I’m a wine critic and author with 30 years of tasting and fieldwork experience. It was the changing taste of my favourite wines that brought me to climate change, I founded The Wine and Climate Institute in Oxford (www.twacci.org) in 2016, after having published my first book on wine and climate change in 2014. This blog contains extracts from my UN research, my talks, articles and books, and it is all about wine, climate change, freshwater management, the water and earth sciences, coastal and maritime cultures such as the Vikings and the Saami, Northern issues, Indigenous Knowledge Systems and TEK, etc. Basically, all things Water and anything else that interests me. My greatest hope is to be part of the solution.

November 21, 2022

Nature’s capital: Water scarcity begins with water ownership

November 21, 2022/ Linda Johnson-Bell

Continuing on from the theme of my previous post, nowhere is the battle between water and man fought so earnestly than in America’s southwest where it germinated in the context of the post-Civil War industrial revolution. When writing about water ownership and the dams in the American West in Water Wars, Vandana Shiva provides several damning (excuse the pun!) statements perfectly illustrating the prevailing relationship with water: “W.J. McGee, President Theodore Roosevelt’s chief advisor to water programs, projected that the control of water was ‘the single-step remaining to be taken before Man becomes master over Nature” (Shiva 2016:54). And she quotes Francis Grove, the chief of construction in 1944, describing the blocking of the Sacramento River to build the Shasta Dam: “We had the river licked. Pinned down, shoulders right on the map. Hell, that’s what we came up here for” (Shiva 2016:54). One voice seemed to prophesy the future. In 1893, Wesley Powell, the Director of the US Geological Survey (and namesake of Lake Powell), warned that there was not “sufficient water to irrigate all the lands which could be irrigated, and only a small portion can be irrigated.”

The idea that mankind had to vanquish nature in order to “come of age” and attain the epitome of its production potential is at the root of why “things are not going as well as they ought to be going” (Schumacher 2011:2). The noted economist E.F. Schumacher* wrote: “The arising of this error … is closely connected with the changes in the last three or four centuries in man’s attitude to nature. I should perhaps say: western man’s attitude to nature, but since the whole world is now in a process of westernisation, the more general statement appears justified. Modern man does not experience himself as a part of nature, but as an outside force destined to dominate and conquer it. He even talks of a battle with nature, forgetting that, if he won the battle, he would find himself on the losing side” (2011:3).

(A great read: Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered*)

The “dehumanisation” of water, the replacement of its spiritual value with a commercial value caused a fatal disconnect. Positioning water as a disposable possession rather than as a rare gift makes it difficult to engender respect for it or a wish to protect it. It becomes a tool with which to overcome any obstacle on the road to “progress”. Schumacher argues the business case for water conservation is simply made if water is treated as a capital item as opposed to a limitless income. “We have been living on this natural capital of living nature for some time, but relatively modestly. It is only since the end of WWII that we have succeeded in increasing this rate to an alarming proportion”. If water were treated as a capital item, any savvy businessperson or policymaker would be primarily concerned with its conservation and with minimising its rate of use. Schumacher states the obvious when he states that “water is not made by man - once the well runs dry, it is gone” (2011:4 ). In 2010, the United Nations affirmed that access to fresh water is a fundamental human right. However, this does not then mean that this access to water cannot be privatised, controlled, and commercialised - which rather limits this right.

Water cannot be owned. It is common property and all efforts to curtail this basic right are at the root of all political-ecological injustices (Jenkins et al. 2017). A principal deterrent to water-smart agriculture is the water laws regarding water use and water ownership. A comprehensive treatment of the topic of international, national, and regional water laws is outside the scope of this post but it merits a mention.

Lawlessness and conflict

From the out-of-date, antiquated laws, to the new bills blatantly supporting short-term political agendas, water ownership is clearly one of the greatest impediments to the attainment of water freedom and water protection. “Neither international nor national water laws adequately respond to the ecological and political challenges posed by water conflicts. No legal document in contemporary law mentions the most basic law related to water - the natural law of the water cycle. Water conflicts continue to escalate and, to date, no appropriate legal framework exists to resolve these conflicts” (Shiva 2016:77). Indeed, it seems clear that every technological process to capture water interrupts its natural cycles. Man-made water conflicts could be minimised if water were recognised and treated as a common resource.

What does Hoover Dam got to do with wine? In the 1930s, the dam formed Lake Mead (our family used to water ski on it). It is one of several man-made reservoirs that take water from the Colorado River, which supplies household water, irrigation for farms and hydropower to Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and parts of Mexico. Today, water wars are raging in the wine regions, where water rights are traded like a commodity and dodgy legislation is hurtling the environment ever closer to its inevitable demise.

Last year I spoke to Mimi Casteel, owner, and winemaker at Hope Well Wine in Oregon, USA. She is an outspoken crusader for regenerative farming practices. She summarised the mindset of her contemporaries to me, as being one of control and power over legislative rights. The local laws engender an “if you don’t use it, you lose it” mentality, and only those who are “first in line” get the water. The idea that it may run out, is perceived by most to be “not my problem”. “With irrigation in the vineyards, you do get better yields, yes, but only for a short period of time. But with local producers, their irrigated acres are the most productive ones and they can’t get out of that cycle. Our system drives this abuse. They can’t even afford to take a year off and fix the soil. ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ and public perception is still very much the US mindset” (Casteel 2022). Casteel is concerned that only producers with money will be able to afford the transition to sustainable and regenerative farming practices, and then they will charge a high premium for their product, be it wine or another crop. There are shortcuts being taken as producers pay for green certifications to get greenwashed so to justify their premium price. “The land has to come first. Then we would have an abundance for all. Our covenant with Nature is to give more. But now it is all about keeping the wealthy, wealthy, and we cannot disengage from the commodity system” (2022). Shiva would add that the destruction of water resources and of forest catchments … aquifers and privatised water distribution, and polluting wells and rivers is a form of corporate terrorism. Shiva also proposes that a three-pronged approach be used when creating a legal framework for water: a movement against dams, a movement against the ecological hazards of intensive irrigation, and a movement for water rights (Shiva 2016). (Another great read: Vandana Shive: Water Wars).

What are the water rights in your area and how are they legislated? Is there a way a back to communal water ownership?

LJB, Founder of The Wine and Climate Change Institute, www.twacci.org