Water and Civilization: Using History to Reframe Water Policy Debates andto Build a New Ecological Realism

This article invites policy makers to reframe some familiar policy debates on water through using history. While violence has and will continue around water, water is far more humanity’s learning ground for building community than it is a cause of war. Increased interdependence through water sharing plans and infrastructure networks can be seen as increases of our flexibility and capacity to respond to exigencies of nature and reduce our vulnerability to events such as droughts and floods and thereby increase security. The history of social organization around river basins and watersheds is humanity’s richest records of our dialogue with nature. It is among the most fertile areas for learning about how the political and technical interact. The spatial and functional characteristics of the river basins influenced human settlement and interaction long before the idea of the river basin started to be formalized into legal and administrative terms. The direction of flow of rivers influenced the movement of civilization. Rivers have been crucial to means of communication leading to the formation of political units. The article concludes with calling for new ethics in water management. It calls for an ethic built on: a sense of purpose and on an active co-designing with nature and not solely on preservation; a balance between humans and technology and among structural and on-structural approaches; and a new balance of the sacred and utilitarian in water. Previous article in issue