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Botswana's Okavango Delta is considered by many to be one of the last "Edens" left on Earth. There a rich assortment of organisms exist in natural equilibrium.
The same insults in microcosm - encroaching agriculture, water diversion, disease, and pollution - threaten the Okavango that in macrocosm threaten the entire planet. Starting with a sensual journey by plane and boat, Eldredge leads a reader first to the very heart of the Okavango, and then on a tour of Earth's organisms - animals, plants, fungi, and the microbes which underpin all of life - and ecosystems in which these organisms earn their living - from the tundra to the tropics.
It is a journey that reveals the twin faces of biodiversity (the 13 million extant species and the ecosystems through which these species transform and exchange the Sun's energy) and the value of biodiversity to the Biosphere as a whole and to our own continued human existence.
Eldredge's tour ends at the Panama Canal, the site of one of humankind's greatest achievements, where, if only by necessity, practical solutions to maintaining biodiversity's delicate balance have been successfully implemented. If his message is not entirely pessimistic, it is not entirely hopeful either. There are a number of difficult actions we must take as a global society if we are to stem an impending Sixth Extinction, and Eldredge outlines these steps in detail.
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Previews available in: English
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Edition | Availability |
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1
Life in the Balance
January 31, 2000, Princeton University Press
Paperback
in English
- New Ed edition
0691050090 9780691050096
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2
Life in the balance: humanity and the biodiversity crisis
1998, Princeton University Press
in English
0691001251 9780691001258
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Book Details
Edition Notes
Includes bibliographical references (p. [216]-218) and index.
"A Peter N. Nevraumont book."
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First Sentence
"Tucked away in the northern reaches of Botswana-a landlocked country about the size of France seated just to the north of South Africa-lies the closest thing to Eden left on the planet, the Okavango Delta."
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