The New Fight Over Who Owns The Earth

The Landgrabbers

How City financiers, Chinese billionaires, oil sheikhs and agribusiness are buying up our hungry, crowded world. Brilliant, trail-blazing reportage.

Brilliant: Fred Pearce has lifted the lid on an issue that has yet to register with most people.  Anyone who cares about the fate of the planet should read this.

Fred Pearce is at the nexus, brilliantly reporting on the biggest swindle of the 21st centurey. He is without peer.

Susan George, author of HOW THE OTHER HALF DIES

This is just what the world has been waiting for-a detailed overview of the land grabs that are the principal manifestation of a new geopolitics of food.

Lester R. Brown, President of Earth Policy Institute and author of World on the Edge

an astounding eye-opener, Landgrabbers is an unflinchingly sobering read and all the more important for that

a gut-wrenching page-turner... an exhaustive and compelling overview of the threat facing the global commons

Eye-opening... a new global horror story of the rich annexing the poor

Fred Pearce is the environmental and development consultant for New Scientist and writes regularly for the Guardian. He has won many awards including UK Environmental Journalist of the Year. In 2011 he received the ABSW Science Writers' Lifetime Achievement Award. His previous books include When the Rivers Run Dry - voted among the all-time 'Top 50' books by Cambridge University's Programme for Sustainable Leadership - The Last Generation, Confessions of an Eco-Sinner - longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize - and Peoplequake.

What do City speculators, Gulf oil sheikhs, Chinese entrepreneurs, big-name financiers like George Soros and industry titans like Richard Branson buy when they go shopping? Land. Parcels the size of Wales are being snapped up across the plains of Africa, the paddy fields of Southeast Asia, the jungles of the Amazon and the prairies of Eastern Europe. Why? The money men will tell you that their investments will bring an end to world famine. But is this more about fat profits and food security for the few? 
 
The race is on to grab the world’s most precious and irreplaceable resource. In this brilliant piece of investigative journalism Fred Pearce moves from boardroom and trading floor to goat-herder’s hut and flooded forest. The result is an eye-opening, extraordinarily important examination of the most profound ethical and economic issue in the world today.

Mass Migration, Ageing Nations and the Coming Population Crash

Peoplequake

A groundbreaking book that reveals the truth about population levels, and where they will take us in the future.

With his usual clarity and dash Fred Pearce brings us the best news we've heard in 10,000 years - that the human population should soon level out, at a number that should be quite manageable; and some of the problems that may seem so dire in truth are assets - including the rise in average age and the increase in migration. This isn't wishful thinking - it's hard science. And it changes everything.

Peoplequake is a debate-shaping book. Sobre, fascinating, it redraws the boundaries of the population debate. Pearce points out that the Earth could adequately meet the needs of a bigger population, but only once natural resources are shared more equally and managed using ecological 
principles. The population bomb would defuse itself even quicker if we tackled over-consumption by the rich instead of fretting about the poor having children. This brilliant book's insights could save many lives and stop many more from suffering.

Andrew Simms, Policy Director at the New Economics Forum

What a wonderfully rich and humane book! As a generation of newly-empowered women sweeps away our wrongheaded Malthusian nightmare, Fred Pearce demonstrates persuasively that the end of the population surge may well usher in a new era of ethnic tolerance, increased global integration and a period of kinder and more nurturing governance.

Ross Gelbspan, author of THE HEAT IS ON and BOILING POINT

Fearless and well-informed; every paragraph crackles. Pearce evokes past and present with vivid detail and startlingly coherent insight.

Jesse H. Ausubel, Director of the Program for the Human Environment and Senior Research Associate at The Rockefeller University

This is a well written and important book ... we highly recommend (Fred Pearce's) book - everyone should be grateful that he wrote it

Super-optimistic ... Even those who disagree should welcome this articulate contribution to a much needed debate.

