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Of Dogs and Rivers

2012-01-13T14:06:30Z

Human societies have co-evolved not only with rivers, but also with dogs. I've been thinking about both this past week. Last Saturday I was in Paris, walking along the quintessentially civilized River Seine, blessed by flocks of tourists, Notre Dame Cathedral, and busy Parisians. A few days after returning home (Santa Fe, New Mexico), our dog Lilly, age 12, passed away. She has been an intimate part of our family, co-evolving with our children, adding playful energy and solace to our lives.

As a domesticated piece of Nature, our dog Lilly also required human attention. We had to take care of her, giver her food (but not too much), take her for regular walks, and provide attention and affection. Our unspoken contract with our domestic animals is one of reciprocity. They help us, and we help them. It's a "win-win" that probably started with our Homo erectus ancestors more than 100,000 years ago, though recent research on foxes in Russia has shown that the shift from wild to domestic can happen in just a few generations, much faster than we had assumed.

Rivers can also be domesticated very quickly. Some levees to keep the river contained allows cities to build right up to the banks, as in Paris. The domesticated Seine makes Paris what it is. Can you imagine Notre Dame surrounded by land instead of water? The Seine has helped Parisians for many centuries, providing transport (barges), energy (water wheels powered pre-industrial Paris), as well as drinking water, recreation, and of course, inspiration to philosophers, artists, writers, lovers, and as Notre Dame reminds us, to our inner spiritual yearnings.

What is the unspoken contract between people and their domesticated rivers? We need to offer them the same kinds of things my family provided to our dog, Lilly: food, exercise, and affection. A river's food is water which comes, ultimately, from surface runoff and infiltration. Urban rivers depend on us to get food that is clean and healthy. Both dogs and rivers also need regular exercise. Rivers that are forced to stay inside their embankments while in the city, need to be able to flex their muscles in rural areas through meandering and periodic flooding. Without this exercise they can become lethargic, depressed, and unexpectedly violent, jumping their urban embankments and flooding the city.

And rivers, like dogs, need human affection. They need to feel loved, and are only too happy to reciprocate. Here in New Mexico, the Indigenous Pueblo Indians used to sing to the Rio Grande thanking the river for what we now call "ecosystem services." I'm guessing (and hoping) that the Indigenous Parisians perform blessings for the Seine, whether through the Catholic church, or as small prayers of gratitude as they walk along the river. [If you have any examples to offer, please post them on the Facebook page of the Water Ethics Network.]

The affection for our rivers, and our dogs, means that we don't depend on economic cost-benefit analysis to decide whether to take our dog for a walk, or whether to let the river flood into adjacent fields or to keep its meanders. We often force our dogs to stay in the house while we go to work, but we know we need to come home in time to let them outside. Do we have the same balanced approach to damming rivers? A little affection can do wonders for dogs...and rivers!

Manipulating Rivers

2011-11-25T20:33:55Z

Civilization grew up around the manipulation of rivers, so I don't want to suggest we shouldn't, but there are limits to how much manipulation is a good thing. This became a theme of my trip to the Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge along the Rio Grande in Central New Mexico. The refuge sits on land that was once a constantly changing braided river channel of the Rio Grande. As the river migrated back and forth finding new channels and abandoning old ones, the resulting pools of water would attract migrating waterfowl like Sandhill Cranes and Snow Geese.

Birds migrating is accepted as a good and natural phenomenon. But when a river wants to migrate back and forth within a broad floodplain, it's seen as a sign of an undisciplined Nature that needs to be brought under control. The US Bureau of Reclamation and the Middle Rio Grande Conservation District responded to that challenge by channelizing the river, building Elephant Butte Dam (completed in 1916), and constructing a 80km "low flow conveyance channel" parallel to the river to make sure water could flow into the reservoir created by the dam. Otherwise the river's water tended to form pools and some of the water would be lost to infiltration.

The modern refuge, which has been under development since the 1930s, effectively replaces some of the standing water that would have existed had the river not been channelized and bypassed. The refuge today is more farm than wildland. Fields are plowed, planted, and irrigated to attract the geese and cranes, using pumped groundwater, since the river is often dry. What looks like a natural floodplain is intensively managed to enhance the bird population, often at the expense of pesky mammals such as beavers (which are relocated) and coyotes (which have been culled in the past, but no longer).

The management policy of the refuge has been evolving towards a more natural approach, with a new conservation strategy in the works (click here for a 6MB pdf summary). But how natural can and should the management be? Hopefully the refuge plan will include a path to the otherwise out-of-sight-out-of-mind Rio Grande. I was able to drive up to the low-flow channel, but there's not even foot access to get a view of the river. In a very literal sense, we can's see the river for the trees!

Irrigating the Refuge

Sandhill Cranes and geese enjoying the Refuge

Low flow conveyance channel in the Refuge

Elephant Butte Dam and reservoir downstream from the Refuge

Water Ethics: Getting to "WHY"?

2011-11-10T01:15:46Z

I’m attending the annual conference of the American Water Resources Association in Abuquerque and the theme of ethics, surprisingly enough, is in the air.   The opening keynote address was by Cynthia Barnett, author of the just published book, Blue Revolution, who pitched ethics to her largely technical audience, in such an engaging way that no reasonable person could help but agree with her.

That was a bit of a trick, since her audience represented the professional water establishment – the very group that has watched, and profited, as the water crisis has continued to unfold. It was like talking to a gathering of investment advisors about the economic crisis and the need for a new ethic about the economy. It’s not exactly their fault, but their profession is intertwined with a dysfunctional system that needs to change.

One criticism Barnett leveled at the water profession is that they have made water too easily available; they’ve been too good at what they do. Better to have a few water shortages in major cities (Think of Atlanta a few years ago) to remind us of the value of water, and help us get more interested in knowing where it comes from.

A related criticism she was too diplomatic to press very hard was that the water utilities who provide drinking water to cities, or the US Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers that provide water for farmers and flood protection for valley dwellers, have too narrow a view of their jobs. They are rewarded for pulling water out of rivers, often destroying the rivers in the process, and telling their water customers not to worry; everything is under control.

Control is precisely the problem!   Channelizing and damming rivers to tap their water is like a 19th Century plantation owner whipping his slaves to bring them under control. Within the context of institutionalized slavery, whipping served as an effective way to discipline unruly workers.   Reformers who abhorred whipping realized they had to take on the whole system of slavery. There are other ways for worker to cooperate; you can invite them to become full members of society and pay them for their work. What a concept! But it requires an ethical shift.

