Affordable Housing Institute : US

[Continued from the previous Part 1 and Part 2.]

 

So far in our examination of the economics of water, drawing from 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, I’ve dealt with pre-urban rules for individual behavior. 

 

Yet though water may be natural, not earned and not owned, society as a whole has a duty to provide its basic infrastructure, such as wells.

 

 

5.         Water’s cleanliness must be protected

 

Though clean water is a gift of God, humans can pollute it, and even the most primitive societies have (or had) draconian rules to protect its purity:

 

[Zimbabwe]  There are clear norms to ensure water quality – such as prohibitions against doing laundry or making bricks near wells.

 

Washing clothes in water brought from the well, Mavoko, Kenya

 

[India]  Rules for ensuring source water quality are detailed.  The water must be approached barefoot, so that shoes do not pollute the source; containers must be properly cleaned before gathering water; no bathing or washing is allowed near the source; etc.  

 

Bathing in the Ganges, sacred if not truly clean

 

The waters at Bath, Georgian over Roman

 

[Australia]  Defecating or starting a fire near a water hole were vitally serious offenses, giving those responsible for the water the right to punish these transgressions by death (though, in practice, this ultimate sanction was usually negotiated away). 

 

 

6.         The aristocracy must be generous

 

We humans are primates who maintain pecking orders – but those who have more, must provide for those who have less.

 

[India]  Studies of the Bihar in the northeast region of India reveal some fascinating differences in drinking water management.  Because of the complex social hierarchy, priority of access and management is much more carefully proscribed than in other cultures along social caste lines.  As a researcher has written,

 

Water is believed to be a medium that transmits pollution when in contact with a person who himself is in a ‘state of pollution.’  Hence, the upper and lower castes are expected to maintain distinctness of water sources as the lower castes, especially the “harijans,” are believed to have the potential of transmitting pollution by sharing sources…  The group of community members who actually have ownership and/or access to a public source depends primarily upon caste and differs in accordance with their social affiliations.

 

Dalits beginning at Varanasi

 

As a result, only upper castes may make use of sacred source waters.  The rule of sharing, however, is widely observed and those in need must be given access to water. 

 

This social differentiation also plays out in water management.  Upper castes are responsible for maintaining the water sources and assign manual labor to the lower castes. 

 

The rich have a duty to create the group resource.  That is, the rich pay the non-recoverable hard cost.  This early form of charitable contribution is a societally mandated form of the Basic Model of infrastructure finance.

 

 

Substitute ‘rich’ or ‘aristocracy’ for ‘government’ and you have the pre-urban ethos in a nutshell.

 

7.         Infrastructure belongs to the community, not the individual

 

Akin to the Basic Model, even though the resource itself is divine – not earned, not made, not ours – we who have created the operating model to protect it have dibs on it:

 

Studies of communal lands in Zimbabwe have found remarkably persistent norms of drinking water management into the present.  While wells and boreholes are often built today for private purposes, they are made available for communal drinking.

 

[Zimbabwe] Moreover, people must ask permission from the owner prior to using the well.  If they gather too much water, use it for a different purpose than requested, or are unhygienic near the well, then their access rights are limited.  As one person described, “You go to someone you are in good books with.” 

 

Jewish water carriers, Minsk

 

8.         Water hoarding or ownership is sinful – and will be met with retaliation

 

Beneath the surface of all this polite society are real threats: the group resource may be destroyed by any disaffected individual.

 

One little bottle of poison can ruin a well

 

As the most comprehensive study of drinking water for the [Zimbabwe] region has concluded, “Cutting across all the different tenurial systems is the notion that no one should be denied access to safe drinking water.”  Interestingly, the impetus for sharing is sanction-based rather than religious.  Field researchers report a general fear that denying water to someone could lead the drinking well to be poisoned – either literally through adding a poison or spiritually through witchcraft. 

 

Poisoning the well at Calvary

 

Great rule for a pre-technological, invariant resource.

 

The net result is that drinking water remains a non-economic good, with no requirement of payment or gifts for access. 

 

Outright bans, however, are rare for fear of retribution.  One well owner who denied access to his water found a dead dog floating in the well two days after locking the gates. 

 

Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) existed long before John Foster Dulles rediscovered it.

 

They didn’t say I was MAD back then

 

In the pre-urban modus vivendi, water was an element, a miracle and a gift.  It was not a commodity, not an asset, not a product, not an output.  Lack of water constrained humanity’s growth, and the growth of humanity’s civilization and culture. 

 

Clearly, then, access to water in ancient and indigenous cultures was not premised on economic relations.  So when did the transition to commodification of water start to occur?  There is no better place to look than ancient Rome.

 

Who paid for that thing, anyhow?

 

[Continued in a few days in Part 4.]

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