Water Is a Commons
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If' S 202.1 94WA jean robert water is a commons HABITAT INTERNATIONAL COALITION LtbKAKY INTERNATIONAL REFERENCE C1KTHÍB FOf? COMMUNITY WAIB» WLXEtM SANITATWN tlfiOJ jean robert water is a commons LIBRARY, INTERNATIONAL REFERENCE CENTRE FOR COMMUNITY WATER SUPPLY ANO SAMÍTAT/ON (IRC) p|ÍA§ffA¥il Tef. (070) 8] Copying permitted with reference to title, author and publisher Author Jean Robert Coordination Enrique Ortiz Collaboration Joel Audefroy, Jodi Grahl Cover page Joël Audefroy Edition and desktop publishing Riitta Ylàtalo Produced with support of United Nations Development Programme, UNDP Local Initiative Facility for Urban Environment, LIFE Publisher Habitat International Coalition, HIC Cordobanes 24 Col. San Jose Insurgentes 03900 Mexico D.F. Mexico First edition July 1994, Mexico City The contents represent the view points of the author and not necessarily those of the organizations/persons that made possible the publication of this book. PRESENTATION Habitat International Coalition, HIC, the international NGO alliance on human settlements, publishes this essay by Jean Robert, Water is a Commons, with the conviction that it will contribute with its fresh and profound vision to the debate on the options available to the majority populations in the implementation of their basic right to water. The interest of HIC in this issue stems from its conceptualization of the human right to a place to live as not limited to housing alone, but rather encompassing the broad human habitat as a whole, with access to water constituting one of the most important components of this right. Furthermore, HIC refuses to accept the perspectives that limit the analysis and formulation of policies in the habitat field to technological, financial and macro-economic oriented considerations, understanding that the full enjoyment of the right to a place to live also has cultural, philosophical, historical, social, political, environmental, and of course territorial implications. In this perspective HIC formulated a plan of action that established as one of its first steps the convocation of various persons at the forefront of thought on distinct issues in the relationship between human habitat and the environment, for the preparation of a series of analyses of contemporary approaches to these issues. Such analyses were considered fundamental to the development of the HIC position on complex issues which must reconcile respect for the environment and the fulfillment of basic human rights such as access to water, land, and shelter. The joint HIC-LIFE Project, "Promotion of Sustainable Technologies in Drinking Water and Sanitation Services in Urban Settings", funded by the UNDP LIFE Program, presented the opportunity to pursue the first of these analyses on the crucial question of access to water and sanitation. For this study we turned to Mr. Jean Robert, an architect bom in Switzerland in 1937 and who currently resides in Cuemavaca, Mexico. Jean Robert studied in the Polytechnical Institute of Zurich, ETH, following which he practiced his craft for a number of years in Holland and Switzerland, where as he notes he was "dedicated to a large extent to the construction of banks." A series of factors began to radically redirect his activities around the mid-1960s, including eco- logical concerns, interest in peoples' grasssroots architecture, contact with Mexico, and especially contact with persons such as Ivan Illich, Gustavo Esteva and John Turner. Jean Robert has produced a number of essays and books on diverse themes in which it is always possible to detect his profound concern for the conflict which has historically developed, especially through industrial modernization, among peoples' subsistence founded in local cultures on the one hand, and the modem culture which cancels the peoples' skills and abilities in order to impose the concept of goods and services held by the State, the business interests, the accountants and the technocrats, on the other. Among his publications stand out: "La Trahison de l'Opulence" written in 1976 together with Jean Pierre Dupuy; "Le temps qu'on nous vole", 1980; the entry on "Production" for the "Development Dictionary" published in London in 1992; "Ecología y Technología Crítica", 1992, which unites a series of newspaper articles published in Mexico; and "Zu Hause und Unterwegs", 1993, which deals with the history of perceptions in ancient and medieval Europe. His intellectual work has not distanced him from the practice of his trade through which he has sought to translate his concerns, most notably through the development and promotion at the grassroots level of alternative sanitation technologies. Jean Robert currently teaches in the school of Architecture of the University of Morelos in Cuemavaca. The work of Robert responds to our