Water Resilience for Human Prosperity

A new approach to water-resources for researchers, professionals and graduate students, focusing on global sustainability and socio-ecological resilience to change.

Johan Rockström (Author), Malin Falkenmark (Author), Carl Folke (Author), Mats Lannerstad (Author), Jennie Barron (Author), Elin Enfors (Author), Line Gordon (Author), Jens Heinke (Author), Holger Hoff (Author), Claudia Pahl-Wostl (Author)

9781107024199, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 March 2014

311 pages, 116 colour illus. 12 tables
25.3 x 21.3 x 1.7 cm, 0.88 kg

'Valuable for academic researchers, professionals in water resources management, and graduate students … Highly recommended.' E. S. Norman, Choice

The world's human population now constitutes the largest driving force of changes to the biosphere. Emerging water challenges require new ideas for governance and management of water resources in the context of rapid global change. This book presents a new approach to water resources, addressing global sustainability and focusing on socio-ecological resilience to changes. Topics covered include the risks of unexpected change, human impacts and dependence on global water, the prospects for feeding the world's population by 2050, and a pathway for the future. The book's innovative and integrated approach links green and blue freshwater with terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem functions and use. It also links changes arising from land-use alteration with the impacts of those changes on social-ecological systems and ecosystem services. This is an important, state-of-the-art resource for academic researchers and water resource professionals, and a key reference for graduate students studying water resource governance and management.

List of contributors
Preface
Introduction to the book
Acknowledgements
Part I. A New Perspective: 1. The role played by water in the biosphere
Part II. Living in a Human-Dominated World: 2. Human modification of the Earth system
3. Balancing on a threshold of alternate development paths: regime shifts, traps and transformations
4. Crucial functioning of and human dependence on the global water system
Part III. Food Production Globally: In Hotspot Regions and in the Landscape: 5. Food production: a mega water challenge
6. Closing the yield gap in the savannah zone
7. Water resources and functions for agro-ecological systems at the landscape scale
Part IV. Governance and Pathways: 8. Governance for navigating the novel freshwater dynamics of the Anthropocene
9. Pathways to the future
Glossary
Index.

Subject Areas: Hydrology & the hydrosphere [RBK], Earth sciences [RB], Earth sciences, geography, environment, planning [R]