This book restores water, both fresh and salt, to its central position in human endeavour, ecology and environment. Water access and the environmental and social problems of development are major issues of concern in this century. Drawing on water's many formations in debating human relationship with a major source of life and a major factor in contemporary politics, this book covers oceans and rivers to lagoons, billabongs and estuaries in Asia, Oceania and the West Pacific. In an interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary analysis of the water problem, the contributors address the physical...