Out-of-control wildfires, racing through bone-dry plantlife, are devouring Southern California. Lingering drought is devastating the southeastern U.S. and southern Australia. Global warming isn’t merely a future danger to the world’s supply of fresh water — the threat is already manifest today. In the new Cosimo book Water: The Blood of the Earth: Exploring Sustainable Water Management for the New Millennium, Allerd Stikker — chairman and founder of the Ecological Management Foundation — discusses present and upcoming options for ensuring the supply of clean water even as demand increases around the planet. He also explores the human relationship with water and the spiritual meanings we ascribe to it.

Praise for Water: The Blood of the Earth, from Charles Louis de Maudhuy, advisor to the chairman of Veolia Water:

Allerd Stikker has always reminded me of Alexis de Tocqueville, who would have chosen to study the problem surrounding water rather than the American democracy. He has the same insatiable curiosity, the same energy, same passion, same ease in mixing analysis with intuition, the capacity to draw together different cultures, the same capacity to listen and to dialogue with those who reason from different starting blocks. Water: The Blood of the Earth is the outcome of reflection and action of a cosmopolitan who has remained loyal to his native land, mixing some European thinking of the Age of Enlightenment with some futuristic viewpoints.

And from Antony Burgmans, former chairman of Unilever:

Lack of access to clean and sufficient water in many parts of the world, especially in Asia and Africa, will be a major issue in the coming decades. This book presents an overall view on the diversity of problems and solutions, based on the author’s involvement in water-related projects. Over the course of the years I have followed some of these projects with interest; they inspire us to take concrete actions.

Water: The Blood of the Earth is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.

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