The Econocene and the Delta

Abstract

October 2013 San Francisco Estuary & Watershed Science: A Broad Perspective The Econocene and the California Delta Richard B. Norgaard Professor Emeritus Energy and Resources Group University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720 USA norgaard@berkeley.edu Member, Delta Independent Science Board Considering the 50-fold increase and the globalization of economic activity during the 20 th century, we are now in the Econocene: an era where our economy has become the major driver of rapid global change. Managing the California Delta will require policies that facilitate looking ahead and continually working with change rather than looking back and trying to secure a static past. Simply making modest adjustments in the current science–policy interface will be insufficient. Impractical changes—that is, those well beyond existing practice—are called for across the public, private, and non-governmental sectors. Dealing with the variability of nature has been central to human survival, indeed to all species. Being social and smart, people have organized collective strategies to live with nature’s capriciousness. Water management, in particular, has long been central to the cultures and structures of many successful societies around the world. With the rise of modern nations in the 19 th century, being social and smart took the form of progressive, or scientific, governance of land and water. Central to science a century and a half ago was the premise that nature varies in knowable ways around an invariable mean. Those concerned with the big questions of geological history and the evolution of life saw dynamics, but hydrologists and ecologists at the time saw stability. For water science, this led to classifications such as a 100-year flood and 10-year drought, as well as management concepts such as reser- voir operating rules. For fish and wildlife, the concepts of sustained yield and critical thresholds were developed through an understanding of nature having set properties. Similarly, water rights—indeed our concepts of property in general—are rooted in a known nature that varies around a mean. Importantly, this allowed nature to be divid- ed up, owned, and exchanged. Equally important for this essay, our understanding of responsible environmental management and accountability, whether in the private or