January 2024 – Friends of the Rib and Quin

The Times Book of the Year pick

‘Smart, sobering, and scholarly.’ – Steve Brusatte, the Sunday Timesbestselling author of The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs

A gripping, thought-provoking and ultimately optimistic investigation into the world’s next great climate crisis – the scarcity of water.

Water scarcity is the next big climate crisis. Water stress – not just scarcity, but also water-quality issues caused by pollution – is already driving the first waves of climate refugees. Rivers are drying out before they meet the oceans and ancient lakes are disappearing. It’s increasingly clear that human mismanagement of water is dangerously unsustainable, for both ecological and human survival. And yet in recent years some key countries have been quietly and very successfully addressing water stress.

How are Singapore and Israel, for example – both severely water-stressed countries – not in the same predicament as Chennai or California?

In The Last Drop, award-winning environmental journalist Tim Smedley meets experts, victims, activists and pioneers to find out how we can mend the water table that our survival depends upon. He offers a fascinating, universally relevant account of the environmental and human factors that have led us to this point, and suggests practical ways to address the crisis, before it’s too late.

Tim Smedley, author of Clearing the Air: The Beginning and the End of Air Pollution, contacted members of the Chalk Aquifer Alliance working group back in the summer of 2020 as part of the research for his proposed book on the global water crisis, to gain an insight into the challenges chalk streams were facing. Following our meeting I was able to put him in touch with Ash Smith of Windrush WASP to learn more of the work he and Peter Hammond had done in uncovering illegal sewage spills by water companies.

Three years on and in the summer of 2023, The Last Drop was published. I managed to add it to my library just after Christmas and it has been my reading material since.

Tim’s research for this book has been immense, cataloguing the global water crisis across the planet, from the Americas, through Europe to Africa, the Middle and Far East and Australia. It is a sobering read and one I thoroughly recommend (and not just because of his kind words in the Acknowledgements section!).

The paperback will be out later in the spring and Tim has kindly agreed to give an online talk for the Chalk Aquifer Alliance then too. I will let you all know of the date but in the meantime, if you would like to get up to speed on the global water crisis and what has contributed to it as well as learn about some of the practical steps being taken to resolve the issues, look no further than Tim’s excellent book.

It was an absolute honour and pleasure to talk to and with the children of Barley and Barkway First Schools this morning about chalkstreams and the ongoing challenges they face.

We covered rivers and watersheds, why chalkstreams are so special, what animals, insects and plants live in them and how pollution and abstraction are damaging them.

The children were wonderfully attentive and engaged and we look forward to hosting them on the riverbank for some fieldwork in the spring.

Not sure about waders as a fashion choice, from these pictures though!

Many thanks to Mrs Gould and all the teachers for asking us along and in advance for the letters the children will be writing to our MP and the water companies.