We need a new water ethic that is not based on enslaving rivers, but on finding new ways that rivers can work for us that respect a river’s basic right to be a river.   The technical expertise for building environment-friendly dams, for recycling water, for recharging aquifers, for removing or isolating toxic contaminants, is already on the market. We know how to manage water resources sustainably; we just have to learn “Why”!

Ethics of Agricultural Water Transfers

2011-10-25T21:52:48Z

California farmers are being paid not to plant so Los Angeles and nearby cities can use the water that would otherwise go to (mostly low value) crops, says an article in the New York Times yesterday. The water is worth a lot when reallocated to urban use, so it's not hard to offer farmers a lot of money for the privilege of borrowing their water for a season. The blowback from this kind of arrangement is that local farming economies -- the ancillary services that depend on crop production as the base of a large economic pyramid (with the bankers on top, but we won't go into that!) -- get undermined when some farmers stop producing. When a lot of farmers stop producing, the local economy suffers even more, and the speculation is that, as with climate change, there is probably a tipping point where local farming-based economies will collapse.

The ethics here are complicated. Should cities forgo the opportunity to buy water from farmers? Should farmers refrain from selling their water? What if they need the money to put their kids through college? The NYT article cites two divergent responses from the Palo Verde Irrigation District, which is taking a mercenary stance, helping their members get top dollar when they sell their water, vs. the Imperial Irrigation District which regulates sales through a lottery system, and keeps the selling price low, to limit the land that is taken out of production.

This situation also shines a light on the inefficient application of scarce water to water-thristy, low-value crops like alfalfa. How ethical is that? What about regulating crop choice to require farmers to grow something more interesting, like vegetables? Or what about cropping practices that pollute the irrigation return flows with deadly agrochemicals? Is that ethical?

There was a big debate about all this in Europe over the past 15 years, as the members of the EU had to come up with a Common Agricultural Policy. The EU decided that agriculture is about more than growing crops; it's also about lots of tangible and intangible benefits that are linked to the production cycle, from ecosystem services to culture heritage to health benefits of good food grown consciously. This is referred to, in the European (and Japanese) literature as agricultural multifunctionality, [This links to the Water-Culture Institute's webpage on "The Ethics of Agricultural Water Use"], a term that has been suppressed by US agricultural officials as counter to the interests of American industrial modes of producing cheap food.

Debates about urban water needs and the ethics of transferring water out of agriculture into cities, will inevitably raise questions about the kind of agriculture that scarce water is supporting. One way farmers can increase their water security is to shift to growing crops that their urban water competitors really appreciate, and using farming practices that contribute to ecosystem health. A little water competition between cities and farmers might not be a bad thing, if both sides can make adjustments towards more responsible use.

A Standard for Water Ethics?

2011-09-23T04:52:30Z

I'm in Portland, Oregon attending a conference of the International Society of Sustainability Professionals (IISP), and there is a lot of discussion about standards. "If you don't measure it, you can't improve it," advised Craig Moss of Social Accountability International (SAI). That's the idea behind the ISO standards, which earlier this year released ISO 26000 a comprehensive set of social and environmental indicators aimed at businesses that want to be considered green and socially responsible. An ISO water standard based on the concept of the "water foot print" is in the works, and an independent group, the Alliance for Water Stewardship, is working on a very detailed set of water standards that hopefully will cover indirect water impacts as well.

Can standards be developed for water ethics too? Most readers of this blog would likely agree that we need a different set of ethics guiding our water management, if we are to arrive at a sustainable way of doing things. But can we evaluate the ethics directly or must we rely on measures of physical outcomes (water quality, quantity, etc.)?

The experience of social accounting standards offers some encouragement that the murky world of ethics might also be amenable to measurement. SAI came up with a hugely intricate set of criteria to assess how workers are treated in their SA8000 standard. SAI offers training courses around the world to help companies assess how well they are doing in meeting these standards. Imagine training programs for water agencies that would help them assess whether their management practices are adequately supporting the cultural values of their stakeholders!

Some first steps towards this outcome are being taken through the newly launched Water Ethics Network, an initiative of the Water-Culture Institute, which helps connect people and organizations working on the values-dimension of water policies. A network today....and perhaps standards tomorrow?

Tar Sands and Water Ethics

2011-09-06T03:34:20Z

The Tar Sands action in front of the White House has now ended. The goal was to convince President Obama to not grant US government permission for the construction of a pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico, feeding those hungry refineries, and our addiction, with the world's dirtiest, most carbon-intensive oil. But it's not just the releases of CO2 that are an issue, although that's a big one. It's the trashing of the water ecosystems and the destruction of First Nations' territory. Cultural genocide or water ecocide or planetary matricide are all terms that apply here. See the Tar Sands Campaign webpage of the Indigenous Environmental Network for details.

For a front line perspective, I'd like to turn this blogpost over to the words of Sam Hitt, fellow resident of Santa Fe, founder of what is now Wild Earth Guardians, and participant in the Tar Sands Sit-In. Here is his account, taken from an email he sent today to a local list-serve:

ARRESTED

I was # 93. They took the older women first, then the younger women (they all looked beautiful). The old men came next. A Washington D.C. police officer finally points to me and says “You”, motioning with his hand to come forward.

More than 160 of my fellow citizens from every state are chanting (the favorite, “You say tar sands, I say no”) back and forth with a lively group of supporters in Lafayette Park across the no-man’s land cordoned off by the police.

When my turn comes I turn and face the White House with arms held behind as the officer tightens thick, white plastic handcuffs around my wrists. “Officer”, I begin “We are here to respectfully remind President Obama of his campaign promise to protect the nation from the ravages of an unstable climate by foregoing construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from northern Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast”. He nods his head, says nothing.

Then I am firmly padded down; my sweaty hat is removed and rigorously inspected. As instructed, I have brought nothing except my driver’s license and cash for bail. For the first time in decades, I removed my wedding ring. I am not wearing a belt but did find a cheap tie to wear at the last moment.

This was last Friday, the thirteenth day of the largest U.S. environmental sit in so far this century. The media finally paid attention as 1265 were marched off to jail. However, our message – leave the dirty tar sands oil in the ground – is strange and incomprehensible to their tin ears. What about jobs? The high cost of gas?

Of course, if you’re an addict – and we are all petroleum addicts – where the stuff comes from doesn’t matter. To addicts, losing primeval forests, polluting vast watersheds, violating treaties with First Nations and putting the largest aquifer in the U.S. at risk are abstract, distant threats. Big Oil’s position is simple: we’ll deal with the consequences after the $10 trillion worldwide petroleum infrastructure has been milked for every penny of profit.

