Life Sciences Essay: Framing Water: Opportunities & Risks

Framing Water: Opportunities & Risks
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Framing Water: Opportunities & Risks
The metaphor of a water drop is powerful enough to evoke emotions of purity and abundance yet also risk and scarcity. In recent decades, water has a cone front and center in sustainability discussions. The demographic explosion, economic development, and military conflicts are, moreover, accelerating a global push to manage water in more innovative ways in order to avoid social unrest and, in the worst case, war waters across borders. The approaches to and appreciation of water are as different as policymakers and socio-cultural values informing any water decisions. Water appreciation is narrowed down to four perspectives proposed by Hoekstra (1998) to put matters into more perspective. In addition, a fifth perspective is explored in order to expand on the discussion of the mentioned four perspectives. This short essay aims, accordingly, to reflect on four perspectives on water appreciation suggested by Hoekstra and offer the fifth perspective to explore a possibly different view on water management in an age of water scarcity.
There are, according to Hoekstra, four perspectives on water appreciation: (i) hierarchic perspective, (ii) egalitarian perspective, (iii) individualist perspective, and (iv) fatalist perspective (pp. 617-621). The "hierarchic perspective" is primarily a bureaucratic approach to water management, whereby policymakers emphasize supply (requiring constant investment) over demand (considered unmanageable) in order to meet needs. To do so, social and cultural considerations are of minimal value, whereas effective management of water resources is of paramount importance. The "egalitarian perspective" is, in a sense, the opposite of the "hierarchic perspective" by placing more emphasis on water distribution equality and, more importantly, people's needs. This interventions perspective also advocates the preservation of natural ecosystems and
environmental stewardship and, as such, opposes major technological (e.g., dams) considered of far-reaching, negative impact on the environment and, demographically speaking, on the increasing displaceme...