Abstract
Abstract The water sector has a major leadership role to play in addressing the global water crisis. How can it make the radical shifts in approach that are needed? This paper highlights the reality that the management of water, and the ways in which water flows are directed, reflects social relations of power, not just between human groups, but also between humankind and the non-human world. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic research with indigenous communities and other water users in river catchments around the world, it considers alternate cultural worldviews that encourage more sustainable beliefs and practices, and asks how larger societies might make imaginative use of these in contemporary and future engagements with water. In a thought experiment intended to reposition human–non-human relations, it proposes a concept of ‘re-imagined communities’ advocating more collaborative forms of conviviality – living together – with other species. Opening the door to ideas about pan-species democracy, it calls for decision-making processes in which a wide range of expertise is brought together to exchange knowledge, with an explicit and practical remit to ‘speak for’ and promote the needs and interests of the non-human inhabitants of the ecosystems on which all living kinds depend.
Highlights
What can the water sector, government, and non-government agencies, and all water users do to ensure a sustainable future for water? Over the last several decades, it has become clear that this is not where we are heading
How might water users and managers in larger societies ensure that the non-human world has a ‘voice’ in social and environmental decision-making? Lui and Ingildsen suggest that ‘to succeed requires a paradigm shift from the traditional water engineering focused management to a systems approach involving multidisciplinary research between engineering and social science, economics and ecology’ (Lui & Ingildsen : 319)
Anthropologist Julie Cruikshank, who works with Athapaskan and Tlingit groups in the Yukon Territory, describes the complexities of such collaborations, and the ways in which different knowledges often have to compete for legitimacy (Cruikshank ). This matches my experience of working with Aboriginal elders in Cape York. While they have engaged increasingly with other groups in co-managing the river, and have often shared their in-depth ecological knowledge with natural scientists, the social and political inequalities between indigenous communities and wider Australian society mean that the onus of translation, or ‘talking the talk’ as my indigenous collaborators put it, is often a one way street (Strang )
Summary
What can the water sector, government, and non-government agencies, and all water users do to ensure a sustainable future for water? Over the last several decades, it has become clear that this is not where we are heading. Key words | cultural and biodiversity, human–non-human relations, interdisciplinary research, pan-species democracy, re-imagined communities, sustainable water management
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