Sink or Swim
Susannah Fisher has published a new book on the hard choices ahead in adapting to climate change.
The world needs to adapt to climate change - but how? What are the key problems and hard choices that lie ahead for the global community? This book reveals all.
Heatwaves, wildfires, hurricanes and flooding caused by climate change are already impacting people and nature. Adaptation until now has been incremental with governments and institutions tinkering around the edges of current systems. This will not be enough.
Sink or Swim explores the hard choices that lie ahead concerning how people earn a living, the way governments manage relationships between countries, and how communities accommodate the movement of people. Should people be encouraged to move away from the coast? How can global food supplies be managed when parts of the world are hit by simultaneous droughts? How can conflict be handled when there isn't enough water?
Drawing on cutting edge research, interviews with experts, and practical examples from across the world, Susannah Fisher tells the story of the tough choices on adaptation that lie ahead, and looks at ways we can still have a liveable planet later in this century and beyond. Will we choose to sink or swim?
The Financial Times wrote that “Fisher … says it’s obvious the past decade of measures have been too incremental and inadequate. For one thing, there isn’t enough money .... Many hurdles are less obvious ... This readable book shows why, as with so much else in environmental policy, we need action nonetheless”
More praise for Sink or Swim:
Fisher brilliantly outlines how climate adaptation must happen with people, not for people. A crucial roadmap for turning climate paralysis into determined action, where it counts the most. ― Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
Sink or Swim shows us that adapting to climate change is a critical part of climate justice. Through a compelling and meticulously researched narrative, Susannah Fisher highlights the urgent need to face up to the scale of climate impacts and sets out how people can be at the heart of a fair and just response. ― Mary Robinson, UN Special Envoy on Climate
A clear and hopeful book which brings to life a hard but vital question of our time - how do we not only live with degrees of climate change but imagine better futures within them? ― Alice Bell, author of Our Biggest Experiment
Sink or Swim summarises the choice we face right now. This big-picture take on the unfolding global crisis and the part we all need to be playing right now is carefully researched and action-oriented. It is realistically stark but hopeful. ― Mike Berners-Lee, author of A Climate of Truth