杏吧原创

鈥淚s the world鈥檚 water running out?鈥� is the subtitle of Water Wars.
It takes author Marq de Villiers 311 pages to answer. His verdict? No: 鈥淚t鈥檚 an
allocation, supply and management problem.鈥� Some problem: most people in the
West use a tonne of water a week, making it a miracle that we haven鈥檛 had a
water war yet. De Villiers doesn鈥檛 explain our luck: instead he ducks the
question. It鈥檚 true we have here a measured and lucid travelogue through
鈥渉ydropolitics鈥�, covering the convoluted history of the Nile, the terrible
Soviet legacy of the emptying Aral Sea and Israel鈥檚 theft of Arab water. But
other books have done this. We鈥檙e left with an unexplained assertion that human
inventiveness will carry on filling the well. Published by Weidenfeld &
Nicolson, 拢20, ISBN 0297842706.