Water Resources

Abstract

Water is of fundamental importance to life on Earth. It also has huge economic and cultural significance. This book examines water and water resources from scientific, economic and social perspectives. It is aimed at university students of all levels and water practitioners and policy makers who want to obtain a good grounding in the subject of water across the disciplines. The world faces grand challenges for water as popu - lation continues to grow, as emerging econ omies develop and as climate change alters the global and local water cycles. There are major questions to be answered about how we supply water in a sustainable and safe manner to fulfil our needs, while at the same time protecting vulner - able eco systems from disaster. These grand challenges require an interdisciplinary approach to address them because there are scientific and technological issues to be addressed, there are economic and political issues to be addressed and there are social and cultural issues to be addressed and these all interconnect. Solving a technological problem on water supply may be futile if there is no political or social will, nor the economic means to utilise that technology