62 Books Like Protecting the Third Pole

Who better to explain the Tibetan ecosystems that are vital to all of Asia? And to offer solutions.

A millennium before national parks and nature reserves appeared in the West, Tibetans had a system in place: they did not call regions national parks, but they decreed these areas were to be left alone, which is pretty much the same thing. The Dalai Lama elaborates on the Tibetan Buddhist concept of interdependence, whereby all creatures, plants, and phenomena depend on each other.

He proposed that Tibet be turned into a large biosphere, a Zone of Peace between China and India, set aside to preserve the Third Pole. Though his vision was rejected by the Chinese, in 1989, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize due to this vision—the first ever awarded on the basis of environmental initiatives.

Author Brahma Chellaney is India’s most prominent geopolitical expert. He lives in Delhi, at the epicenter of the battle for water.

India’s water crises are numerous. For starters, India’s groundwater is running out, and there’s no way to replenish it. Water means survival, and across India, water shortages are critical, not just for people but also for agriculture and industry. Few solutions are in sight at this point.

Chellaney’s book considers the much larger picture of how Asian nations will "share" water sources—if that is at all possible. Due to flooding and sea-level rise, a third of Bangladesh may disappear in the coming decades.

Author Jonathan Watts covered environmental issues across China for many years for The Guardian.

The book title originates from the author's childhood fantasy belief that if everyone in China jumped simultaneously, it would shake the earth off its axis, leading to catastrophic consequences. This has morphed into a metaphor for China's massive footprint across Asia. And a massive footprint in the Third Pole region—as China occupies Tibet by military force and does not give a toss about the environmental impact of its irresponsible policies. China is experiencing catastrophic water shortages and is hell-bent on diverting water resources from Tibet.

Weather has always been a constant topic of conversation, and this was certainly true for the Civil War generation. But it was also a matter of serious concern as it greatly affected the conduct of military campaigns. 

With careful attention to the science of weather and meticulous research, Kenneth Noe has crafted what amounts to a “weather history” of the American Civil War that brings new perspectives to the war’s course and would certainly have resonated with everyone from generals to privates to the folks at home. 

Noe’s book makes a striking contribution that assesses the impact of weather along with certain unusual climate conditions on the conduct of the war generally and specifically on strategy and logistics. For students of the Civil War, and with apologies to Bob Dylan, we need Ken Noe to know which way the wind blows.

I love this book because it ties our insatiable demand for stuff to local, regional, and, indeed, global pollution and environmental destruction that threatens human and animal life.

Each chapter presents an eye-opening case study, my favorite of which explains all the steps that occur to bring bananas from far-off places and into grocery stores through Southern California’s largest ports. In fact, while Oil Beach spells out the impacts of oil refining, shipping, and trucking on humans, I love it, especially because it focuses on birds, whales, and other non-humans. The sad irony of oil-coated birds being treated at a clinic funded by oil companies will not be lost on the reader.

I also love books that are compelling reads. I read this book from start to finish without putting it down.   

It is one of the few books about the woman who saved the Ocklawaha River (and the Florida aquifer) from the Cross Florida Barge Canal.

Marjorie Harris Carr, an unassuming woman from Micanopy, Florida, created the organization Florida Defenders of the Environment. It is an important sentry of environmental issues, including safeguarding the future of the Ocklawaha River.

I was one in a world of frustrated and increasingly anxious people back in 2018. Politicians just weren’t talking about the severity of the environmental crisis and the vast actions that we need (and can) undertake to tackle it. And then Extinction Rebellion, Greta Thunberg and Fridays for the Future, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Green New Deal, and the Sunrise Movement came along. Suddenly everyone was talking about it. This set of essays brings so many of those thinkers and doers together to give us an inspiring road map for getting out of the crisis and realizing a better world in the process. And it shows us that these movements are built on the shoulders of giants, particularly in the global south. 

During research for my book, I visited manmade wetlands in south Florida, built to filter farm runoff from the water before it flows into Everglades National Park. These constructed wetlands are thick with alligators, spoonbills, storks, hawks, and other wildlife—but they’re just an echo of the surviving Glades. Now among the most cherished natural areas on Earth, in the settlement era the Everglades was written off as wasted space. Early in the 20th century the northern half of the Everglades was drained and turned into sugar fields. Today polluted runoff from those farms threatens the surviving remnants of the Everglades ecosystem. 

Grunwald’s book shows the human quirks and greed that drove the Everglades’ destruction, and that sometimes get in the way of its restoration.

I was amazed at Taussig’s ability to combine personal description and anecdote with system analysis to reveal “the real.” This is a lyrical account of a useful plant turned into a worldwide commodity.

Palma Africana is better known as an oil palm, and its substance pervades a host of products in the modern economy of consumer goods. In Taussig’s episodic and fast-paced tale, we move from drinking beer with companions in strange new places to the ghosts of night-time jaguars and their corporeal human revenants. Those who know how to grow capital begin by displacing local people with cattle before moving to coca production and then clear-cutting for palm plantations, whose green and glossy images are found in the advertising spreads of Wall Street boardrooms.

The capital-generating methods of the predators are evident in the slouched figures with weapons at their side while riding above the people, keeping to the… show more.

This book had me shivering. Every chapter introduced another character and another set of often frightening but exhilarating arctic adventures spanning more than 100 years.

I found myself imagining what it must have felt like to cross Greenland’s ice on foot or to have spent the winter living in a rat warren of snow caves at the summit of the ice sheet with the Wegner expedition over the winter of 1930-1931.

An excellent read with well-referenced details and history galore. I couldn’t put it down and read the whole book in two nights.