The struggle over the toxic, carbon intensive Canadian tar sands may be THE critical battle for the climate. They are the second largest source of carbon on the planet. The largest, Sandi Arabia, is close to being pumped dry. If the pipeline is built, tar sands extraction will double (it’s already the size of England) and, according to Dr. James Hanson, the nation’s leading climate scientist, that means “game over” for the climate (Dr. Hanson was arrested earlier in the week).

This is serious stuff and by administrative fluke, the decision to approve the Keystone XL pipeline is exclusively in Obama’s hands. He can’t blame the wing nuts in Congress for inaction. This is Obama’s environmental litmus test before the 2012 election.

We don’t have money like Big Oil to sway public opinion, therefore we have to “use the currency of our bodies” to make our point. That’s how author and reluctant activist Bill McKibben explains it as we prepare to be arrested.

McKibben is not your typical cheerleader. He’s a writer more comfortable making his case one step removed from the chaos of unfolding events. But McKibben has stepped it up recently. It’s his valor and intelligence that has brought us here today, lifting from the noise of heartbreaking current events an issue that First Nations in Canada have been battling for over a decade.

No one, least of all Bill McKibben, thinks Obama will nix the pipeline with the stroke of his pen. But after two weeks of civil dissent that rapidly gained political purchase, the tar sands are on the President’s radar. And as a sign that we hit a nerve, oil king pins on both sides of the border are mounting a counter attack (that’s what those absurd ads for ‘ethical oil’ are all about).

For many it was the first time they had purposely disobeyed the law. Held the longest on day one, Gus Spath, environmental advisor to numerous Presidents, smuggled a note out of D.C.’s Central Cell Block saying, “I’ve held numerous positions and public office in Washington but my current position feels like one of the most important.” It’s what we all now believe; doing nothing is a choice that is no longer an option.

We pay our $100 fine and are shown the door. Freedom. A few hours ago I was free but didn’t know it. Now I’m truly free and ready for a bathroom.

Carved in marble at the new Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. memorial on Washington’s Mall, Dr. King reminds us that “the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy”.

Don’t worry if you missed this one. There are many mountains to move and everyone is needed.

Keep posted at www.tarsandsaction.org/next-steps

Water Ethics: Good, Bad, and Ugly

2011-08-28T02:47:42Z

Yes there is some good news about water ethics. The Water-Culture Institute of which I am the director has started a network to share experience and inspiration across disciplines. The Water Ethics Network consists of a blog and newsletter and will be issued on the 15th of each month. You can subscribe to the newsletter on the blog site, and you are invited to submit news items to network@waterculture.org.

Other good news: The Charles River Watershed Association in Boston is a finalist for the international Riverprize awarded each year by the Australian-based International River Foundation. The nomination is an acknowledgement of the Association's effective advocacy for reviving the health of the Charles River to the point where an annual swim can take place without anyone getting sick! See their website for details of their diverse set of programs.

Charles River (upper right) entering Boston Harbor, 24 August 2011

And still more good news about water ethics: A few days ago the once dead Los Angeles River was the scene of kayakers proving beyond a doubt that the river is alive once more, as a result of a decade-long effort by local activists. Click here for the New York Times account. Along the Buffalo River in New York, a $50 million clean-up effort was announced for the section of river that flows into Lake Erie and is polluted with PCBs and heavy metals. In Nevada, the native fish populations of Walker Lake are being restored with $200 million in federal funds, much of which will be used to pay irrigators for using less water so more can go to the lake. Click here for details. These cases are examples of changing values as local communities start to view their rivers and lakes as having enduring importance that justifies steep short-term investments.

Bad news is, of course, always easy to find. Two weeks ago the last commercial fisherman operating out of Milwaukee, on the shore Lake Michigan, closed his operation and is planning to move to Alaska where fishing is still viable. He's not leaving the lake, he says: "The Lake left me" with collapsed populations of fish many of which are too toxic to eat anyway. See the story here. It's both ironic and hopeful that the Milwaukee Water Council was formed just two years ago to orchestrate inputs from academia and business and draw attention to water issues.

Lake Michigan last week at dawn, looking more alive than dead.

The ugly news comes from Appalachia where Waterkeeper and other environmental groups are suing two Kentucky coal companies using the Clean Water Act. The suit claims the two companies have committed 5,000 new violations of the act, on top of 12,000 other violations previously identified. Click for the press release giving details.

Seeing the Big Picture

2011-07-17T22:22:51Z

The New York Times ran an OpEd piece today about the looming water crisis, the prospects of bigger and longer droughts, and the need for more careful water conservation, under the title, Drought: A Creeping Disaster. The writer, Alex Prud'Homme, knows water (He wrote The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Fresh Water in the 21st Century). The model he suggests we learn from is Singapore, where wastewater recycling is reducing overall water consumption, and desalination is adding to the supply.

"To forestall a drought," he writes, "we must redefine how we think of water, value it, and use it." It sounds like reasonable advice, especially if we live in a wealthy urban metropolis where water is in short supply. But can the global water crisis really be solved by recycling wastewater or desalinizing seawater?   What about rivers and lakes? What about Nature?

Is our long-term societal goal just to have water come out of our taps? Or do we want to redefine our role within our local water ecosystems: our watersheds and river basins?   Worrying about water without bringing the natural context into our picture is the classic case of not seeing the forest because we're too preoccupied with the individual trees. We need to worry about bigger things than water, like rivers and lakes and the Natural World. If we can "do right" by the natural world, we'll enhance our water security in the process.

Two new documents help us think about managing water from an ecosystem perspective.

1. Ramaswami Iyer, water writer and former Secretary of Water Resources for the Government of India, offers an Alternative Draft (in the Economic and Political Weekly) of what India's new water policy ought to look like. His vision nicely balances the priorities of environmental sustainability with the need for economic development. Protecting Nature is not just to keep the water flowing so we can divert it; rather (or "and") respecting Nature and protecting rivers is seen as part of what makes us human. While we may be hardwired to live in a "polis" as Socrates told us, we also need to live in Nature.

2.  Water Management Options in a Globalised World (9MB download), edited by Martin Kowarsch, is a rapidly compiled collection of papers from a June 2011 conference organized by the Institute for Social and Development Studies at the Munich School of Philosophy. The paper by Kowarsch presents a framework (the "triangle of justice") for applying ethical analysis to water management options. This nicely complements the paper by Akpabio who shows how cultural values underlie the frame within which water is managed. His focus is southern Nigeria, but the point is universal. When the water crisis is defined as a shortage of water, the solution is to conserve, recycle, and desalinize. When the crisis is defined environmentally (rivers need help) or culturally (Indigenous communities depend on the river for their cultural identity) different kinds of solutions are needed.

