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Troubled Water

Saints, Sinners, Truths and Lies About the Global Water Crisis

by Anita Roddick

with Brooke Shelby Biggs

For the Media

The amount of water that exists on earth today is exactly the same amount that existed at the beginning of time. But humanity is putting greater demands on this precious, limited resource than ever before. In their new book Troubled Water, Dame Anita Roddick and Brooke Shelby Biggs take a closer look at this life-giving resource, at the demands that humanity places on it, and at the premonitions that the wars of the next century will be fought over water.

Around the world, a billion people donâ??t have access to clean water. Meanwhile, consumers in industrialized countries such as Italy, Britain, Australia and the United States drink millions of bottles of water every day â?? some of which is less pure than the stuff flowing from their taps at home â?? at a cost of about 1000 times what tap water costs. Why are the politics of water so skewed, and whatâ??s being done about it?

Troubled Water, to be released by Chelsea Green Publishing in America in October 2004, explores the problems and the solutions of the global water crisis, and provides resources for ordinary readers to get involved. Through 138 brightly designed pages, this book presents fourteen essays on water interspersed with useful facts and figures about water and everyday life. Essayists include renowned environmental activist Vandana Shiva, Oxfamâ??s Barbara Stocking, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, whose own essay, â??River of Dreams,â?� points to the restoration of the Hudson River as a model of hope and potential in the fight for clean water.

Blending hope for restoration with disturbing facts about current consumption and demand patterns, Troubled Water gives readers a sense of the true state of water as a resource that must not be taken for granted. Roddick notes Robert F. Kennedy Jrâ??s claim that â??Water no longer flows downhill. It flows toward money.â?� That fact, she writes, is hardly lost on the multinationals. â??Water is one of the great business opportunities,â?� notes Fortune Magazine. â??It promises to be for the 21st century what oil was for the 20th.â?� Coca-Colaâ??s 1993 annual report said, â??All of us in the Coca-Cola family wake up each morning knowing that every single one of the worldâ??s 5.6 billion people will get thirsty that day. If we make it impossible for these 5.6 billion people to escape Coca-Cola, then we assure our future success for many years to come.â?� Coca-Cola now owns dozens of bottled water brands, including Dasani and Evian in the United States, Pump in Australia, and Malvern in the UK. Troubled Water contributor Amit Srivastava writes about the disastrous effects of this global attempt to monopolize water resources in her essay â??Coca-Colanization.â?�

Water is elemental, life-giving and sustaining. It is ours to drink, ours to play in, to grow with, to build on. Water is more fundamental than any other substance on Earth. Troubled Water is a stirring tribute to this, our most fundamental resource. It is a small effort to explore the problems of water worldwide, and to identify and celebrate some possible solutions.