Fred Pearce has reported on environment, popular science and development issues from over 60 countries during the past 20 years and is the recipient of many awards for both his journalism and his books. His books have been translated into 16 languages. When the Rivers Run Dry was voted among the all-time 'Top 50 Sustainability Books' by the University of Cambridge's Programme for Sustainable Leadership. Confessions of an Eco Sinner, his most recent work, was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and winner of a 2008 IVCA Clarion Award. He is the environment and development consultant for the New Scientist and writes regularly for the Guardian. He is a frequent broadcaster and speaker, and has given public presentations on all six populated continents in the past four years.

Wherever we look, population is the driver of the most toxic issues on the political agenda. But the population bomb is being defused. Half the world's women are having two children or fewer. Within a generation, the world's population will be falling. And we will all be getting very old. 
 
So should we welcome the return to centre stage of the tribal elders? Or is humanity facing a fate worse than environmental apocalypse? 
 
Brilliant, heretical and accessible to all, Fred Pearce takes on the matter that is fundamental to who we are and how we live, confronting our demographic demons.

Journey To The Heart Of The Rainforest

Deep Jungle

Fred Pearce explores every aspect of the world's rainforests. Following the trail of jungle adventurers from the past and from our high-tec present, he examines both the remains of early civilizations and the clues to our own civilization's dependence on the flora and fauna of the canopy.

...a fascinating piece of work. It contains a wealth of facts, legend and argument that should be of interest to anyone with any curiosity about the history and future of the planet

This is a fascinating exploration of the Earth's most alien, feared and fecund habitat...Pearce produces a cornucopia of wonderful facts and seeks to distinguish between the reality and myths surrounding the heart and lungs of our planet.

Pearce proves himself a skilful guide to the history and science of the "most extreme, the most complex place on Earth".

Fortunately, Fred Pearce's flights of rhetorical hyperbole are rare, his tone being one of genial enthusiasm mixed with discreet, but genuine, awe...This is more than a catalogue of curiosities...and Pearce does not shy from the daunting question of what the forests should be for.

Fred Pearce is a former news editor at New Scientist magazine, and is currently its environment and development consultant. He also writes regularly for the Independent and the Times Higher Education Supplement, the Boston Globe and Foreign Policy in the US and has written reports and extended journalism for WWF, the UN Environment Programme, the Red Cross, UNESCO, the World Bank and the UK Environment Agency. He is syndicated in Japan, Australia and elsewhere and has filed articles from more than 50 countries in the past decade. 
 
He was voted BEMA Environment Journalist of the Year in 2001 and has been short-listed for the same award in 2000, 2002 and 2003. He is a past recipient of the Peter Kent Conservation Book Award and the TES Junior Information Book Award. 
 
He is a regular broadcaster on radio and TV, with interview credits from Today to Richard and Judy to the Open University.

DEEP JUNGLE is an exploration of the most alien and feared habitat on Earth. Starting with man's earliest recorded adventures, Fred Pearce journeys high into the canopy - home to two-thirds of all the creatures on our planet, many of whom never come down to earth. During his travels he encounters all manner of fantastic flora and fauna, including a frog that can glide from tree to tree, a spider that can drag live chickens into its burrow and a flower that smells of decaying flesh. 
 
It is in the jungle that Pearce discovers secrets about how evolution works, the intricate links that connect us all, and maybe even clues to where humans came from - here is the key to our future foods and medicines, our climate and our understanding of how life works. At the start of a new millennium Pearce asks why we continue to waste precious time - and billions of dollars - looking for signs of life elsewhere in our universe when the greatest range of life-forms that have ever existed lies right here on our doorstep. Today environmentalists say we are on the verge of destroying the last rainforests, and with them the planet's evolutionary crucible, and maybe even its ability to maintain life on Earth. But nature has a way of getting its own back. The Mayans and the people of Angkor went too far in manipulating nature and paid the ultimate price. Their civilisations died and the jungle returned. Nature reclaimed it's own and it may do so again ...

