Water security and peace: a synthesis of studies ... - unesdoc - Unesco

Poor countries are now facing the dilemma of having to undergo rapid
industrialization. to face growing population numbers, migration to the cities, and
greater demands for the amenities of urban living and middle-class lifestyles. In the
process they are stressing existing water resources, hastily and rather inefficiently
developing new water resources, overlooking degradation and the breakdown of the
urban water and sewage infrastructure, and failing to minimize or prevent water
pollution from modern farming and industrial installations. Thus they are trying to
repeat the patterns of growth of the industrialized countries, which appear to be
unsustainable at the global level.
2.3. Water Resources Management in the Postmodern World
2.3.1. What Has Not Changed?
The technology of water resources development has not changed significantly for a
long time. Improved mathematical approaches and computational capacity and new
materials technologies at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth
centuries led to the last major innovations in engineering design (i.e., arched dams
and the trial-load method). Also, beginning in the mid-twentieth century, computers
allowed us to design water systems to meet more precisely divergent social
objectives. In construction too, use is now made of reinforced concrete and steel, as
well as rock, stone, and earth, to build levees, floodwalls, jetties, and dams.
Nevertheless, recent innovations have been mostly in the details. Indeed, the most
interesting thing about water resources technology is its essential atemporal nature:
lessons learned two thousand years ago in ancient China or two hundred years ago in
Napoleonic France may well be equally valid for current water management and
engineering. This has been constant.
2.3.2. What Has Changed?
As has been seen in this chapter, our problems are not new, except that:
! Our water demands are rising sharply.
! Our ability to pollute is global.
! Our pollutants are more deadly.
! Our interference with ecosystems is both far-reaching and nefarious.
! All societies are closely interlinked so that any regional catastrophe can have
global repercussions.
! There are increasing global social and environmental concerns.
! The increased speed of transformation gives people less time to adapt to new
situations.
Human societies have always needed to cope with unforeseen natural forces. They are
most vulnerable when they are stretched to a meta-stable condition: a point of living
dangerously when minor perturbations can plunge society into a state of chaos.
Today, climatic change, mostly as an external force that is now destabilized by
human-induced variables, could suddenly and significantly influence the hydrological
cycle, air mass movements, ocean currents, and regional distribution of water
resources, with serious socioeconomic effects. This may require new approaches to
create the necessary resilience to adapt and cope.
2.3.3. A Lesson from History
There has been a change in the scale of our relationship with nature and other
societies. Yet humanity is still constrained by the sentiments, ideologies, and
worldviews shaped in our remote and recent past. Societies are hindered in their
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