IWHA 2003 Conference Abstracts Third IWHA Conference Bibliotheca Alexandria 11-14 December 2003 http://www.iwha.net/ Conference topics: A. Ideas of Water B. The History of Water: Science and Technology C. The History of Water: Law, Economics and Politics D. Water Management in the Nile Basin The conference was organized in cooperation with Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation (Egypt), The Library of Alexandria, IHP-UNESCO, University of Bergen, US Army Corps of Engineers and Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation. Minutes from the IWHA Business Meeting 13.12.2003 IWHA Report 2001-2003 IWHA Work Plan 2003-2005 Page 1 IWHA 2003 Conference Abstracts Theme A. Ideas of Water 121. Patricia Avila, Mexico Water culture and environment in an indigenous region from Mexico The indigenous population from the Meseta Purépecha -region allocated in the West-center of Mexico- has had to design during the centuries various strategies for improving the use and management of water. The reason is because in that region, water is a very scarce resource: there are not rivers, lakes or any other important sources, only small springs. Their strategies are based in: a) social and communal water control, that has guaranteed the free access to the population and the resource protection; b) the efficient use and management of water, that has permitted to profit in a way more rational; c) the diversified use and management of water, that has asked the utilization of all available sources, including rain water; and d) the multiple use and management of water, that has permitted to develop different productive and domestic activities and improve the water utilization through recycling and reusing. Although the scarcity does not explain by itself neither the high value of water that the indigenous people (Purepechas) have, nor the logic that support the strategies of use and management. For that is important to deep in the socio-cultural dimension because water has sacred and divine values that are manifested in its myths, festivities and cultural practices. In the Purepecha cosmogony, the human beings are part of nature and their relationship is based in principles of respect and harmony. This is because the mother deity is associated with nature (Cuerauahperi) and is connected also with the water deity (Ocupi Tiripeme). Thus, the human beings can not be in a superior level, only through a relationship of respect that is mediated by the technology and knowledge. In this sense, the socio-cultural practices of water use and management are a projection of this cosmogony: water is a patrimonial good with high social value, that is protected to guarantee the present and future use. Also, the water use and management are based in ecological principles that permit an efficient, multiple and diversified utilization and the resource protection. For that reason, the relationship between water culture and environment explains the existence of an important magnitude of population since prehispanic times, in a region with a very limited water ava¡lability. 017. Kate A. Berry, USA Scale as Contested Terrain in Water Conflicts Scale is not often addressed with respect to conflicts over water use, yet competition over scale can influence the terrain of water conflicts and the history of policy decisions. Such competition includes tensions over the appropriate scale – regional, national, tribal, state/provincial or community -- to address issues as well as struggles about what to include (or exclude) at any given scale. Take as an example, the popular notion of community with its generally positive connotations. Using community as the basis for making water use decisions, however, is not without significance nor are community-based decisions universally superior to decisions made on the basis of other scales. And even if the scale of analysis seems obvious to all involved, conflicts over water often implicitly or explicitly involve struggles over the definition of that scale -- what is meant by community, for example, and what does this exclude. The point is that scale is socially constructed and, as such, is subject to competition within political and legal arenas used in resolving water conflicts. The case study presented here concerns the McCarran Water Rights Amendment of 1952, which has had the effect of undermining Indian tribal sovereign immunity in water rights litigation. Throughout the development, passage, and judicial interpretation of this national water policy, ideologies about community (as well as about state, tribal and national scales) were projected into the policy processes. Western farmers and ranchers as well as government officials and Indian tribal representatives articulated different visions about how their positions attached to notions of community, state, tribe, and nation. This, I will argue, was more than simple rhetoric. Different visions of scale were consciously selected for Congress, the media, and the Supreme Court to underscore competing positions. This case study will provide insights into how scale can be contested terrain in water conflicts as ideas about Page 2 IWHA 2003 Conference Abstracts community are deployed and as tensions between national, state, tribal, and community interests are accentuated. 196. Bhattarai, Lok P., Nepal Hierarchies of Water Control in Nepal Himalayas: A Reflection from Political and Cultural History of State Formation Nepal Himalayas is one of the major geographic segments in the upper catchments of Indo-Gangetic plains. For that reason, it has been remaining mainly as a ‘cultural watershed’ of the civilization of the Indo-Gangetic plains of the south than the Tibet in the north. However, Nepal Himalayas has its distinct historical experiences than other parts of Himalays in course of the evolution of cultural and political history. In this article, I depict how ‘water’, despite being a ‘god-gift’ product, deserves special cultural metaphoric meanings in the ecological history of this part of Himalayas. I will discuss the history of water use in light of the history of the evolution and diffusion of irrigation technology and the water management organization in course of the process of Nepali state formation. This article focuses on depicting how, on the one hand, the Hindu notion of ‘personhood’, hierarchies of the roles of different actors in cosmic arrangement, worldview and, on the other, the politics of inclusion and exclusion, property right and the economic arrangement of production and distribution were nicely tailored in the logical framework of symbolic meaning of water. The article also illustrates how ‘water’ was taken as a marker of social boundary, which ensued as an arrangement of exclusion and inclusion of caste, ethnicity, sex and region in the larger structure of property regime. Secondly, this article discuss how the cultural arrangement for the hierarchies of water control has been ridiculously destroyed in the changed context of social transformation while state already went in the direction of secular democratic regime abolishing the olden arrangement. This article will also tend to precipitate the issue in the current context of social conflict and insurgency in Nepal Himalayas. 144. David Breen, Canada Private versus Public Water Rights: The Foundation of Water Law in the Canadian Prairie West The Canadian prairies comprise a vast region within the North American interior almost as large as France and Germany combined. Much of this region is semi arid and prone to extended cycles of drought. Currently in the midst of such a cycle, the renewed exodus of farmers and ranchers from the region underlines the precarious nature of agricultural endeavour in the region. Those struggling to remain, like their drought besieged forbearers, have appealed for massive government assistance. Both the nature of their appeal and the pattern of proposed assistance are framed by an extended public debate and body of legislation that was initiated in the midst of a similar just over a hundred years previous. This earlier debate centered upon the question of private versus public water rights. The seminal product of this debate was the decision to abandon the doctrine of riparian rights (an important article of Canada's inherited corpus of British common law) in favour of public ownership of all surface water in the Canadian Prairie west and northern territories. This remarkable decision introduced a new and progressive approach to water management unique to North American experience that was much admired by contemporary American observers such as Elwood Mead. It was a decision that had far reaching and lasting implications. My proposed paper will examine this precedent setting debate concerning private versus public water, the economic and political environment in which it occurred as well as the particular and vital role played by one man - the visionary champion of public water, William Pearce. ( A comprehensive evaluation of existing North American water law, as well as the laws and traditions governing irrigation practice in India, Egypt and Australia, led Pearce to conclude that effective and equitable water management had to be based on the principle that " water is the property of the public." Eventually able to persuade the Canadian Parliament to accept his notion that the government should hold title to all surface water in the prairie region, Pearce saw his principle of public ownership of water enshrined in the North West Irrigation Act of 1894 ) This paper will examine the intellectual and technical environment which informed Pearce's ideas and which were embodied in the North West Irrigation Act. In its abolishment of riparian rights, the Statute marked a fundamental turning point in law and since it remains the Page 3 IWHA 2003 Conference Abstracts foundation of contemporary water management in the region its impact was far reaching and lasting. This paper will reflect upon these implications, including the statute's impact upon aboriginal water rights. 106. P.G. Dhar Chakrabarti, India Saga of a Lost River The Saraswati was one of the mighty and highly venerated rivers of ancient India.