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Toward a Global Water Ethic: Learning from Indigenous Communities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2018

Emma S. Norman
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Abstract

This review essay examines three important new contributions to the water governance literature, which provide important overviews of the changing water governance structures over time, and advance the call for a new water ethic. Furthering this work, I suggest that the need for a water ethic is globally important, but it is particularly urgent for indigenous communities. Settler expansion, fixed political boundaries, and subsequent colonial framings of land and water ownership have affected indigenous communities throughout the world and have led to severe environmental and social justice disparities. Although the books under consideration provide examples of indigenous rights associated with water protection, the theme is largely underdeveloped. Thus, I suggest that insights from indigenous communities’ more holistic and long-term relationship with water could help define and move forward the adoption of a new global water ethic. These insights are gleaned from work with indigenous communities throughout North America, particularly those in the Salish Sea and the Great Lakes regions. A new water ethic could incorporate three precepts: (1) treat water as sacred; (2) consider rights and responsibilities together; and (3) practice hydrophilia (love and know your waterways).

Keywords

water governanceglobal water ethicsenvironmental ethicsindigenous communitiessocial justice
Type
Review Essays
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , Summer 2018 , pp. 237 - 247
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2018 

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References

NOTES

1 Biswas, Asit K. and Tortajada, Cecilia, “Assessing Global Water Megatrends,” in Biswas, Asit K., Tortajada, Cecilia, and Rohner, Philippe, eds., Assessing Global Water Megatrends (Singapore: Springer Nature, 2018), pp. 1–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Conca, Ken, Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006), p. 114Google Scholar.

3 Mehta, Lyla and Movik, Synne, eds., Shit Matters: The Potential of Community-Led Total Sanitation (Warwickshire, U.K.: Practical Action Publishing, 2011)Google Scholar.

4 Ibid.

5 Bakker, Karen, Privatizing Water: Governance Failure and the World's Urban Water Crisis (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Budds, Jessica and Linton, Jamie, “The Hydrosocial Cycle: Defining and Mobilizing a Relational-Dialectical Approach to Water,” Geoforum 57 (2014), p. 170-180CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Harris, Leila M. and Alatout, Samer, “Negotiating Hydro-Scales, Forging States: Comparison of the Upper Tigris/Euphrates and Jordan River Basins,” Political Geography 29, no. 3 (2010), pp. 148–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Swyngedouw, Erik, “The Political Economy and Political Ecology of the Hydro-Social Cycle,” Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education 142, no. 1 (2009), pp. 56–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Linton, Jamie, What Is Water? The History of a Modern Abstraction (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

6 Budds, Jessica, “Contested H2O: Science, Policy and Politics in Water Resources Management in Chile,” Geoforum 40, no. 3 (2009), pp. 418–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Budds, Jessica and Hinojosa, Leonith, “Restructuring and Rescaling Water Governance in Mining Contexts: The Co-Production of Waterscapes in Peru,” Water Alternatives 5, no. 1 (2012), pp. 119–37Google Scholar.

7 Norman, Emma, Cook, Christina, and Cohen, Alice, eds., Negotiating Water Governance: Why the Politics of Scale Matter (Farnham, Surrey, U.K.: Ashgate, 2015)Google Scholar.

8 See also Leopold, Luna, “Ethos, Equity, and the Water Resource: The 1990 Abel Wolman Distinguished Lecture,” Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 32, no. 2 (1990), pp. 16–42Google Scholar.

9 Whyte, Kyle, “Is It Colonial Déjà Vu? Indigenous Peoples and Climate Injustice,” in Adamson, Joni and Davis, Michael, eds., Humanities for the Environment: Integrating Knowledge, Forging New Constellations of Practice (Abingdon, U.K.: Routledge Earthscan, 2016), pp. 88–104Google Scholar.

10 Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Swinomish Climate Change Initiative: Impact Assessment Technical Report (La Conner, Wash.: Office of Planning and Community Development, 2009)Google Scholar.

11 United Nations, “Communities of Ocean Action: Implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 14,” June 5–9, 2017, oceanconference.un.org/coa.

12 Kimberly Curtis, “‘Climate Refugees,’ Explained,” UN Dispatch, April 24, 2017.

13 On the notion of false choices, see Gagnon, Valoree, Gorman, Hugh, and Norman, Emma, Eliminating the Need for Fish Advisories in the Great Lakes Region: A Policy Brief (Houghton, Mich.: Great Lakes Research Center, Michigan Technological University, 2018)Google Scholar; and Donatuto, Jamie, Campbell, Larry, and Gregory, Robin, “Developing Responsive Indicators of Indigenous Community Health,” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 13, no. 9 (2016)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

14 Norman, Emma S., “Standing Up for Inherent Rights: The Role of Indigenous-Led Activism in Protecting Sacred Waters and Ways of Life,” Society & Natural Resources 30, no. 4 (2017), pp. 537–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; LaDuke, Winona, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life (Chicago, Ill.: Haymarket Books, 2015)Google Scholar; and Whyte, “Is it Colonial Déjà Vu?”

15 Norman, “Standing Up for Inherent Rights.”

16 Norman, Emma S., Governing Transboundary Waters: Canada, the United States, and Indigenous Communities (Abingdon, U.K.: Routledge Earthscan, 2015)Google Scholar.