How Nature Will Take Her Revenge for Climate Change

The Last Generation

Impeccably researched and explained survey of the evidence for imminent dramatic climate change.

Pearce is no idle Jeremiah...his book signals a shift of tone in the popular debate...The Last Generation makes you feel that we know enough now to conceive of the problems ahead. And anticipating a problem is half way to being able to do something about it.

This is the most frightening book that I have ever read...everyone should read this book to find out what is going wrong with the world.

One of Britain's finest science writers.  He is a sceptic of the best sort, saying nothing until he has seen the truth of it for himself.

A crystal clear wake-up call from one of the finest science writers in the world.

Apocalyptic in its vision, but never scare-mongering, The Last Generation superbly explains and dramatizes both the causes and the consequences of climate change. One reads it both gripped, and deeply alarmed.

Pearce's book does a superb job of surveying the evidence which demonstrates that we are changing the world's climate.  He gives an engaging, lucid and balanced account, with emphasis on both the certainty that "business as usual will produce basically a different planet" and the uncertainties as to detail, particularly time scales.  This is a powerful book about the most important event in human history.  Read it.

Professor Lord May OM FRS, Oxford University

We are now at war with Gaia and have no chance whatever of winning. Fred Pearce's scholarly and thoughtful book analyzes the battlefield and will guide us in a sensible retreat to the place where we can negotiate a peace.

This book is a sober illustration of how little we have actually grasped of the reality of the economic damage and human catastrophe already caused by anthropogenic Climate Change. 
In pulling together all the major scientific work from the last 40 years into a coherent and highly readable form, Fred Pearce has sounded the final warning. It is as if we are all on a plane with the auto-pilot set to crash. 
Pearce is unashamedly frank in telling it like it is and, even more frighteningly, that it's only going to get worse. This book is a call to action that we dare not ignore.

It is not a book for the faint-hearted, but if you want to read a well-researched book that makes the science accessible and exiting, The Last Generation is an ideal choice.

No one...is suggesting that this is a relaxing read, but it's certainly a necessary one.

Very readable...Pearce is excellent at explaining the fantastically complex interrelationships of Earth systems.

Fred Pearce is a former news editor at New Scientist magazine, and is currently its environment and development consultant. He also writes regularly for the Independent and the Times Higher Education Supplement, the Boston Globe and Foreign Policy in the US. He was voted BEMA Environment Journalist of the Year in 2001 and has been short-listed for the same award in 2000, 2002 and 2003.

Climate change is not a matter of gradually increasing temperatures. New scientific findings about how our planet works show that it does not do gradual change. Under pressure, it lurches into another mode of operation. Man-made global warming is on the verge of unleashing unstoppable planetary forces. Biological and geological monsters are being woken, and they will consume us. Virtually overnight Nature's revenge will be sudden and brutal, like a climatic tsunami sweeping across the globe. No question, we are the last generation to live with any kind of climatic stability. 
In this impassioned report, Fred Pearce travels the world on the story to end them all. Most troubling, while visiting the places where the action may start: deep in the Amazon, high in the Arctic and among the bogs of Siberia, he uncovers the first signs that nature's revenge is already under way.

Travels to find where my stuff comes from

Confessions of an Eco Sinner

This book offers the hidden story behind all our everyday things, revealing the cost of well-meaning but muddle-headed thinking.

This is a splendid book and will do much good to counteract the comfortable hypocrisy of urban and suburban greens who pretend to 'save the earth' while carrying on business as usual. Fred Pearce goes out and sees the world as well as thinking and writing about it; he is one of the few that understand the Earth as it really is and we must listen to him.

James Lovelock, author of THE REVENGE OF GAIA

Pearce shows us how our greed, and our wilful blindness, are ruining the world in faraway places . . . An excellent book.

Sometimes frightening, always enlightening, it will teach you more about other people's lives than you ever thought possible.

