Water Management Practices

Traditional Knowledge and Water Management Practiceswater

Principal Investigator: Rajindra K. Puri
Co-investigator: Dr. Deanna Donovan
Project dates: 2008-2010
Funding: TBA
Partners: UNESCO IHP- Water and Cultural Diversity, Global Diversity Foundation

Given the impending ‘water crisis’ and the need to incorporate traditional knowledge in  a more participatory and integrated approach to this problem, the proposed project will review and evaluate anthropological and other studies of traditional water management knowledge, and develop and test a methodology for uncovering and incorporating local traditional knowledge in water resources assessment protocols. The project will involve collaboration between the Water and Cultural Diversity Project of the International Hydrological Programme at UNESCO. The methods developed will be tested as part of a PHD research project in collaboration with the Global Diversity Foundation in Morocco. Outputs will include a knowledge bankto be shared via publications and web postings, including academic articles and policy briefs, and a methods manual to be disseminated to UNESCO partners worldwide. Overall the project will raise the profile of anthropology in the field of water and highlight local contributions to managing the world’s water resources.

The shortage of freshwater, a recent phenomenon seemingly worldwide, is not a new experience in the human condition. Certain areas as a result of extreme climate variability or seasonal weather patterns have experienced severely restricted supplies of freshwater regularly or periodically throughout their history. Thus many societies have been challenged to address the issue of water scarcity in the past, albeit on a much smaller scale. Over the centuries human ingenuity has developed mechanisms—technological and social—to enable society to adapt to environmental variability and change, to surmount this limitation and thus to survive.  Recognizing that human society, in the larger sense, is entering a period of freshwater scarcity, a ‘water crisis’, so to speak, this project seeks to draw from the experience and knowledge of the past in building effective responses to urgent problems of the present.

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