 pages, 24.9 x 18.3 x 1.8 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
The world's human population now constitutes the largest driving force of changes to the biosphere. Emerging water challenges require new ideas for governance and management of water resources in the context of rapid global change. This book presents a new approach to water resources, addressing global sustainability and focusing on socio-ecological resilience to changes. Topics covered include the risks of unexpected change, human impacts and dependence on global water, the prospects for feeding the world's population by 2050, and a pathway for the future. The book's innovative and integrated approach links green and blue freshwater with terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem functions and use. It also links changes arising from land-use alteration with the impacts of those changes on social-ecological systems and ecosystem services. This is an important, state-of-the-art resource for academic researchers and water resource professionals, and a key reference for graduate students studying water resource governance and management.
List of contributors
Preface
Introduction to the book
Acknowledgements
Part I. A New Perspective
1. The role played by water in the biosphere
Part II. Living in a Human-Dominated World
2. Human modification of the Earth system
3. Balancing on a threshold of alternate development paths
regime shifts, traps and transformations
4. Crucial functioning of and human dependence on the global water system
Part III. Food Production Globally
In Hotspot Regions and in the Landscape
5. Food production
a mega water challenge
6. Closing the yield gap in the savannah zone
7. Water resources and functions for agro-ecological systems at the landscape scale
Part IV. Governance and Pathways
8. Governance for navigating the novel freshwater dynamics of the Anthropocene
9. Pathways to the future
Glossary
Index.