Walden Pond, where Henry David Thoreau spent a lot of time thinking about water and Nature

What Is Lake Michigan?

2011-06-20T14:59:08Z

What is water? What is a river, or a lake? These are the questions that come easily to mind during a vacation week on the sandy shores of Lake Michigan. The lake water is constantly in flux, calm or stormy, blue or green, with waves going left or right, and water clear or murky. We can describe the water with words or pictures, but what, really, is that water?

A conference on "Steps Towards Discorvering the Intrinsic Nature of Water" will be held in Blue Hill, Maine, on July 31-Aug. 5, to address the question of what water is. My friend and colleague, Jennifer Greene, director of the Water Research Institute, is organizing the conference (click for details) along with Wofram Schwenk from the Institute for Flow Sciences in Germany, and David Auerback, a professor of fluid dynamics. They take their inspiration from the philosopy of Rudolf Steiner that there are lots of spiritual forces at work in our universe, and we can learn about them through careful observation of, for example, water.

Western culture has decided that water is a resource and not a spirit, and that bodies of water such as Lake Michigan are pools of resources to be exploited for the material benefit of people. That philosophy drives water development in a particular way, with debates about the details riding on the question of what strategies can yield the greatest benefits for the most people. Re-orienting water development towards a concern for the wellbeing of the lake itself requires a different way of conceptualizing what the lake is. That's what this blog, and the Water Culture Institute, are trying to do.

To get beyond our own cultural categories that tell us that Lake Michigan is a giant pool of resources, we can engage in a bit of cultural therapy simply by observing the lake and seeing what's out there. What does it look like? Does it look like a resource? Does it look mysterious?  Sacred? What color is it? What is the shape of the water as it touches the air? As the waves crash onto the shore?

I engaged in a bit of therapy during the past week on the shore of the lake, in Lilly Bay, just north or Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.  I spent a lot of time looking at the lake and as Socrates (I think) said about the river, you can't see the same lake twice. The colors and the waves are always in flux.

There's the classic blue, or "wine dark" as the Greeks described the color of the Mediterranean.

In the early morning there is usually a red glow from the rising sun, which I only rarely managed to see;

and at night, the lake becomes black, except when illuminated by moonlight:

The sand on the lake bottom gives a tan, green, or yellowish hue when the water is calm, and the subsurface texture can shine through.

And there is a lot of white color along the shore, as the blue waves get transformed into white froth as they hit the shore...

Hope for Endangered Species... and Rivers

2011-05-23T03:38:36Z

Today is Endangered Species Day, an annual celebration created 6 years ago by the Endangered Species Coalition to tug at our sensibilities and help us appreciate Nature's diversity. The Endangered Species Act, passed under Richard Nixon in 1973, stands as a milestone for the Rights of Nature movement. Species, at least endangered ones, are recognized as having some special value just for existing.

A baby horned toad in Santa Fe, cautiously enjoying the sun

Two weeks ago here in Santa Fe, our City Council voted to keep the Santa Fe River flowing a little bit through this very dry Spring and Summer. This is path-breaking for a river designated in 2007 as the Most Endangered River in America. The City has other sources of water (including a new $250m pipeline from the nearby Rio Grande) so it is not losing anything by being generous, but in the words of Councilwoman Patti Bushee, it is an important symbolic effort: "When do we recognize that some of the water belongs to the river?"

The Santa Fe River enjoying some of its own water

About the same time Santa Fe voted in favor of its river, UNESCO released a long-awaited assessment on Water Ethics and Water Resource Management. The study even mentions Aldo Leopold and the rights-of-nature concept, though unfortunately these themes are left out of the conclusions. The report does set a new standard for human ethics, however, staking out a position that goes far beyond economic cost-benefits and into issues of human rights.

Citizens in Pune, India, are dealing with their rights to a living river, and are resorting to a hunger strike to show their resolve. The Ram Nadi (nadi means river), though small, is important to the wellbeing of local residents who have mobilized against the severe pollution and building encroachments in the river's floodplain. It is obvious to Ram Nadi activists that what is good for the river is also good for them. Click here for an account from the India Water Portal.

Construction debris in Ram Nadi (Photo by Ravi Karandeekar, from India Water Portal)

Who Represents Rivers?

2011-04-28T14:21:00Z

When estranged parents haggle over who gets custody of their child, the courts may appoint a "child representative," a person, usually a lawyer, to serve as a champion for the child's interests. There is a whole field of law devoted to this task. Rivers could also use a champion like that, someone to represent the interests of the river in the face of squabbling water users -- agribusinesses, cities, industries -- who are busy looking out for themselves but don't think about the welfare of the river itself.

Yesterday I attended a special "field hearing" here in Santa Fe, chaired by New Mexico's senior senator, Jeff Bingaman, the chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The hearing featured prominant experts on water and climate commenting on the new report released this week by the US Bureau of Reclamation, on Climate Change and Water in the American West (Click here for the USBR webpage where you can download the report). There was lots of doom and gloom: This year is the 3rd driest year on record in New Mexico, and studies of climate history suggest that mega-droughts of 30 to 40 years are possible. Add climate change to the mix and the prognosis looks even gloomier: Hotter and drier conditions will make water even scarcer.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman chairing the hearing yesterday

The questions (and not many answers) raised by the experts focused on how local communities can adapt to these changing conditions, e.g., through better information for better planning plus new institutions and market mechanisms for putting water to the best use. It was all about how we people can get through the anticipated droughts with the least disruption to our normal way of life.

No mention of the rivers. How are rivers supposed to get through the droughts, especially when we people are extracting every last bit of water to meet what we consider our more important needs. Even if we are only worried about ourselves, don't we want our children to enjoy rivers that are still rivers?

We might need two court-appointed representatives, one to represent the river, and the other to represent the unborn generations who have an inherent interest in the survival of the river.

That's the basic idea behind Bolivia's new "Law of Mother Earth" now under debate in the legislature, according to Yes! magazine (click here for article). Rivers, along with the rest of Nature, would have legal rights to exist in a healthy condition. The Bolivian government is in the hands of indigenous leaders who value Nature for her own existence. Adapting to climate change takes on the additional meaning of helping rivers adapt to those changes, as well as helping ourselves, in a joint-venture kind of way. We all need to adapt, and survive, together -- rivers and people. Will the court please appoint some river representatives to point this out at the next hearing on water and climate?

