Annotated Bibliography: The Global Clean Water Crisis

Julie Calvert

Barlow, Maude. Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the
Coming Battle for the Right to Water. New York: New, 2008.
Print.

The book provided an overall glimpse at the global water crisis both from a cause and effect and a solutions standpoint. It explains the key elements necessary to understand how the crisis arose and to take actions to better our situation. Barlow break down the causes into three categories, and throughout the book, relates facts back to these themes: pollution, overuse, and big corporations.

This was one of the most useful sources for my project, and provided me with a lot of the information I was looking to learn. The information is reliable, Maude Barlow is a professional in this area and the facts are reasonable. I would definitely say that this source is objective, probably biased too. Barlow is making her point throughout the novel. I think her goal was to provide readers with a fairly broad knowledge of the different aspects that play a role in the global water crisis being what it is.

As previously stated, this was one of my best, and most thorough sources. It was broad, yet examined each topic one at a time and carefully.  

It has provided me with a greater understanding of how we got into this mess, simple solutions, quick solutions, long-term solutions, and the importance of not ignoring the issues at hand. I think it has definitely played a role in how I think of the topic overall, so I guess if I was doing a research paper, this source would most certainly shape my argument.

“Bottled Water Statistics.” Bottled Water Statistics. Web. 15 May
2012. <http://www.droptheprop.info/bottled-water-
statistics>.

This website lists several facts about bottled water and the bottled water industry. It categorizes them into categories such as chemical effects, environmental impact, economic impact, and consumption facts. This website was incredibly useful for gathering quick facts as well as perspective. As some of the facts also showed up in my other sources I trust that it is a reliable source. I thought, for my purposes, this was a great source because it was quick, understandable, and provided perspective for one of my arguments.

De, Villiers Marq. Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious
Resource. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. Print.
          This book was another good encompassing book for the topic. It combined both research and the author’s travels to explain the topics mentioned. Like Blue Covenant, this book also describes both causes and solutions to the crisis. Each chapter looks at a different topic, which is helpful in organizing thoughts and ideas.

This was a useful source, even though I couldn’t finish it. I think that since it contained some of the same information, it wasn’t as useful to me as Blue Covenant was. As the author shares some of his personal travel stories I think that this source is more biased than Blue Covenant. That being said, I think that it adds to his argument by having the personal stories as it makes it more relatable.

I think this source was helpful to bringing the issues to life and seeing how it affects actual people. I think had I read this book first and finished it, it would have been more useful to me. I do however, think that it is a good book, well written, and very effective at conveying the research and argument.

Michael Pritchard’s Water Filter Turns Filthy Water Drinkable.
Perf. Michael Pritchard. TED Talks, 2012. Ted.com.

            This was a lecture given by Michael Pritchard about his new invention, the lifesaver bottle. This is a bottle that filters the water in the bottle and the filter is small enough to filter out even the tiniest viruses and bacteria. This was an incredibly interesting lecture and invention that I believe has great potential, however it wasn’t exactly relevant to my exact studies. Therefore, it wasn’t that helpful to me, but I still enjoyed hearing about the advances in technology being made.

“The Straw That Can Save Lives.” Web log post. Tumblr. Alchymista. Web. 24 May 2012. <http://www.tumblr.com/>.

This source was an article about a straw that filtered water as one drinks. Similar to my previous source about the lifesaver bottle, this was interesting in that it let me know about the technology being created to save lives in a sustainable way. I am not sure of the credibility of this source as it was from tumblr and it was hard to find anything like it or a website for the product. This being said, I don’t think that this was one of my top sources.

Tapped. Dir. Stephanie Soechtig. Atlas Films, 2009.
Netflix. Netflix. Web. 28 May 2012.

            This was a documentary about the bottled water industry. It was informative and accurate. It talked with real people and interviewed big companies. I think this source was very reliable as major players in the fight against the bottled water industry professionally produced it. I think that for my research about the industry itself this was a great, informative video. It was biased but it was also incredibly objective on the point. I would list this as one of my second informative sources.

Water Changes Everything. Charity Water, n.d. Web. 7 Apr. 2012. <www.charitywater.org>.

This source was a short video, sort of like a public awareness announcement, that summarized the crisis as a whole through animations. A company called Charity Water that works to supply clean water sources to those in rural, water scarce regions made this video. This was one of my first sources and helped get me interested the issue as a whole, so it is definitely an effective video.

Water Talks. Solidarités International, 2012. Youtube.com.

            This video was something I found on tumblr and was actually a public art project in France that made water fall in shapes that then shaped words. It was called “Water Talks” because water was used to tell about the issues of dirty water in the world. I think that the video was incredibly effective and that it was a very interesting idea.  I believe that the source is credible because the organization is another one of the leaders in the crisis. I think that this was an important source because it showed one of the many ways people are spreading awareness about the crisis, which is one of the ways to start solving it. 

     I am definitely not liking this book as much as I loved Blue Covenant. One of the reasons for this is that it is even more out of date than the last one. This one was written in 1999 and the other one was only six years old. Secondly, a lot of the information is repeated, and, while it is good information, it is not any fun to reread the same information over and over again. Another thing that I dislike about the book is that the author is focusing in on a lot of points that aren’t interesting or relevant to me. I do find some of it interesting, but some of it is a bit painful to chug through.

    I started my second book, Water: the Fate of Our Most Precious Resource, by Marq de Villiers. So far I like it, the author takes more of a human and personal stance to narrating the situation. For example, the last book would talk about a certain issue (overuse of groundwater), however, this book uses a story of a specific group of people to show the problem and how it affects this one group of people. So far I already like this book better simply because it talks of the impact on people, going beyond just simple statistics. 

      What I learned. This was a great comprehensive book for encompassing the issues we (the world) face with clean water issues, the approaches  being taken to solve the water crisis, the why now? (weren’t we taught the water cycle as being renewable?). I learned abou technology such as desalination plants (both nuclear and traditional), nanotechnology to clean water, corporations that can literally take water out of the clouds and sell it to us for ridiculously high prices, and the lack of technology used in creating and keeping bottled water out of the environment. I already knew that lack of clean water effected children’s ability to attend school, but I did not know that on average, Africa alone could save 40 billion hours each year, which is about the entire workforce of France!

    Additionally, I learned about possible solutions, and the steps our government and other governments around the world are taking get closer to solving this crisis. On top of that, there are many NGOs currently working for solutions to the water crisis and raising funds for projects to build clean water sources in desperate locations around the world. Overall, on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the best and most informative book I have ever read, I would give this a 7.5. I really did enjoy it and almost everything mentioned was relevant to my topic and answered many of my questions. Although the book was written in 2007, and some of the facts are somewhat old now, most of the information was still relevant, gave me an idea of the quantities that such facts exist in. I am excited to start my next book, Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource by Marq de Villiers.