Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

Interim Director: Getting to Sustainability and Resilience: Let's Talk Water

Back to Leopold Letter Spring 2011

By LOIS WRIGHT MORTON, Interim director

In past columns I’ve introduced a new Leopold Center focus on sustainability and resilience and how ‘the people factor’ is both affecting and affected by complex ecological changes and adaptations. I’ve proposed that our challenge is to better understand interactions among humans and nature, to recognize when they are vulnerable and in danger of losing resilience.

Water is one of the most important human-ecosystem points of intersection where we need to focus our attention. Rivers, lakes, streams, and wetlands are critical sources of life, energy, economic and social well-being. We easily see that cultivated agricultural ecosystems testify to the disproportionate effects that human adaptive management and engineering have on other social and ecological systems. We see less clearly that people − you and I − are constantly constructing, destructing, and reconstructing creeks, streams, rivers and lakes by our daily actions. Some call this “making nature” (Busch 1995).

Achieving progress toward sustainability and resilience in use, conservation and enhancement of even such a necessary natural resource as water is complicated. It involves public and private land use decisions, agricultural practices and policies, natural resource rights, public supplies and disposal, lifestyle and consumption behaviors and allocation of moral and financial responsibilities. Although water is a shared resource, there is limited agreement on the magnitude of water degradation, the extent of resource loss, irreversibility and how personal and/or communal resources should be invested.

The global frames of reference that scientists, state and federal government agencies, politicians, and environmental activists bring to public discussions vary a great deal, and often contrast with local citizen frames of reference based in their personal experiences, identities of place and how their lives are impacted by their unique local water bodies. Yet, some level of agreement is necessary if we are to successfully manage this valuable resource in a manner that leads to greater sustainability and resilience.

In Iowa, water quality - especially the persistent and difficult problems of nonpoint source (NPS) pollution - is a critical concern. As part of my research, I’ve been working with partners across the Midwest and Northeast to produce a new book, Pathways for Getting to Better Water Quality: The Citizen Effect. This book explores the many ways people engage science, technology and each other to identify and solve their watershed problems.

The premise is that people can impact water quality when they engage each other, begin the public process of talking about their watersheds, and then take action to make their waters better – and that strong, effective watershed partnerships don’t happen by accident. They must be deliberately constructed.

Chapters range from how to measure the citizen effect to applications of performance-based outcomes and technical assistance as an educational program to examples of citizen involvement in Kansas, Missouri, Indiana, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Iowa watersheds. Authors share the experiences and knowledge of researchers and practitioners who study and work with people and communities to restore and improve water quality. The book is intended to offer insights and flexible guidance to watershed leaders and specialists as they develop their own approaches to draw out the citizen effect for improving watershed management in their own community.

Although I have stepped down as Interim Director of the Leopold Center, I will continue to work on the challenges of managing our natural resource base for sustainability and resilience. I encourage all of you in your efforts to do the same.

The more we learn together about the processes and mechanisms of our social-ecological systems, the greater our capacity to change our policies and behaviors to adapt to, mitigate, and manage our agricultural landscapes and the natural resource base on which they depend.

Reference:

Busch, L., W.B. Lacy, J. Buirkhardt, D. Hemken, J. Moraga-Rojel, T. Koponen, and J. de Souza Silva. 1995. Making Nature Shaping Culture. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
 

Back to Leopold Letter Spring 2011