The World's Environments series consists of six volumes covering major areas of the globe. Each volume has ten chapters devoted to the following major environmental issues: Population and land use; Biodiversity; Parks, preserves and protected areas; Forests; Agriculture; Oceans and coastal areas; Energy and transportation; Air quality and the atmosphere; Environmental activism. There are, in addition, a number of sidebars and tables, which provide readers with information on key individuals, organizations, projects, events and controversies connected with specific environmental issues. A good example of the latter would be China's Three Gorges Dam which is probably the world's most controversial dam project and which continues to fuel fresh controversy at every stage of its development. Contributors to this reference work are all well respected in their fields of expertise and biographical details can be found at the front of the book.
Each individual chapter, commencing with Population and land use, lays out the state of the environmental issues to be taken into account. These cover both the positive and negative aspects of a topic and sometimes make depressing reading. We are told that the population of Asia is exploding almost out of control and that the whole region is showing signs of demographic fatigue. There has been large scale and haphazard conversion of forests and wetlands for agricultural and industrial use, as well as human settlement. Examples include the drainage and loss of many mangrove swamps, huge logging projects and over fishing of the oceans. Asia also contains a greater number of people living in poverty (about one‐third of the total population) than any other part of the world. Set against this, are some of the world's richest countries such as Japan and Singapore.
The picture is not all bleak. At present, Asia is one of the world's biodiversity strongholds. However, if the growing population continues to expand at the present rate, coupled with over enthusiastic land clearance for agriculture, a different picture emerges. Local flora and fauna become threatened – many Asian species are on the endangered wildlife lists. Some of these are well documented such as the fall in the tiger population, but others are not so visible, examples being the orangutan, freshwater turtle and many species of orchid. Add to all, this increasing atmospheric pollution from badly sited industrial developments, traffic congestion in such places as downtown Bangkok and acid rain damage to forest and lakes and we have a gloomy picture of out‐of‐control environmental hazards. Good things are happening, but not fast enough it seems and this book aims to at least help to bring more awareness of the problems and address the need to bring about change for the better. Increased international concern about the deteriorating state of Asian biodiversity is creating an environment in which formal protection of rain forests and other important habitats has emerged as a priority.
The remaining chapters deal fully with a range of other issues. These include changes to freshwater supplies and river systems, intensive agriculture, over‐fishing, and energy production and use. Problems such as the fast disappearing Aral Sea and the blighting of the Caspian Sea by oil production are discussed, as are public transport trends and air quality. A useful concluding chapter deals with environmental activism which is now growing in Asian countries as the populace becomes more aware of the damage being wreaked by the lack of health and safety concerns and the sheer greed of some of the operators of, for example, illegal timber logging.
This book is well worth studying if only to heighten the awareness that we need in order to understand fully the world's environmental problems. We should be encouraged by the stand of Dai Quing, the Chinese environmental activist who protested against the Three Gorges Dam project. She suffered imprisonment and solitary confinement for her efforts but, in 1993, was awarded a prestigious prize for her opposition. As a result of this, several international agencies cut off funding for the project, and the start of the building program was delayed until 1998. Even now, it lags behind and is a constant source of disagreement with China's political opponents.
There is a useful appendix of programmes and agencies with Web sites and an index with maps. This is a worthy, if somewhat pricey, attempt to bring researchers up to date on the state of the environment in this part of the world and will fill a gap in the literature.
