Against the Seas - Dundurn

Against the Seas

Saving Civilizations from Rising Waters

Published February 2023

Description

An incredible read.… While unflinching in her analysis, Soderstrom nevertheless gifts us with a message of hope and resilience. — MAUDE BARLOW, activist and author of Still Hopeful: Lessons from a Lifetime of Activism.

What can we learn about coping with rising sea levels from ancient times?

The scenario we are facing is scary: within a few decades, sea levels around the world may well rise by a metre or more as glaciers and ice caps melt due to climate change. Large parts of our coastal cities will be flooded, the basic outline of our world will be changed, and torrential rains will present their own challenges. But this is not the first time that people have had to cope with threatening waters, because sea levels have been rising for thousands of years, ever since the end of the last Ice Age. Stories told by the Indigenous people in Australia and on the Pacific coast of North America, and those found in the Bible and the Epic of Gilgamesh, as well as Roman and Chinese histories all bear witness to just how traumatic these experiences were. The responses to these challenges varied: people adapted by building dikes, canals, and seawalls; by resorting to prayer or magic; and, very often, by moving out of the way of the rushing waters.

Against the Seas explores these stories as well as the various measures being taken today to combat rising waters, focusing on five regions: Indonesia, Shanghai, the Sundarbans of Bangladesh, the Salish Sea, and the estuary of the St. Lawrence River. What happened in the past and what is being tried today may help us in the future and, if nothing else, give us hope that we will survive.

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Contributors

Mary Soderstrom

Mary Soderstrom is the author of eighteen works of fiction and non-fiction. In addition to her most recent non-fiction work, Against the Seas: Saving Civilizations from Rising Waters, Dundurn Press also published her novel After Surfing Ocean Beach. She has traveled widely, but is based in Montreal.

Book Details

Paperback
February 2023
6x9 in
296 pp
9781459750487
PDF
February 2023
-
296 pp
9781459750494
ePub
February 2023
-
296 pp
9781459750500