wish to set aside the economist's vision of urban questions so much in vogue in these times when all is being reduced to the laws of the market, and instead opt for a more integral historical, philosophical and reflective vision of water to better stimulate radical debate - the primary goal of the essay. It will be found to counter all three of the more traditional perspectives on the fulfillment of water and sanitation needs: the economic vision which sees them as a problem of pricing; the political vision of water and sanitation as a problem of servicing; and even the social vision which might label them a problem of participation. Robert's perspective has grown out of his historical vision of the management of water (and other basic gifts of nature as land for example) as commons: neither private nor public but of equal gratuitous access to all members of a given basin, who share common understanding towards its conservation in accordance with its limits in the given context. Such an approach traditionally also guaranteed access to such vital elements as water for the meekest - or, in more modem terminology - for the most vulnerable. The primary end goal of this effort is to search for elements which contribute to the clarification of the position which HIC and other interested people and organizations should assume with respect both to the protection of the environment and to peoples' access to the fulfillment of their fundamental living requirements, in this case for drinking water and sanitation. The crises now being faced in settlements around the world, and the subsequent growing recognition that contemporary approaches to the provision of water and sanitation are neither sustainable nor meeting the needs, point to the present as a time when new perspectives must be opened up and dynamic new approaches must be developed in the resolution of the rights of access to vital basic elements such as water, land and shelter. We hope that this study is a step in that direction. Enrique Ortiz CONTENTS Chapter 1 LOOK AT PRESENT SITUATIONS 1. NATURAL BOUNDARIES «11 1.1. the "natural" and the "anthropogenic" water cycles 12. the predicament: are we running out of water? 2. SCARCITY AND THE GLOBALIZATION OF "WATER PROBLEMS" • 17 2.1. "a drop of water for lite", or the rise of a new emblem 22. the price of water and the new 'sanitary revolution" 3. ECOLOGICAL REPERCUSSIONS • 24 3.1. depletion of groundwatar tables 32. soil pollution 3.3. the macadamization of the soil and the collapse of micro- climates 4. RADICAL POLICIES OR REPAIR-TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER? • 26 4.1. reproduction of errors 4.1.1. sludge: a domestic-industrial poison 4.12. the monopoly of the conventional sanitary "technological package" 4.1.3. the demise of conservation in domestic use patterns 42. the "bigger is better* fallacy 5. WATER AS "WAGER" OF MODERN GEOPOLITICS • 29 5.1. water and war 52. water and poverty 5.3. water-related diseases 6. A LOCAL PERSPECTIVE ON A GENERAL PREDICAMENT: WATER IN THE VALLEY OF MEXICO • 36 7. CONCLUSIONS • 41 7.1. a concept of water Chapter 2 FOR A CULTURAL HISTORY OF WATER 1. WATER AND THE MAKING OF PLACES • 43 1.1. the imagination of water 12. what to expect from history? 12.1. reflecting on soil and water 122. modernity in the mirror of the waters of the past 12.3. HjOvs water 12.4. the two tasks of the water historian 2. FIRST TASK: STUDY OF THE SOCIOGENESIS OF MODERN WATER • 50 2.1. the prehistory of a concept and of a percept 22. the "sanitarian revolution" in England 2.3. the advent of indoor plumbing in the United States 2.3.1. conservation 2.3.2. ...and its demise 2.3.3. a matter of public policy 2.3.4. Latrobe, the pioneer 2.3.5. pipad freshwater generates unpiped waste waters 2.3.6. the sanitarian crusade 3. SECOND TASK: DEALING WITH THE WATERS OF THE PAST • 60 3.1. water and its cultural matrix, culture and its 'water matrix1 3.1.1. water and the ways of cultures 4. REVIVING THE PHILOSOPHY OF WATER • 66 4.1. the ancient mythopoatical elementarily of water 4.2. the elementarily of water in natural philosophy 4.3. the demise of the philosophy of water 4.4. the urge for a philosophical reorientation 4.4.1. philosophical proposals Chapter 3 BEYOND WATER DEVELOPMENT 1. FALLACIES ABOUT WATER • 71 1.1. the recognized pitfalls of water development 1.2. the expansion of water-development and the scarcity of water 1.3. traditional responses to the limitedness of water 2. THE CONCEPTUAL TOOL KIT • 75 2.1. paying honor to precedents 22. the right to water 2.3. 'sustainable" water development 2.4. delinking sustainability from development 3. IS WATER AN ECONOMIC RESOURCE OR A FREE GIFT? • 79 3.1. an Italian shepherd's tale Chapter 4 RESCALING WATER POLICIES 1. RETURNING TO THE SOURCES OF COMMONALITY • 89 1.1. the household of water 1.2. sound householders or professional water managers? 1.3.