The Rio Grande near Albuquerque, New Mexico, April 23, 2011

Going Beyond Trickle-Down Environmentalism

2011-04-22T17:07:00Z

Remember trickle-down economics?   It says that helping the rich get richer is ultimately good for the poor because some of the riches will trickle down to them. We hear it all the time from corporate lobbyists: The future interests of the poor are best served by indulging the present interests of the rich. Does that sound a bit self-serving?

Trickle-down environmentalism has a similar logic. Damming rivers and fracking aquifers to extract the natural gas is all good becuase once the economy gets healthier, then we will be able to afford the costs of helping the environment. I'm not making this up. This is the rationale given by Republicans who want to repeal the EPA's authority to regulate air and water quality.  Environmental standards might interfere with corporate profits.  I heard the same logic in India last month as an explanation for why their rivers are so polluted. A poor country can't afford to worry about its rivers.

On this International Mother Earth Day, perhaps we can try to think beyond trickle-down environmentalism and imagine a more robust approach to fixing our nearly broken planet.  Let's take ecosystem restoration as the number one objective and work our other agendas around that one. It's all about priorities, though I'm entirely open to suggestions if someone can name a more important priority than the environment we live in!

Comments? Click here to send a comment through the "contact" form of the Water-Culture Institute, and I'll post them in the next blog. [I have to do it this way to avoid spam.]

Two views of Rock Creek in Washington, DC

Irrigation, Livelihoods, and Happiness in India

2011-04-09T22:26:00Z

I've just submitted my evaluation report on the Chhattisgarh Irrigation Development Project (CIDP) in India (see previous blog post), and I need to debrief. It's one of those progressive projects that is trying to do a lot of interconnected things: farmer participation, women's empowerment, improved incomes, etc. The over-arching goal is to "improve rural livelihoods and reduce rural poverty" through investments in irrigated agriculture. I like that goal, and so do the farmers. Their production will go up and they will be better off. What's not to like?

But when you dig a little deeper there are a lot of questions. What do we mean by "livelihoods" and what, exactly is "poverty"? Are livelihoods just about earning more money, and is poverty just about not earning enough? Both concepts have evolved a lot over the past 10 to 15 years. In 2000, the World Bank came out with a definition of poverty that saw income as just one part of the picture, along with opportunity and security. Some years before that, Bhutan adopted the goal of improving "gross national happiness" and not just incomes. Last month, China's government adopted a similar policy, according to a recent Economist report,

How can irrigation water make Indian farmers happier? Isn't that what improved livelihoods should really be about? Shouldn't that be the goal of irrigation development projects like the CIDP?

In Bhutan's concept of happiness, there are 9 aspects, including psychology, culture, environment, and governance. Income doesn'r even make the list, but is subsumed under "living standard." I like Bhutan's approach because it seems closer to the real decisions we make about our own priorities. How does it fit with the way farmers in Chhattisgarh, India view their farming choices? This seems to be the right kind of question for a development project to ask. Well, I'm no farmer, but let me suggest some answers.

On the culture and envrionment aspects, traditional seeds are critically important. Local farmers used to plant dozens of different seeds, with thousands (28,000 is the biggest number I heard) of rice varieties recorded in the state. Building on that diversity would help farmers maintain their cultural identity as rice people, while maintaining enviornmental diversity of rice plants. On the governance aspects, strengthening their water user associations gives them governance power over their canal systems, and increases their happiness that way.

The livelihoods appraoch is not in conflict with the happiness perspective. I found an interesting article by two Danish scholars (E. Petersen and M. Pedersen) suggesting that we take a more psychological orientation to livelihoods, You can read their paper here. Yes, incomes are a necessary part of life, but let's not confuse incomes with life itself! And the same goes for water. We need water for agriculture, but let's look for ways that our agricutlural systems can generate not only happy incomes, but also happy outcomes.

CIDP project staff interviewing a farmer in Raigarh District, Chhattisgarh, India

A Time for Water and Fire: Notes from India

2011-03-23T05:23:00Z

It's World Water Day, but here in Raipur, India, people are still decompressing from their festival of fire a few days ago. Holi was celebrated on Saturday night with bonfires under the full moon, depicting the burning of the evil sister who tried to kill her enlightened brother, according to the story. The next day was marked by drinking and smearing or throwing colored powder on friends and family, or sometimes strangers. That was Sunday, but nearly everyone took Monday off, and came to work only grudgingly today, Tuesday, mostly unaware the today is the international day of water. The memories of fire are still too strong.

Water, indeed, seems to be losing out to fire in modern India. Industries are slowly but surely extracting more and more water from rivers that would otherwise serve farmers, or maybe nature. However, the nature lobby is weak here, and industries rule, or would if not for India's pesky Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh, who takes his job seriously. The green political movement is not in evidence, however. The battle line is between farmers and industry, and the politicians are actively engaged in appeasing both. The losers, in this quest for votes (from farmers) or money (from industry) are the already stressed rivers who have silently served hundreds of generations of Indians but whose very existence is now threatened.

The priority here is improving the livelihoods of the poor. But how? In agriculture the standard response is to increase incomes by helping the farmers grow higher value crops, and market them to honest traders who will pay a fair price. That is the focus of the project I'm working on right now, the Chhattisgarh Irrigation Development Project (CIDP), funded by the Asian Development Bank. The project is building the capacity of large (ca. 1000 farmers) water user associations to help them take control of what are now government canals, and to market their crops collectively. The whole production systems starts with water that is retained in "tanks" (shallow reservoirs). Irrigation efficiencies are not great, but the wasted water infiltrates to the aquifer where it is either pumped out by other farmers, or flows to a river, perhaps to be diverted for industry. Yes, water is life, and it's all related. That's why water governance -- the system of managing, planning, allocating, and protecting water -- is so critical. Everyone's interests are involved in one way or another.

Some of the members of the Crants Water User Association, Kawardha District, Chhattisgarh

The water user associations (WUAs) in Chhattisgarh were created, on paper at least, with the passage of the PIM Act in 2006 and elections the following year. The CIDP project is helping the WUAs through training programs and, for 70 lucky WUAs, personal help from community organizers. The hope is that the Water Resources Department, which now controls the irrigation canals, will be convinced to decentralize that control when they see that properly organized WUAs can do their own irrigation management.

Bilaspur Tank, Raigar Distrcit, Chhattisgarh: Bilspur Tank WUA president, Mr. Patel, cleans debris from the canal gate
.
The water user associations in Chhattisgarh are an expression of the social value of water. Opting for decentralized governance is a way to empower local communities, replacing the bureaucratic mode that India inhereted from the British. The lesson is not only that water governance reflects political values (e.g., democracy vs, tyranny) but that it actively reinforces those values. The social ethics of water use always confronts governments with choices. Do we want to encourage local self-reliance? Or dependence on the state? The rebellions in the Middle East suggest that the colonial concept of a rigid state bureaucracy is neither stable nor desirable. Change is coming, slowly perhaps, to water management in India.

