Other Worldwatch Books
November 2004
Brian Halweil
ISBN: 0-393-32664-0
237 pages
In Eat Here, author Brian Halweil points to a surging local food movement that is rediscovering homegrown pleasures and changing the way we eat.
With Eat Here, you can
- Discover why eating local food is one of the most significant choices you can make for the planet and for yourself.
- Find out why food shipped over long-distances can be dangerous.
- Get practical advice on finding homegrown pleasures amid the same old standard choices.
- Learn why local food is better for your health, small farmers, and the environment.
Visit our Online Feature: Food to learn more about the virtues of local food.
March 2000
Hilary French
ISBN: 0-393-32004-9
257 pages
As the twenty-first century dawns, goods, money, people, ideas, and pollution are traveling around the world with unprecedented speed and scale, producing transnational environmental problems, from climate change to the soaring trade in commodities like timber and shrimp.
In Vanishing Borders, author Hilary French provides people concerned about the future of the planet with a clear plan of action for ensuring environmental stability in the wake of globalization.
French argues for integrating ecological considerations into the still-nascent rules of global commerce by reforming international treaties and institutions. She shows that new communications technologies are making it possible for nongovernmental organizations to mobilize powerful coalitions of private citizens to force government and corporate decision-makers to take global environmental issues into account. She finds that some forward-thinking businesses have begun to support environmental codes of conduct and other international standards that international institutions, nongovernmental organizations, and the business community are forging innovative partnerships to reverse ecological decline.
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July 1999
Sandra Postel
ISBN: 0-393-31937-7
313 pages
A key lesson from history is that most irrigation-based civilizations fail. As we enter the third millennium A.D., the question is: Will ours be any different?
Irrigation has been a powerful tool of human advancement for 6,000 years. It remains a cornerstone of agriculture today, as farmers strive to meet the increasing food demands of ever larger populations. In Pillar of Sand, author Sandra Postel examines the challenges to our modern irrigation society-from mounting water scarcity and salinization of soils to rising tensions between countries over shared rivers. She explores irrigation's role in the rise and fall of early civilizations and connects the lessons of the past with the challenge of making irrigation thrive into the twenty-first century and beyond.
Pillar of Sand points the way toward protecting rivers and vital ecosystems even as we aim to produce enough food for a projected 8 billion people by the year 2030. Postel shows how innovative irrigation technologies and strategies can alleviate hunger and environmental stress at the same time. And she calls for a new ethic of sufficiency and sharing in response to impending water limits.
April 1999
Lester Brown, Gary Gardner, Brian Halweil
ISBN: 0-393-31906-7
167 pages
Should you be worried about world population growth? The birth rate is falling in many industrialized countries; in some cases populations are actually shrinking. But in many nations where the population has exploded in recent decades, birth rates remain high, and populations will likely double or triple in the next half-century. Nevertheless, these nations are showing the early signs of "demographic fatigue" —a slowdown in population growth due not to smaller families but to increasing death rates.
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November 1998
Chris Bright
ISBN: 0-393-31814-1
287 pages
Bioinvasion — the spread of alien, "exotic" organisms — is gnawing away at ecosystems all over the world, largely unnoticed and unopposed. The continuing increase in travel and trade around the globe is fostering the spread of more and more invaders of almost every conceivable description, from highly flammable weeds to human pathogens and forest diseases.
Chris Bright tracks the extent and explains the dangers of bioinvasion — an environmental threat that may now be surpassed only by habitat loss in its potential to irreparably damage our planet. Bright explores the counterintuitive mechanisms of invasion, in which the addition of a non-native species to an area tend to reduce that area's biodiversity. He shows that bioinvasions are not only destroying ecosystems, but also endangering public health, disrupting the cultures of traditional forest and fishing peoples, and costing our economies billions of dollars a year.
September 1998
David Malin Roodman
ISBN: 0-393-31852-4
303 pages
The Natural Wealth of Nations offers concrete solutions to environmental problems by showing how we can turn the tremendous power of market economies away from environmentally destructive activities and toward protecting natural wealth of human health.
Why are the world's governments wasting more than $650 billion each year to subsidize activities that harm the environment, from logging to mining to driving? David Roodman shows how cutting these wasteful subsidies can boost the economy and save tax dollars, while protecting the environment. Roodman also proposes raising taxes on harmful activities like air pollution, while cutting taxes on payrolls and profits — a tax shift that would discourage pollution without harming the economy.
1998
Lester R. Brown, Ed Ayres
ISBN: 0-393-31753-6
358 pages
Concern about the health of our planet has risen sharply in the past few years. World leaders, who for four decades were deeply preoccupied with Cold War threats, have awakened to the realization that the most pervasive threats to human security now may be environmental, not military. The expanding human population is straining the planet's capacities — not only its capacity to satisfy our relentlessly growing demands for food, energy, fresh water, lumber, and space to live, but also its ability to recover from the damage those demands have inflicted.
October 1996
Michael Renner
ISBN: 0-393-31568-1
239 pages
In Fighting for Survival, Michael Renner describes the new reality of post-Cold War security - a reality that seems still to elude global leaders.
In the aftermath of the Cold War, it has become clear to citizens everywhere that it is not the march of armies that is the clearest threat to peace and stability but rather the disaster of pervasive resource loss, refugees who are forced across borders, and social instability that makes war primarily an action within, rather than between, states.
Renner argues that global leaders and citizens must find a new sense of mission and destiny, and must reclaim the security terminology from war-making institutions. He shows that social, economic, and environmental stresses and pressures on societies worldwide call for a new definition of security, and hence for a new set of priorities.
Poverty, unequal distribution of land, and the degradation of ecosystems are among the most pressing issues undermining security. Soldiers and tanks are at best irrelevant and at worst an obstacle to solving problems.
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