4 - Crafting institutions: Law, treaties, and shared benefits

Summary

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

– Commonly attributed to Charles Darwin

DISCIPLINES AND WORLDVIEWS

Water is a powerfully unifying resource, so it is ironic that water education, management, and discourse are so fragmented (Goldfarb, 1997). To truly learn about water in its most holistic sense, one needs to understand the many aspects of the hydrologic cycle, from meteorology to surface hydrology to soil sciences to groundwater to limnology to aquatic ecosystems. One should also have an integral sense of the human dimensions, from economics to law, ethics, aesthetics, sociology, and anthropology (Freeman, 2000). Universities and management institutions are simply not organized along these lines; often they are fragmented to where even surface water and groundwater, quality and quantity, are separated out as if they were not inextricably interrelated. Yet each of these disciplines offers a particular perspective on conflict prevention, management, and resolution. Although each discipline is rooted in its own typologies and terminologies, there are again surprising similarities from discipline to discipline, particularly in that each strives to provide a more structured framework to the often chaotic processes of conflict resolution: law (see, for example, Wescoat, 1996; Bennett and Howe, 1998; McCaffrey, 1999, McCaffrey, 2001b; Wouters, 2001; and Paisley, 2003), through its clear delineation of the terms, boundaries, and solutions; economics and game theory (Howe, Schurmeier, and Shaw, 1986; Rogers, 1993), through the unifying concepts of rationality and efficiency; engineering (Bleed, 1990; Lancaster, 1990), by its depiction of present and future states, and how to get from one to the other; and political economy (Just and Netanyahu, 1998; Allan, 1998a), through its position at the intersect between political and economic decision making.