Managing Sacred Water in India

2011-01-31T17:07:00Z

I'm just back from a month in India, whose sacred rivers are diverted and polluted, and where once idylic village ponds ooze with garbage and human waste. So much for cultural values supporting sustainable water management! The sacred Yamuna River which (sometimes) runs through Delhi is a skeleton of its former self. The river, famed as the goddess of love, has been utterly abused by the humans who once, and indeed still, worship her. With devotees like these, who needs enemies?

A workshop on the crisis of the Yamuna, organized by Yale University's "Forum on Religion and Ecology" was held at Delhi's TERI University Jan 3-5 to address the issues, and specifically how religious values might be able to inspire restoration efforts. A meeting in the holy city of Vrindavan the day after the workshop is reported here, and provides a nice summary of the issues.

I was in India for other reasons (see below) and did not attend the Yamuna workshop, but it nonetheless helped frame my thinking about water and development in India. I had three agenda items for my visit: (1) attending a conference in Hyderabad (South-Central India) of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (click here for the IASC Facebook page), where I presented a paper on The Role of Cultural Values in Sustaining Water Resources, (2) a consulting assignment in Raipur (Eastern-Central India) to evaluate part of the ADB-financed Chhattisgarh Irrigation Development Project, and (3) a long-overdue return visit to the two villages on the border of Rajasthan and Haryana (Northwestern India) where I conducted my PhD research long ago.

Through these three different contexts of research conference, development project and social visit, I brought the same question: How does the Hindu reverence for rivers and other water bodies play out in actual water management practice?

What I found was disconserting. In cities, towns, and roadside villages just about every pond, lake, or river was visibly polluted.

In the booming state capital of Raipur, trash combined with wastewater looks provides a perfect breeding ground for diseases as well as mosquitos.  Whether this is a sanitation or water problem is not an interesting question to me; what is more interesting is how a religion that is fundamentally nature-worshiping can be so callous to water and land pollution.

In rural areas, however, the story is different. The irrigation reservoirs (tanks, in local parlance) which I visited in Chhattisgarh were well cared for by the state Water Resources Department and the local villagers who depend on the tanks for irrigation water, as well as bathing and fishing.

Why are some ponds filled with trash while others are well maintained? The answer lies more in organizational incentives than cultural values. Both the local community and the state water agency have clear responsibilities for the irrigation tanks and the villagers have strong economic incentives to keep the water clean enough so they can use it. The people with the most to gain or lose also have the organizational capacity to set rules for keeping the tanks in good working order. In fact, one of goals of the Chhattisgarh Irrigation Development Project is to build local capacity of water user associations so they can take over the technical management of reservoir releases. The rationale is that water management will improve if the people directly affected are given the responsibility

Small ponds which once served as the primary source of village drinking water, however, have fallen into neglect because drinking water projects have provided the villagers with new and safer water sources. The ponds are still used for animals, and sometimes for bathing, but there is less incentive to keep them clean. Large rivers like the Yamuna suffer from a different problem. Millions of people have a strong interest in a clean river that can be used for bathing, laundry, fishing, and religious rituals, but organizing everyone (including the cities and industries that use and pollute the river) is too overwhelming. The result is a free-for-all "tragedy of the commons."

Is there a common governance solution to the tragedy of polluted ponds and dead rivers? The focus of the IASC conference in Hyderabad was on governing commons such as fisheries, pastures, water, and rivers.  Elinor Ostrom, cofounder of the association and 2009 Nobel laureate for her pioneering research into the commons, delivered the keynote address, giving an overview of why active management of common resources is so important, and how to structure effective governance arrangements. The implication for big water ecosystems like the Yamuna River is that investing in governance is at least as important as investing in engineering infrastructure. Small village ponds should be far easier to manage, since local institutions such as panchayats are already in place.

The degraded state of local village ponds suggests that governance shortcomings is a symptom of deeper values. Only if the health of the pond or river is seen as a big enough priority will stakeholders be interested in looking for governance solutions. Water supply schemes that bring clean water to rural villages are undoubtedly needed, but not at the cost of undermining traditional water managment and creating new health problems. Click here for a summary of the report, Dying Wisdom, by Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain, which disucsses these issues.

New village water systems, such as the one depicted here from Janania village in northern Rajasthan, can complement traditional ponds by providing clean, safe drinking water, without displacing the older ponds that can continue to provide benefits for people, animals, and groundwater. Larger urban tanks can serve recreational functions while providing floodwater storage, aquaculture, and recharge. In Hyderabad, the city's ancient tanks provide recreation opportunities both day and night.

Restoring health to the Yamuna River, while a much bigger task, also needs to start from a similar shift in values. A living Yamuna River is good for both the River Goddess and the river people. Models of competition and conquest over nature, need to give way to traditional values of synergies between people's needs and the river's well-being   Managing the sacred waters of modern India is a serious and sacred challenge that demands creative responses from both engineers and philosophers.

Water Ethics in the New Year

2011-01-02T05:31:00Z

What will the New Year bring to the world's water ecosystems? It's probably safe to say that previous New Years have not been kind. For decades, and even centuries, each New Year has brought increased degradation of rivers, lakes, and aquifers. The current status of the world's freshwater has been studied by an international team led by Charles Vörösmarty
at City University of New York, and reported in a Sept 30 article in Nature aptly entitled, "Rivers in Crisis" (click here for a summary and links). Here's what the team found:

"Our study found that vast areas across both the developed and developing world arrive at similarly acute levels of imposed threat to their freshwater resources. Sources of degradation in many of the developing world’s most threatened rivers bear striking similarities to those of rivers in similar condition in wealthy countries. However, the highly engineered solutions practiced traditionally by industrialized nations, which emphasize treatment of the symptoms rather than protection of resources, often prove too costly for poorer nations. Reliance of wealthy nations on costly technological remedies to overcome their water problems and deliver water services does little to abate the underlying threats, producing a false sense of security in industrialized nations and perilous water insecurity in the developing world. In addition, lack of comparable investments to conserve biodiversity, regardless of national wealth, help to explain accelerating declines in freshwater species."

The good news is that rivers can be restored, at least partially.  Salmon are back in the Rhine River, for example, thanks to the International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine (ICPR).  The Arvari River in Rajasthan has regained its flow as a result of community-based watershed treatments organized by Tarun Bharat Sangh and its leader, Rajendra Singh (Click here for a brief report). There is a whole new field of ecological restoration being applied to rivers, e.g., see the recent (2008) book River Futures: An Integrative Scientific Approach to River Repair (click here for Amazon link).

