One of Canada’s premiere magazines on issues of water and water
management, Water Canada suggested
recharging this summer with “the latest selection of winning water management
fiction and non-fiction.”
The list comprised mostly of 2017 publications, but
included a few late arrivals from 2016.
Recommendations included:
“Water,
Abundance, Scarcity, and Security in the Age of Humanity” (NYU Press) by Jeremy Schmidt is an
intellectual history of America’s water management philosophy. Debates over how human impacts on the planet, writes Water
Canada, are connected to a new geological epoch—“the Anthropocene”—tend to
focus on either the social causes of environmental crises or scientific
assessments of the Earth system. Schmidt shows how, when it comes to water, the
two are one and the same. The very way we think about managing water resources
validates putting ever more water to use for some human purposes at the expense
of others.
“A River Captured: The Columbia River Treaty
and Catastrophic Change” (RMB Books) By Eileen Delehanty Pearkes
reviews key historical events that preceded the Treaty,
including the Depression-era construction of Grand Coulee Dam in central
Washington, a project that resulted in the extirpation of prolific runs of
chinook, coho and sockeye into B.C. Prompted by concerns over the 1948 flood,
American and Canadian political leaders began to focus their policy energy on
governing the flow of the snow-charged Columbia to suit agricultural and
industrial interests. Water Canada
writes, “Referring to national and provincial politics, First Nations history,
and ecology, the narrative weaves from the present day to the past and back
again in an engaging and unflinching examination of how and why Canada decided
to sell water storage rights to American interests. The resulting Treaty
flooded three major river valleys with four dams, all constructed in a single
decade.”
“Border Flows: A Century of the Canadian-American Water
Relationship” (University of Calgary Press), Lynne Heasley and Daniel Macfarlane,
editors, explore and discuss Canada-U.S. governance. Water Canada writes,
“Ranging across the continent, from the Great
Lakes to the Northwest Passage to the Salish Sea, the histories in Border Flows
offer critical insights into the historical struggle to care for these vital
waters. From multiple perspectives, the book reveals alternative paradigms in
water history, law, and policy at scales from the local to the transnational.
Students, concerned citizens, and policymakers alike will benefit from the
lessons to be found along this critical international border.”
“New
York 2140” (Orbit)
by Kim Stanley Robinson is a novel set in New York City following major sea
level rises due to climate change. Water
Canada writes, “The book explores a full eight separate
narratives: the market trader, who finds opportunities where others find
trouble; the detective, whose work will never disappear, along with the
lawyers, of course; an Internet star; a building’s manager; and two boys
who don’t live there, but have no other home—and who are more important to its
future than anyone might imagine. Lastly there are the coders, temporary
residents on the roof, whose disappearance triggers a sequence of events that
threatens the existence of all– and even the long-hidden foundations on which
the city rests.”
“The Death and Life of the Great Lakes” (WW Norton &
Company Inc. Press) by Dan Egan is a frank discussion of the threat under
which the five Great Lakes currently suffer. This book, writes Water Canada is “prize-winning reporter
Dan Egan’s compulsively readable portrait of an ecological catastrophe
happening right before our eyes, blending the epic story of the lakes with an
examination of the perils they face and the ways we can restore and preserve
them for generations to come…Egan explores why
outbreaks of toxic algae stemming from the over-application of farm fertilizer
have left massive biological “dead zones” that threaten the supply of fresh
water. He examines fluctuations in the levels of the lakes caused by manmade
climate change and overzealous dredging of shipping channels. And he reports on
the chronic threats to siphon off Great Lakes water to slake drier regions of
America or to be sold abroad.”
“Downstream: reimagining
water” (Wilfred Laurier University Press) by Dorothy Christian & Rita Wong
“brings together artists, writers, scientists, scholars, environmentalists, and
activists who understand that our shared human need for clean water is crucial
to building peace and good relationships with one another and the planet. This
book explores the key roles that culture, arts, and the humanities play in
supporting healthy water-based ecology and provides local, global, and
Indigenous perspectives on water that help to guide our societies in a time of
global warming. The contributions range from practical to visionary, and each
of the four sections closes with a poem to encourage personal freedom along
with collective care,” writes Water
Canada.
