Troubled Water: Saints, Sinners, Truth and Lies About the Global Water Crisis [Paperback]

Troubled Water is part of an amazing library of books Anita Roddick, global entrepreneur and founder of Body Shop, has spent much of the last 3 years authoring and is publishing simultaneously.

Troubled Water is likely to have extraordinary consequences for global corporations in the water and soft drinks industries. For years, this sector has been asked by poor countries to collaborate responsibly and not to try to take over water in countries where cumulatively a billion people already have no fresh water access. As the author of World Class Brands 15 years ago, and a marketer ashamed to agree with most of Naomi Klein's charges of how much badwill global marketing has needlessly compounded over the last decade and a half, it will need a heroic and deeply human response from the likes of Coca-Cola if it is to remain in top 10 global branding lists 5 years out.

It is fitting that within days of the publication of Troubled Water, the president of the World Bank has declared a war on global poverty. Over in Britain, from where I submit this review, you can be assured that Water will be the main activist theme aligning 20000 concerned people converging for the European Social Forum (October 2004), and celebrating the Brazilian led launch of the International Free Water Academy. It is time the people of the world took back the branding of the humanity of water, and 2005 is a year jammed full of large scale change networking events, each of which will pay special tribute to water as a symbol of human freedom. Troubled Water is a book of our times, the start of an activepeace movement as well as with your and my god's blessings a whirlwind contributor to James Wolfesohn's war on poverty. It would be fitting to pay tribute to his and Anita's common sense of humanity and water with the way the World Bank declares our future's interdependence at every locality of the globe:

"The big issue of our time is global security. At present, we view it mostly through the lens of Baghdad or Beslan. While we certainly have to deal with these and other immediate concerns, by far, the greatest potential source of instability on our planet today is poverty, and the hopelessness and despair that it brings to so many in our world. Sixty years ago, the world recognized the need to bring hope to the millions of people left in shattered nations after World War II, and the World Bank was created to help them rebuild their lives. Its mission today remains as critical as it was then, if not more so. It is in all our best interests to help countries that struggle with crushing poverty to take basic steps, such as getting boys and girls into school; preventing diseases like H.I.V./AIDS, malaria and diarrhea; protecting our forests and oceans; and removing obstacles to trade so that poor farmers can get their products to market. Helping poor countries develop in this way is not merely the right thing to do ( though, of course, it is): investing in development is the safe thing to do. My generation did not grow up thinking this way. We thought there were two worlds - the haves and the have-nots - and that they were, for the most part, quite separate. That was wrong then. It is even more wrong now. The wall that many of us imagined as separating the rich countries from the poor countries came down on Sept. 11, 2001. We are linked now in so many ways: by economics and trade, migration, environment, disease, drugs and conflict. In our world of six billion people, one billion have 80 percent of the world's GDP, while the other five billion have the remaining 20 percent. Nearly half this world lives on less than $2 per day. One billion people have no access to clean water; over 100 million children never get the chance to go to school...

I found this book to be a very compelling source of information about our Global water crisis. It presented information in formats that are very clear and to the point. It illustrates quite well the tug-of-war going on today between corporations that sell bottled water and/or soft drinks and the people of countries who desperately need that water at low prices. This book defines water's critical role in the network of the earth's resources and how clean water should be the right of all human beings, not a commodity purchased by corporations and sold at huge profits. A must read!

Anita Roddick is both an entrepreneur and an activist and in Troubled Water: Saints, Sinners, Truth And Lies About The Global Water Crisis, informatively surveys the issues involved in worldwide potable water availability, from the politics of water distribution and water quality to global warming and bottled water myths. Essays from Greenpeace, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others, outline truths, lies, and myths surrounding a range of world water issues.