Values and Ethics

Cultural values and environmental ethics are at the foundation of water policies and management decisions. Because they are so fundamental, they are rarely recognized as variables that can be changed. Rather, these underlying value systems remain hidden from our everyday awareness. Their very existence is often denied. The decision to build the Glen Canyon Dam in the Western USA, or to channelize the Rhine River in Europe, or to drain wetlands in Indonesia through "swamp reclamation" projects, were all justified as not only reasonable, but necessary at the time, on the basis of generally accepted standards of economic development. Today we would do things differently because our standards, our "values" have changed. We ask, in hindsight, "What were they thinking?" The answer is that they were thinking what their culture dictated. From that standpoint, we are no different; we are also thinking what our culture dictates.

Fortunately, our cultural dictates have shifted a little bit, but not enough. No one seriously defends the water policies in operation today as being optimal. Our water management is, generally speaking, unsustainable, inequitable, inefficient, and (in our view) un-ethical. We are depriving future generations of the water that we know they will need. And we are deliberately inflicting irreparable harm on natural water ecosystems, while justifying our actions as necessary to meet our immediate economic needs. Even as we are doing this, we know that climate change is going to make the environmental costs of our short-term decisions all the more profound.

We can point to cultural values as the culprit, but it doesn't help much to blame a culture that we as individuals are powerless to change. Let's look for what we can do for ourselves to shift the particular values that are interfering with sustainable water management, and concentrate on those, while leaving the rest of the cultural challenge to others. [Click here to continue reading, "Getting the Values Right"]

What We Do

The Water Values and Ethics Program addresses three themes, undertakes a small number of projects, and provides links to further information and relevant organizations through the Library and Links section.

    Themes:
            1. Rights of Nature
            2. Social Right to Water
            3. Ethics of Water Use

    Projects
            1. Integrating Values into Water Management (global)
            2. Santa Fe River Advocacy and Ethics (local)

Resources

NEW article: The Next Nexus: Environmental Ethics, Water Management, and Climate Change, by David Groenfeldt, Water and Culture Institute.

UNESCO has been the leading voice in the study of water ethics, publishing a series on Water and Ethics in 2004 and sponsoring various working groups. Some key reports and publications from UNESCO relating to water and ethics generally are listed below.
   - Report of the "water and ethics" working group (December 2009)
    - Report by Lord Selborne on the ethics of freshwater use (2000)
    - Water and Ethics Overview by J. Delli-Priscoli, J. Dooge, R. Llamas (2004)
    - History of Water and Ethics, by F. Hassan (2004)

An article by Adrian Armstrong. "Further Ideas Towards a Water Ethic" can be downloaded from the on-line (and free) February 2009 issue of Water Alternatives.

Ethics of Bottled Water
    - The Story of Bottled Water (YouTube video, 8 min.)

Scientific Perspectives on the Rights of Rivers
Ecological science is building a strong case for the value of keeping rivers functioning as ecosystems which, while largely instrumental in orientation, also touches on ethics and cultural values
    - Instream Flow Council (North America)
    - Environmental Flow Network (International)

Philosophical Perspectives: Environmental Ethics
    - Philosophy of Water Project at the University of North Texas
    - Center for Environmental Philosophy at the Univ. of North Texas

Religious Perspectives
    - Ecumenical Water Network (World Council of Churches)
    -  Article on Roles of Religion and Ethics in Addressing Climate Change by Paula Poscas, Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics, 2007:31-49.

Legal and Constitutional Conflicts
    - Ecuador: The national constitution amended in 2008 gave explicit recognition to nature (pachamama) as holding legal rights. This landmark constitution is a rare inspiration for other countries, but is also running into challenges of implementation.  A recent article about mining vs nature describes the problems, and provides useful references for exploring the case of Ecudor in greater detail
    - Maine: The rights of Nestle to extract local water is being challenged by local communities: Public Trust Doctrine applied to water in Maine, USA

Main Navigation