How Much Water Does a Culture Need? Environmental Water Management's Cultural Challenge and Indigenous Responses

Abstract

Twenty years ago aquatic ecologists Richter et al. (1997) authored a article titled How much water does a river need? to provoke the scientific community to better appreciate the complexity of aquatic ecosystem processes, functions, and interactions in its efforts to give priority of water to river ecosystems. This chapter recasts this question to assist the environmental water management sector—its scientists, policymakers, managers, and supporting nongovernmental organizations—to better appreciate the social and cultural complexity of human relationships with water and, in particular, the multifaceted dependence of indigenous peoples on river ecosystems. The chapter will draw on Australian experience to discuss the ways in which indigenous water values, rights, and interests are framed within environmental water management. Grounded in political ecology, the analysis will reveal narrow, simplistic understandings of culture as well as cultural biases in the environmental water management sector. It will discuss the consequences for minority groups seeking to have their water needs met and their distinct ontological perspectives on water recognized. In considering the implications, the responses and counterstrategies being articulated and deployed by indigenous groups and their supporters will be analyzed.