Water in Plain Sight: Hope for a Thirsty World

In this earnest but uneven volume, environmental writer Schwartz (Cows Save the Planet) places water in a wide human and ecological context, focusing on “innovators from around the world who are finding new routes to water security.” She looks, for example, at the work of Allan Savory, who calls for a holistic approach to land stewardship and restoration. Schwartz describes how improperly managed water and soil lead to “poverty, crop failure, social breakdown, unrest, and repression,” and she travels to Zimbabwe “to see holistic planned grazing in action.” In California, Schwartz addresses the ongoing drought. She notes that large percentages of the state’s water supply go to agriculture and wonders whether it is smart to grow “thirsty crops like rice, cotton, and alfalfa in a mostly dry, often hot landscape.” When farmers in the Imperial Valley ship alfalfa to China to feed cows there, they are essentially “exporting water—which the region can ill afford to spare.” Other chapters cover the relationship between water and Rio de Janeiro’s Tijuca Forest as well as the water crises in São Paulo, Brazil, and Kimberley, Australia. Some sections prove less engaging than others, but Schwartz does well to highlight this timely, important topic. Agent: Laura Gross, Laura Gross Literary. (July)