Chellaney, Brahma. 2011. Water: Asia's New Battleground. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

摘要

Brahma Chellaney tackles a subject of growing global concern: competition over increasingly scarce freshwater resources. His approach is interdisciplinary and concerned with both intra- and interstate water-related conflict. What provides the study with focus is its geographical scope: the continent of Asia, and in particular those areas fed by rivers that rise in the Tibetan plateau. Many Asian states are experiencing growth that Chellaney believes will allow the region to reclaim the economic preeminence it enjoyed prior to the Industrial Revolution in the West. A potential spoiler in this Asian renaissance is water scarcity. Agriculture remains an important economic sector in many states, and irrigation, a notorious water hog, consumes the vast majority of Asian freshwater resources. While Asia has half the global average availability of per capita freshwater, it uses twice as much per capita as comparatively water-rich Latin America. If it continues this unsustainable water-use trajectory, the region will face severe shortages and tensions over water resources will rise.