“Water Is…The Meaning of Water” (Pixl Press) by
Nina Munteanu “explores the many dimension of H2O—the practical, the
physical, and the magical. Water Is… represents the culmination of over
twenty-five years of her study of water. During her consulting career for
industry and government, Munteanu discovered a great disparity between
humanity’s use, appreciation, and understanding of water. This set in motion a
quest to further explore our most incredible yet largely misunderstood and
undervalued substance. Part history, part science and part philosophy and
spirituality, Water Is…combines personal journey with scientific discovery that
explores water’s many “identities” and ultimately our own.”
Water Canada is a Canadian
magazine that provides news and feature articles on water and water management.
They currently co-host the Canadian Water Summit, a gathering of professionals from the water industry
including academia, NGOs, local communities, cleantech, industry associations,
manufacturing and government. “Delegates
will explore opportunities to collaborate on water technology and
infrastructure finance, ‘blue economy’ growth and climate change resilience
through progressive policies, smart business and bold investment
leadership.” This year’s summit will
occur June 22, 2017 at the Sheraton Centre Hotel in Toronto.
Every year, near Christmas, 
Margaret Atwood is a winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature as well as the Booker Prize (several times) and the Governor General’s Award. Animals and the environment feature in many of her books, particularly her speculative fiction, which reflects a strong view on environmental issues.
“
“The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries From a Secret World” (Greystone Books) by Peter Wohlleben. In The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben shares his deep love of woods and forests and explains the amazing processes of life, death, and regeneration he has observed in the woodland and the amazing scientific processes behind the wonders of which we are blissfully unaware. Much like human families, tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, and support them as they grow, sharing nutrients with those who are sick or struggling and creating an ecosystem that mitigates the impact of extremes of heat and cold for the whole group. As a result of such interactions, trees in a family or community are protected and can live to be very old. In contrast, solitary trees, like street kids, have a tough time of it and in most cases die much earlier than those in a group. Drawing on groundbreaking new discoveries, Wohlleben presents the science behind the secret and previously unknown life of trees and their communication abilities; he describes how these discoveries have informed his own practices in the forest around him. As he says, a happy forest is a healthy forest, and he believes that eco-friendly practices not only are economically sustainable but also benefit the health of our planet and the mental and physical health of all who live on Earth.
“Weeds: In Defense of Nature’s Most Unloved Plants” (Ecco) by Richard Mabey. “They’re better for you than you think,” says Atwood. “They hold the waste spaces of the world in place, and you can eat some of them.” Ever since the first human settlements 10,000 years ago, weeds have dogged our footsteps. They are there as the punishment of ‘thorns and thistles’ in Genesis and , two millennia later, as a symbol of Flanders Field. They are civilisations’ familiars, invading farmland and building-sites, war-zones and flower-beds across the globe. Yet living so intimately with us, they have been a blessing too. Weeds were the first crops, the first medicines. Burdock was the inspiration for Velcro. Cow parsley has become the fashionable adornment of Spring weddings. Weaving together the insights of botanists, gardeners, artists and poets with his own life-long fascination, Richard Mabey examines how we have tried to define them, explain their persistence, and draw moral lessons from them. One persons weed is another’s wild beauty.
“Birds and People” (Jonathan Cape) by Mark Cocker. “Vast, historical, contemporary, many-levelled,” says Atwood. “We’ve been inseparable from birds for millenniums. They’re crucial to our imaginative life and our human heritage, and part of our economic realities.” Vast in both scope and scale, the book draws upon Mark Cocker’s forty years of observing and thinking about birds. Part natural history and part cultural study, it describes and maps the entire spectrum of our engagements with birds, drawing in themes of history, literature, art, cuisine, language, lore, politics and the environment. In the end, this is a book as much about us as it is about birds.
will fare in a shifting political wind, these books offer diverse insight, a fresh and needed perspective and critical connection with our natural world–and each other through it.