While the fundamental role of water as a human need and a human right has been acknowledged by the United Nations and member states, too often strategies to secure that right conflict with the competing interests and actions for the same resource. We are approaching a global tipping point in the hydrosphere where the biocultural sustainability of water resources is threatened by the cumulative and synergistic impacts of degenerative changes. When water that sustains life, livelihoods, and culture is threatened, the cultural stability and diversity of peoples and their environment is also threatened. Achieving long-term sustainability of our hydrosphere requires re-embedding social, cultural, and environmental concerns within and throughout the local, regional, and global systems that plan, finance, develop, manage, and use our world’s water.
CPE engages these issues and concerns in number of ways: Through case-specific analysis; organization and participation in water/culture/power conference symposiums; publication of journal articles and books; and — with concrete focus on linking research to action — engagement in various public policy processes.
One example is the Center for Political Ecology partnership with UNESCO’s Water and Cultural Diversity initiative (2008-2011). In partnership with UNESCO-IHP and UNU-IAS Traditional Knowledge Initiative, CPE helped develop an educational text that illustrates the complex role of water in sustaining and/or threatening the viability of culturally diverse peoples and the environments on which they depend. The resulting transdisciplinary publication features case studies exploring water-culture traditions that allowed resilience in the past and encourage innovative change in the present. The primary argument? The precarious state of the hydrosphere can be addressed when biocultural health is prioritized.
To access the FREE ebook Water, Cultural Diversity and Global Environmental Change textbook: CLICK HERE
To view a discussion of findings from the Water, Cultural Diversity and Global Environmental Change initiative, see BR Johnston and SJ Fiske’s 2014 article The Precarious State of the Hydrosphere: why biocultural health matters