Could 2011 be the New Year that marks the "tipping point" when the world's rivers start to get healthier?   River restoration requires more than science, and more than good water governance (although both are important). Rajinder Singh inspired Rajasthan villagers to treat their watershed with respect and reverence, and then they undertook the physical work to restore their streams. Communities along the Rhine took their inspiration from a massive chemical spill in 1986 that served as a wake-up call that their river needed help.

River restoration is what's needed in 2011, and if we pay attention, we can hear lots of wake-up calls to remind us that we need to get up and do something. What we need to do first is identify WHY we need to do something. The "why" is that our rivers are in trouble. They can't take another New Year of ecological degradation.  Rivers need our help, and we need their help. It seems strange to label this sort of expediency as "ethics" but the rivers don't really care. They just want to be able to enjoy the New Year.

Wisconsin River, October 2010

Yadkin River, North Carolina, October 2010

Chama River, New Mexico, December 2010

The Moon is Our Teacher: Water Lessons from the Eclipse

2010-12-22T14:14:00Z

While waiting for the eclipsed moon to brighten up again so I could feel justified in going back to bed, I discovered something profound about the universe. Cosmic events take their own time. They can't be speeded up; we have to deal with Nature on her own terms.

Rivers share that pesky trait of obeying cosmic directives. We humans can straighten them, dam them and divert them, but only temporarily. Eventually the river will regain its freedom, or another river will take its place. It's just a matter of time; a lot of time.

The moon in shadow on Dec. 21. (Photograph by Lucas Jackson, Reuters)

Last week the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science featured a series of articles about the water picture in the American Southwest. It doesn't look good. Reclaiming Freshwater Sustainability in the Cadillac Desert, by John Sabo and 14 other authors, used Marc Reisner's 1985 book (Cadillac Desert) as a reference point to see how we're doing. Other than the good news that the region's major dams are silting more slowly than feared, the trends of population influx, wasteful water use for agriculture and urban lawns, degraded rivers, etc.are only getting worse.

Peter Gleick offers a Roadmap for Sustainable Water Resources. The problem is not just too many people and not enough water; there is an attitudinal component: "Psychologically and socially, it is hard for millions of people who love this region to admit that it is fundamentally dry and that the rules for building, living, and working there must be different from those in the wet regions where most of them were born and raised." The solutions he proposes, however, don't address those dysfuntional attitudes, but stay in the realm of technical and policy fixes to reduce per capita demand and increase supply, e.g., by wastewater recycling.

When smart water people talk about what needs to be done, there seem to be lots of feasible ways to get ourselves out of our mess, but it's equally clear that scenarios of using less water and restoring our rivers to ecological health cannot possibly happen without changing the attitudes that drive the behavior in the first place. Keeping attitudes (ethics) constant, people will be willing to conserve water for economic security, but they won't be willing to give up their lawns so the rivers can have more of water. We're trying to negotiate with Nature to keep doing what we're doing at the cost of dead rivers and steadily depleted aquifers. That strategy can't work because ulimately our own water security depends on a functioning ecosystems.

That's the lesson from the moon. The laws of Nature are running independently from our short-term concerns. The lesson for water policy is not to try to change Nature, but to try to change People, at least their attitudes about water. Avoiding the issues of attitudes and ethics and focusing on technologies and legal policies, is not going to bring water security to the American Southwest, or anywhere else. We need to regard Nature, whether in the form of the moon or a river, in a different way, as relatives, and not only as resources. [This metaphor comes from Oren Lyons; click here for a 9 min. video].

Chama River, northern New Mexico

Water Ethics, Climate Change, and "Moral Outrage"

2010-12-13T16:04:00Z

Just before the Cancun Climate Change meetings, which ended last week, Scotland's religious leaders described the lack of progress up to that point, as a "moral outrage" (see BBC article) and urged the British government to try harder in Cancun. The results, announced over the weekend, are being seen as a small step forward, since there was at least some agreement, albeit around not very ambitious goals.

Should we still feel moral outrage that not more was done? I'd like to suggest that we focus very much on the "moral" part. It is our morals -- about our responsibilities to Nature -- that need to change if climate change is to be kept in check, and if we are going to be successful in adapting the changes that will inevitably occur, not only from climate pressure, but from human pressures too as more people produce and consume more and more stuff.

We might want to hold on to some outrage as well. How else to respond to the eviction of Tom Goldtooth, director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, and one of the primary authors of the 2003 Indigenous Peoples Kyoto Water Declaration?   After criticizing the UN climate process in a speech last Tuesday, Mr. Goldtooth was barred from entering the meeting area the next morning. So much for speaking truth to power! Click here for a news clip and video interview from Democracy Now.

The climate change meetings did bring a small victory for water; at least it wasn't completely ignored as it was last year in Copenhagen. An agenda for action was prepared in advance to frame the issues, which basically said that we need to give more attention to sustainable water management. That's not news, and is hardly going to advance the goal of better management. We need new ways of thinking about, and looking at water, that will inspire sustainable behavior. That's why voices of indigenous leaders like Tom Goldtooth are so important to hear, and that's why we need to make changes in our sense of morality around how we treat water ecosystems.

During the meetings, several side sessions dealt with the water-climate dynamic, including a "Stakeholder Forum" on "Putting Water Security First" organized by the Water and Climate Coalition.  You can watch a video of the session by clicking here.  Potentially the most important water development at Cancun was the request from six developing countries to include water as an agenda item for the scientific body which advises the UNFCC. See the Climate Change Water Blog  for an explanation of why this makes a difference.

The verdict from Cancun?  Water is now on the agenda, and the challenge becomes what to do with that water agenda. Are we going to wage political battles on behalf of vested interests to keep water management the way it is, and avoid any of the hard changes that will bring real sustainability to our water systems?

While the Cancun meetings were going on, I was attending a "pure" water meeting in Bonn, Germany, where the topic was Global Dimensions of Change in River Basins. This conference, organized by the Global Water System Project (GWSP) looked not only at climate change, but also at direct human impacts on river basins and ways of managing that impact, e.g., through governance arrangements and ethics. I moderated two sessions on water ethics and presented a conceptual framework for water and environmental ethics (click here for my presentation).  My basic point was that our value systems (ethics) motivate our behavior, and by reforming our values, we can change our behavior. I didn't offer any magic bullets on how to bring about those changes, but recognizing the challenge is a necessary first step.

