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Blue Gold by Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke, Earthscan, £20, ISBN 185383937X Reviewed by Fred Pearce

SHOULD we be frightened that corporations are taking over our water supplies? The authors of Blue Gold think we should be petrified. Large companies such as French water lord Vivendi and German utilities giant RWE, which now owns Britain’s Thames Water, are supping at the wells of our most precious resource all the world over.

Water, the authors say, promises to be to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th century. After all, a bottle of Perrier now costs more than the…

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