It is our extreme pleasure to write the preface for this remarkable book. This book summarizes the successful efforts of our colleague and friend, Prof. Girja Sharan, representative member for India of OPUR International Organization for Dew Utilization, to harvest dew water in order to provide supplementary potable water to the population of the Kutch area.

Harvesting dew in such a way that humans can access water in arid and semi-arid regions has been for long a dream and many legends are attached to this idea. A number of documented attempts have been tried in the last century – Friedrich Zibold in Crimea (Ukraine), Achille Knapen and Léon Chaptal in France – but the dew water yields were found insignificant. Indeed, massive dew condensers were used which could not cool enough at night to reach the dew point temperature.

Based on a different approach promoted by OPUR – cooling of light foils by radiative losses at night – the dew water yield has been demonstrated to be large enough to be a useful supplement to populations living in an arid and semi-arid environment. This is all the more useful when dew water can be harvested at the very place where people are living, for instance on the roof of the habitations.

This book explains the exemplary procedure that Prof. Sharan followed: study of the dew resource of the site, chemical analysis of dew water to verify potability, test of dew harvesting materials, construction of small and pilot-sized dew condensers, and ultimately the construction of a large dew production plant.