The first edition of this incisive text on the problems of drought and famine facing Africa won worldwide critical acclaim. Revised with a new introduction, Lloyd Timberlake's bestselling study is invaluable reading for anyone interested in Africa.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1986.

Only 3 per cent of the world's water is freshwater and about one third of that is inaccessible. The rest is very unevenly distributed, parts of Canada and the Amazon, for example are both more than amply suppied. Terrible and permanent water stress can be seen, among other places, in the drylands of Africa caused not just by drought, but by poverty leading to poor land management and over-population.;As with so many other things, those most badly affected are the poor nations of the world who are frequently faced with an impossible dilemma: they must either limit their water use to decreasingly available unused water or they must make do with used but untreated and, therefore, dangerous water. They cannot afford the technology to recycle safely. In rural regions increased populations and frequent droughts mean that in addition to the lack of fresh, clean water for human consumption there are inadequate supplies for crop irrigation.;An enormous proportion of the world's population lives in countries which share their primary sources of water with other nations, for example 12 countries depend on the Danube, 10 on the Niger, 9 on the Nile. Water is essential to development, both in poor countries and in rich, the use made of a major river in one country can affect seriously the possibilities open to another. Hence the international shortage is a major threat to world security. To take but one example, if Turkey goes ahead with its plan to damn the Euphrates, then Iraq and Syria, already water-stressed countries could be in even more serious trouble - they are hardly likely to accept the situation.;This book describes the world situation, addresses the nature of the problems, shows the ways in which they have been shamefully neglected in all development and economic thinking and proposes some solutions, often simple and well-tried but which could ensure water security for the whole world.

Chapters cover population and health; human settlements; food and agriculture; forests and rangelands; wildlife and habitat; energy; freshwater, oceans and coasts; atmosphere and climate; global systems and cycles; policies and institutions. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Lands lost to desert may effectively be lost for ever, so desertification is humanity's most obvious despoliation to the planet. It is certainly one of the most serious environmental problems facing the world today. In this book the author describes what is happening and where. Although the problem is greatest in developing countries, it is by no means confined to them. Australia, Africa, the USA and India are all affected. In the 1970s an international Plan of Action was drawn up to bring the phenomenon under control, but it was never implemented. Now that the situation is more serious than ever before, this book urges new action and describes many of the myriad ways in which it is possible to arrest the progress of desertification. It describes, too, not just the failures, but the considerable successes that have been achieved. Originally published in 1990