Initiatives
The past two decades have seen a succession of efforts to reform water policies through pricing mechanisms ("get the prices right") or legal frameworks ("enabling environment"). There have been investments in organizational capacity building and technical training, and in participatory management and strategic planning. Perhaps it's time to look seriously at the underlying values to see what they are, to assess whether those values are serving the interests of sustainable water management, and then from the information base make a determination for how to shift management more in line with a healthier value system.
Unlike policies and management rules that can be revised and enforced through well understood processes of organizational development, the cultural values underlying water management are difficult to identify and even more difficult to change. Indeed, the general consensus is that you can't change values directly; you have to use indirect means. When the Netherlands government wanted farmers in one region to adopt conservation practices including leaving parts of their fields as uncultivated habitat for birds and wildlife, the farmers were offered a subsidy as an incentive. While their initial adoption of the new behavior was externally induced, it allowed them to gain experience with the new ecological farming approach, and they gradually internalized new values about nature and their role as producers working with natural processes. Their change in values occurred after (and as a result of) the change in their behavior.
The good news is that we don't have to change people's values right away (because we can't), but the bad news is that we have to find ways of inducing water managers to adopt more sustainable behaviors without the help of sustainable values, at least initially. Fortunately, everybody, even water managers and policy makers, have values of some sort, and these are the values that we need to work with.
Working with Values
Step #1: Acknowledge that there are values at work. The first step is to identify the values that are already there, so they can be examined consciously and assessed as to their implications for practical water management decisions. It often comes as a shock for water managers to learn that their management decisions are not only based on information (data about water demand and supply, rainfall predictions, etc) and politics, but also on values. They are very familiar with Indeed the objective information available to the water manager is translated into action through the medium of values, and values pervade every decision.
Water managers are only too well aware of the external constraints; meeting management targets of supply and demand, as well as responding to political pressures. But in addition to these externalities (which are addressed by conventional management studies) there are "internalities": the usually unrecognized cultural and ethical values shared alike water managers, politicians, and to a greater or lesser extent, by the whole community, region, or country. There are some differences in values from person to person, but within a given culture, there is more commonality than difference.
The most important commonality shared by all human users of water, is that their use of water is determined in part by their values; everybody has them! A water manager might have the reaction of Moiere's "Burgeois Gentleman" who was astounded to learn that all his life he had been speaking in prose. He know about poetry, but he didn't realize that whatever wasn't poetry was prose: "Good heavens! For more than forty years I have been speaking prose without knowing it!" (Act 2, Scene 4). Water managers and policy makers have been expressing cultural values for their whole lives, without knowing it.
Step #2. Determine what the values are and what influence they have in water decisions. Official laws and policies are formal expressions of cultural values and are a good starting point for identifying values. In the Western United States, the value of "beneficial use" is of central importance, along with the value of "prior appropriation". Beneficial use is legally defined within each state's water law, and generally refer using the water for an economically remunerative purpose. The environmental benefit of leaving water in the river, for example, may not qualify as a legally recognized beneficial use. Prior appropriation expresses the value that the first person to claim a water "right" and to put that amount of water to beneficial use, has a priority claim on that water and for all practical purposes, that person can "own" that amount (or share) of water. Identifying the values reflected in the laws is generally more straight-forward than discerning the values embedded in water policies. In any local context, there are typically a great many policies that have something to do with water, ranging regulations about groundwater extraction, water pollution, stormwater management, zoning and land use, building standards, plumbing codes, water supply and sewerage price policies, water conservation incentive programs, etc. Each water-related policy can be assessed in terms of values being expressed. For example, stormwater that is conveyed via lined canals that have replaced natural streams may be evidence of fear of nature, and a cultural urge to exert control
Step #3. Consider alternative perspectives from history, from science, or from other contemporary contexts. Environmental historians document the evolving cultural values underlying resource management and may have valuable insights (e.g., David Blackbourn’s 2006 book on The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape and the Making of Modern Germany. Blackbourn’s account of the steady transformation of engineering standards for the Rhine River demonstrate that Germany is unlikely to revert to the “command and control” tactics applied in the first half of the 20th century. The values regarding the interaction of people and nature have shifted. The science of ecology and eco-hydrology offer another way of introducing perspective and identifying the role of values in management decisions. Environmental flows and other forms of “natural water management” encourage values of trust in natural processes and offer a benchmark from which to consider the values implied by other engineering alternatives. Environmental philosophers can interpret the philosophical assumptions underlying water infrastructure or management policies, and can compare these observed assumptions with generally accepted principles of environmental ethics. The radically different cultural perspective of Indigenous Peoples can also play a valuable role in identifying alternatives to conventional policies, based on different assumptions.