Rights of Rivers

Open any history of water development and the notions of conquest and control jump out from the chapters set in the 19th and early 20th centuries, whereas the chapters dealing with the 1980s and 1990s become more complicated and nuanced.  Over the past decade and the threat of climate change and looming threats to riparian ecosystems have become prominant issues. The comforting message from history is that our values and paradigms do change over time. 

The fact that society's values about rivers can and do change suggests the opportunity of working on the values side of river management issues.  Reforming the values underlying river management policies offers a path, and in some cases a shortcut, to effecting better water policies.  

While values are intangible, they manifest in very concrete ways.  Consider dam-building, for example.  India's first Prime Minister, Nehru, saw them as "temples of modernization."  Those same values motivated the construction of America's Hoover Dam in the 1930's which was billed, at the time, as a monument to man's conquest of nature. 

Unexamined values can become obstacles to our long-term self-interest.   Building more and more temples of modernity will undermine the natural ecosystems on which our modern way of life ultimately depends.  Recent concepts of ecological river management focus on creatively utilizing the natural processes of rivers for utilitarian purposes.  For example, floodwaters can recharge aquifers used for urban water supply, while weeding out invasive plants and restoring breeding habitat for fish.   

Issues

The Water-Culture Institute addresses the Rights of Rivers through four issues (to be elaborated in the next edition of this web page).

        1.  Flood Management 
        2.  Dams 
        3.  Environmental Flow 
        4.  Adapting to Climate Change