Water is newsworthy: there is, or will be, a world water crisis. Aggravated by climate change, we are approaching the limits of human exploitation of freshwater resources, notably in growing essential food. The complexities and uncertainties associated with improving our management of fresh water take the potential remedies out of the hands of simple, local, hard engineering and into much larger units - the basin, the ecosystem and the global context, and also require longer term perspectives.

The Third Edition follows the same structure as its predecessors, presenting the...