Affordable Housing Institute : US

[Continued from Part 1.]

 

 

In Part 1, I opened with the economics of water, using as its inspiration Duke law professor Jim Salzman’s article Thirst: A Short History of Drinking Water, and looking for principles applicable to 21st century urbanization in the world’s rapidly expanding cities and the spontaneous communities that represent their slums.  Because housing is what makes cities, availability of clean water and sanitation materially influences city scaling.

 

You want clean water at large scale, you need technology

 

What of the time before cities?

 

There is much less anthropological scholarship on drinking water than on irrigation water, presumably because the much greater water required for agriculture made this the scarcer resource.  The available studies are nonetheless revealing.  […] 

 

Water is regarded first and foremost as a common property resource, not as a commodity.

 

This is logical – if you had nothing to do with creating or purifying the water, then you did not earn it, and you do own it – but it’s also a limiting factor, for if you cannot own water, then you have no incentive to invest in the technology, law, economics, or finance necessary to increase its supply.

 

Salzman summarizes five ancient or indigenous societies and their approach to water ownership and use:

 

Traditional Jewish Water Law

Traditional Islamic Water Law

Zimbabwe Indigenous Water Law

Bihar Indian Water Law

Australian Aboriginal Water Law

 

Reorganizing Professor Salzman’s cases by issue reveals that in a pre-technological (and hence, pre-urban) environment, water is regarded as something effectively sacred – to be protected and not owned, used and not sold.

 

1.         Water is free, because no one earned it

 

Springs are precious, their location is important

 

The Old Testament is filled with references to springs and wells, their importance clearly evident from the fact that each was given a special name.  Jewish law regarding drinking water has been traced as far back as 3,000 BC.  The basic rule was one of common property.  As reflected in the later writings of the Talmud, “Rivers and Streams forming springs, these belong to every man.”  Because water from natural sources such as springs and streams was “provided by God,” commodification of these waters would be tantamount to desecration – selling divine gifts. 

 

Page from a Babylonian Talmud

 

Water comes from the heavens or the earth, so it should be free.  Pre-urban societies did not have to address what if making clean water costs labor or money.

 

Islamic water law is quite similar to Jewish water law in both substance and significance.  Indeed, the Arabic word for Islamic law, “Sharia,” literally means the “way to water.” 

 

Before entering a mosque, you wash your hands and feet

 

As the Koran relates:

Anyone who gives water to a living creature will be rewarded….  To the man who refuses his surplus water, Allah will say:  ‘Today I refuse thee my favor, just as thou refused the surplus of something that thou hadst not made thyself.’ 

 

2.         Because water is communal and finite, use depends on need

 

Knowledge of water belongs to the community.

 

[Australia] Knowledge of water sources was vital to a group’s survival (a truly critical example of intellectual property). 

 

Even though water is free, it is finite.  So it must be rationed.

 

“He is nothing.  The well is everything.”

 

[Islam]  As with Jewish water law, norms governed water usage and users.  Priority was given for drinking, then domestic needs, then agriculture and grazing, favoring needs in the community over outside users.   

 

The hierarchy is instructive, since it shows direct immediacy – keep body and soul together:

 

Drinking

Household use (cooking, washing)

Agriculture

 

First for drinking, then for cooking

 

As one scholar has described, “access to water, at least for the purpose of human sustenance, is considered to be a right of all persons, within and without the community, and whether on private or publicly held property.” 

 

Water thus belongs to our community – us versus outsiders – except that survival trumps ownership.

 

Islamic water law was largely adopted into the legal code of the Ottoman Empire. 

 

It’s important to remember that laws are an edifice constructed year by year, case by case.  (This is particularly true in English-speaking countries, whose law derives from English common law.)

 

It is still followed by Bedouin in the Negev, where “water to quench thirst, is an unalienable right, and may not be refused from any water source,” and by the Berbers in Morocco, where drinking water for humans is “sacrosanct and neither may be denied anyone for any reason at any time.”

 

Even in Morocco, however, water is a free resource only in the desert, not in the towns, where water sellers are prominent.

 

 

[India] A divine gift for all of mankind, sharing water is viewed as a spiritual act of generosity – one of the seven kinds of wealth (the ‘saptasantanas’).  At times of water scarcity, even access to an upper caste well is allowed.

 

Although water may be allocated hierarchically, the right to survive trumps everything.  Management of shared water resources is thus a wellspring (as it were) of forming an effective civilization.

 

Filling up at a well in India

 

3.         You have a duty to share

 

 [Islam]  The Right of Thirst reinforced this message.  Since water is a gift from God to all people, sharing water is a holy duty.  

 

You must share it because you did not earn it.  Yet you must be polite:

 

Water dreaming, aboriginal art

 

[Australia] Given the variability of rainfall, sharing has played a key role in water management.  Researchers describe the dominant access system as “always ask.” 

 

“Always ask” is a good rule for life.

 

 

While not an open access resource, in practice those requesting water would be given permission to drink. 

 

There’s the bookend to ‘always ask’ – always give. 

 

Indeed, as one aboriginal expert has written, “the knowledge that those with plenty today will be supplicants themselves in the future… [means that] Sharing is encoded and embedded within all social relations:  trade, marriage, ceremony and others.  The code is reciprocity.  Not only is the precept ‘always ask’ essential; so too is the fact that people are almost never refused.” 

 

As Professor Salzman concludes:

 

[General] Whether expressed through the Right of Thirst in Jewish and Islamic law, as sharing norms in India, Africa, or as “always ask” in Australia, access to drinking water in times of need seems to be a basic right.  As a recent study concluded, “a culture of free access to water was dominant in most countries during ancient times.”  And third, aspects of these water management regimes can endure for long periods, continuing even today in some societies, including the United States.

 

The endurance of cultural norms is critical, because however Rousseau-noble-savage the rules about asking and sharing, they do nothing to create more clean water.  They are wonderful systems for a non-technological, passive approach to water management, and will fail immediately in cities.

 

4.         You have no right to consume ‘too much’

 

‘Always ask, always give’ is heartwarming, and predicated on the mutual expectation that epicurean management will result in there being enough for all.  What goes around, comes around.

 

Taking turns at a well in Zimbabwe

 

[Zimbabwe] In times of scarcity, communities may restrict the amount of water gathered, banning, for example, the filling of large drums or restricting withdrawals to 20 liters per family. 

 

Here is a stirring of a municipal or governmental enforcement.  Consumption restrictions work only if they can be enforced on everyone.

 

As units of government get larger, the range of water bans increases

 

Up to here, we’ve dealt with rules for individuals: what about rules for the society as a whole?

 

[Continued in Part 3.]

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