Judith D. Schwartz is a journalist and the author of Cows Save the Planet, about soil and land restoration. In Water in Plain Sight, she broadens her gaze to water scarcity, the natural water cycle and climate change. She examines how human activity has damaged global water and climate systems and provides an unusually hopeful vision of what we can do to restore them.
The desertification of land worldwide has resulted from mismanagement, including "deforestation, fire, poor grazing management, tillage and inappropriate use of irrigation." Lands stripped of their native plant and animal life swing between flood and drought, crops fail and human livelihoods crumble. Schwartz explains how healthy soils support strong water cycles, how fossil fuel-based agricultural techniques destroy them, and the biological techniques that can revive them, including a new approach to holistic grazing management. She visits experimental ranches in South Africa, Mexico and Zimbabwe where scientists and farmers have successfully introduced carefully managed cattle to restore soil, grasses, wildlife and fresh water supplies. A West Texas farm has found a way to harvest 60 gallons of water from condensation every day, and reforestation projects in Brazil, Kenya, Java and Ethiopia have brought back rainfall, rivers and streams.
Humility is useful, says Schwartz, but so is recognizing our power to catalyze and support natural processes. "We could say that every acre of land on the planet offers a choice, whether toward enhancement and health and complexity or toward degradation. It's up to us." --Sara Catterall