Beguiling . . . honest and revealing . . . optimistic . . . A big book for big problems.

Follow in his global footprints as you read this compelling, thoughtful, provocative and utterly fascinating book.

[Pearce] makes a strong case that the well-meaning Joe Publics of the world really do need someone to tell it like it is, in language they can understand and with the vital statistics intelligible to all. Essential reading.

Fred Pearce is an author and journalist. He is married with grown-up children and lives in Wandsworth in London. For much of the time he works from home. But reporting about environment and development has taken him all over the world for publications such as New Scientist, the Daily Telegraph, the Independent, Country Living, Geographical and the Ecologist.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Ever wondered if declaring support for fair-trade and then chucking Kenyan beans from your shopping trolley to reduce food miles really added up? Or whether the women in Bangladeshi sweatshops really want you to stop buying the clothes from their sewing machines? Or how the system works when you dump stuff but never buy from a charity shop? 
 
While none of us should stop trying, it was never easy being green. Mindful of his footprint, Fred goes in search of the source of the cotton in his shirt, the prawns in his curry and the people who grew, mined or made all his stuff in an attempt to discover the true story behind our everyday things. This compelling story of his travels moves green thinking on to a new, more sophisticated plane.

Alastair Fothergill

Keith Scholey

Fred Pearce

David Attenborough

Astonishing book...full of beautiful photographs

Featuring some of the world's rarest creatures and previously unseen parts of the Earth - Our Planet travels deep into the science of our natural world. Revealing the most amazing sights, alongside stories of the way humans are affecting the world's ecosystems - this book is part of a vital global conversation about protecting and preserving the planet.

A treat on your coffee table and a fine companion to any binge watch of the series

Revealing the most amazing sights on Earth, alongside stories of the way humans are affecting the world's ecosystems, this book places itself at the forefront of a global conversation as we work together to protect and preserve the planet.

The official companion to the ground-breaking Netflix original Attenborough series with a special foreword by David Attenborough

'The future of all life on this earth depends on our willingness to take action now' David Attenborough 
 
The official companion to the ground-breaking Netflix original series. 
 
With a foreword by Sir David Attenborough, breathtakingly beautiful still photography, specially commissioned maps and graphics, and compelling text expanding on the remarkable TV stories and giving the reader a depth of information that is impossible on screen, this companion book presents a whole new view of the place we call home. 
 
Featuring some of the world's rarest creatures and previously unseen parts of the Earth from deep oceans to remote forests to ice caps, Our Planet takes nature-lovers deep into the science of our natural world. 
 
Revealing the most amazing sights on Earth in unprecedented ways, alongside stories of the ways humans are affecting the world's ecosystems, from the wildebeest migrations in Africa to the penguin colonies of Antarctica, this book captures in one concise narrative a fundamental message: 
 
If we don't act now to protect and preserve our planet, the beauty we're lucky enough to witness on these pages will have disappeared . . . 
 
'This book is part of a vital global conversation about protecting and preserving the planet.' Compass Magazine

Fred Pearce

Praise for Our Planet

Astonishing book...full of beautiful photographs

Featuring some of the world's rarest creatures and previously unseen parts of the Earth - Our Planet travels deep into the science of our natural world. Revealing the most amazing sights, alongside stories of ...

A treat on your coffee table and a fine companion to any binge watch of the series

Astonishing book...full of beautiful photographs

Featuring some of the world's rarest creatures and previously unseen parts of the Earth - Our Planet travels deep into the science of our natural world. Revealing the most amazing sights, alongside stories of ...

A treat on your coffee table and a fine companion to any binge watch of the series

Astonishing book...full of beautiful photographs

Featuring some of the world's rarest creatures and previously unseen parts of the Earth - Our Planet travels deep into the science of our natural world. Revealing the most amazing sights, alongside stories of ...

A treat on your coffee table and a fine companion to any binge watch of the series

Books by Fred Pearce

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