Climate change negotiations could also benefit from an ethical perspective, beyond the "moral outrage" felt by Scotland's religious leaders. Ethics is embedded in every policy position, but it is rarely discussed as the negotiators talk past each other and wonder why they can't reach agreement. Maybe some introspection about what values are motivating the various policy positions will help identify deeper points of disagreement that are the real sticking points. Tom Goldtooth, I know, takes the view that Mother Earth deserves our respect and protection. That view tends to clash with national economies that have become addicted to resource exploitation. Let's get the deeper values out on the table where they can be discussed and debated. That goes for both climate policies and water policies. If we want to change our behavior, we'd better look at the values lurking below the surface, that are driving the behaviors we want to change.

Rhine River, 4 December 2010

Performance Art in the River: "Flash Flood"

2010-11-22T04:42:00Z

A thousand people stood in the dry bed of the Santa Fe River yesterday, holding blue-painted cardboard above their heads, in a performance of "Earth Art" organized by the Santa Fe Art Institute along with local environmental groups and individual, regular people. This was one of 15 or so large-scale events around the world being orchestrated this week by 350.org "to communicate, in new and exciting ways, how climate change is impacting our planet." Each of the official "Earth Art" events gets photographed from space by satellite, and the waving of the blue cardboard is timed to coincide with the space photo-op.

Presumably these art displays will be shown to the climate change delagates at Cancun next week, and they will be impressed with the gravity of climate change and the need to do more this year than they did last year in Copenhagen. Let's hope!

My daughter and I were 2 of the thousand participants standing in the river, waving blue cardboard above our heads. We were there to draw local attention to the sad plight of our Santa Fe River, which is dry not because of climate change, but because of unchanged local policies that keep the river dammed up in reservoirs far upstream. These policies were the reason our river was named the most endangered river in America in 2007. Local responsibility for environmental destruction can easily get lost in the "flood" of sentiment about other people doing bad things to cause planetary stress. And this is precisely why weird art events are needed; we can see our old river in a new way, and perhaps gain some new insights in the process.

Diane Karp, Director of the Santa Fe Art Institute, and the main organizer of the event, put it this way: "The purpose of our action is not to fix the river because art will not do that, but art does have the power to reach the hearts and minds of the people who come into contact with it and inspire them into political action.”

Photos of the event were taken from the ground, from a crane, and from a helicopter, besides from the satellite. See the 350.org report of the Santa Fe "Flash Flood" event for more info and some photos, and for lots of shots from the helicopter, see the web-page of photographer Don Usner.

River-level view (photo by Dave Groenfeldt)

Helicopter view looking downstream (photo by Don Usner)

View from space (photo by satellite)

NCAI Live Blog - Water Rights and Climate Change

2010-11-18T05:16:00Z

When I arrived this morning at the NCAI convention the "Just Move It" health and fitness walk had just ended and the walkers were milling around the Civic Plaza waiting for the sessions to start. I spoke with Clayton Brascoupe, Director of TNAFA (Traditional Native American Farmers' Association) who is about as committed to reviving indigenous agricultural traditions as anyone could be. He was planning to skip the morning plenary sessions which dealt with tribal business contracts and return for the session on food sovereignty in the afternoon. I was torn between that session and the water session (Securing Tribal Access to Water in a Changing Climate) going on at the same time, but in the end, I opted for water.

The water session opened with a non-tribal speaker, Jonathan Overpeck, co-director of the University of Arizona Institute of the Environment and internationally recognized expert on climate change. He made very clear that water rights are going to be squeezed by the changing climate. By 2050, just 40 years from now, he expects the Colorado River to have between 10 to 30% less water due to precipation decreases and temperature increases. There's a 30% chance that the Colorado's storage will dry up completely. Some people carry an umbrella when the chance of rain is 30%. What should we be doing?

         I think it will be the interior West that will give the first big wake-up call
         to the nation in terms of what’s really at stake due to climate change
         and what’s really at stake is water. - Jonathan Overpeck

Karletta Chief, a Navajo hydrologist working with the Desert Research Institute in Nevada had some answers to Overpeck's challenge. She grew up near Black Mesa, Arizona, seeing pristine groundwater used to slurry coal for power generation in far away Las Vegas. Seeing this abuse of Nature inspired her to pursue her education and become a PhD Hydrologist. This year she received an award from the Indian Science and Engineering Society for her work with the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe.

Dr. Chief's award-winning approach was to develop a "dynamic model" of the tribe including both the natural ecosystem and their cultural system. Bringing both together allows the tribe to see what their options are, what's worth fighting for ("threshold values") and what's acceptable to compromise on. The tribe has traditionally depended on the lake for sustenance, but the lake is at the tail end of a closed basin fed by the Truckee River flowing from Lake Tahoe. Dams in the 1930s destroyed the native cutthroat trout populations and the tribe is now trying to revive the ecosystem, and their culture,

A similar story of a riverine tribe reclaiming its cultural and subsistence heritage was recounted by Troy Fletcher, Executive Director of the Yurok Tribe along the Klamath River in northern California. Again, the major culprit is dams, which in this case have destroyed salmon runs. Because salmon are so valuable economically, the dams have destroyed the subsistence base on the non-tribal communities as well. Troy underscored the point that the key to successful ecosystem restoration for his tribe is to become active in helping the non-tribal stakeholders solve their problems at the same time.

Alvin Warren, Secretary for Indian Affairs in New Mexico, and a member of Santa Clara Pueblo, talked about how the state government is relating to tribes at the departmental level (e.g., through tribal liasons in each department). That was interesting, but the take-home message I got out of his talk was the issue of sovereignty and how water and agriculture are related to political sovereignty. What's at stake in protecting water rights, and revitalizing agriculture, is “our ability to sustain ourselves, not just economically but from the standpoint of our own health”.

That was my cue to leave the water session and catch the tail end of the food session. I missed Winnona LaDuke (see the blog post from 2 weeks ago when she was last in New Mexico) but I heard talks about traditional agricultural and food revitalization programs in San Ildefonso Pueblo (New Mexico) and the Mvskoke Food Sovereignty Initiative in Oklahoma. Both programs are working to bring back food traditions that, like native languages, are in danger of dying out. It's a matter of tradition, identity, but also a question of the future and the role of traditional cultural philosophies and religious beliefs.  That's why there was so much emphasis on youth throughout this conference. We need their energy and thei commitment to the process of cultural revitalization, not to mention climate adaptation...

Convention delegates at the Civic Plaza after the "Just Move It" walk

Signs of Autumn; Leaves, grass, and ice in Santa Fe, Nov. 13, 2010