Welcome to Green Frigate

Titles published under the Green Frigate Books imprint aim to explore the horizons of the natural and built environments, and the relations of humans within them. The goal of the imprint is to reach its readership by producing works that fall in the cracks between those offered by traditional academic and popular presses. Specific categories include ‘Design, Interiors and Architecture’ and ‘The natural and built environments’. In common with Libri Books, the imprint should be of interest particularly for members of ‘communities of practice’ in the natural and built environments.

Wetlands of Mass Destruction

Robert L. France

Release Date: 01/11/2014

Pages: 207
Published:
ISBN: 9780971746831

Code

9780971746831

Price £12.50

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Wetlands of Mass Destruction

Paradise Found and Lost: The Mesopotamian marshes, located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southern Iraq, were historically one of the world’s most important wetland environments. The area—once over twenty thousand square kilometers and thought by some to be the original Garden of Eden—has provided habitat for millions of migrating birds and had been inhabited since the time of the Sumerians by thousands of people living on artificial islands of mud and reeds and depending on sustainable fishing and farming. In the early 1990s, however, this important ecological and unique cultural jewel was destroyed by Saddam Hussein’s Ba’thists through a series of constructed dams and water diversions designed to eradicate the remaining marsh dwellers who had escaped previous massacres. This led to what many regard as perhaps history’s most severe ecocide in history, that is, the deliberate destruction of an environment for the purpose of ethnically cleansing it of a specifically targeted population. The ancient Mesopotamian inscriptions and Old Testament quotations in this collection offer a haunting presage for these recent events as well as a grim reminder of the overwhelming role that despotic rulers and environmental hardships have always played in the lives of commoners.