Water surprises. Water tests and taxes us. Its complex attributes promote learning, teaching and understanding, which are also key ingredients in the promotion of peace-making. That it has many forms may explain why we see water either disjointedly or synergistically. Water is flow, depth, volume, timing, energy, food, physical sustenance, mental recovery, poison, warmth and natural habitat. Water combines and divides. It is withdrawn, leaked, stored and discovered. It is engineering, economics, law – and more; water supports nature, lives and livelihoods. Water is highly transitional and perspectival; depending on where you are, when and who you represent, you’ll see water in markedly different ways.

As an illustration: one cubic metre of water, which is 1000 litres and weighs 1000 kg or a metric tonne takes many forms.[i]

  • Water is for drinking: A cubic metre of clear potable water provides drinking water for one person for about 500 days.
  • Water has depth and can give life: A cubic metre of water in a pond that is 2.5 metres long and 2.5 metres wide and 16 cm deep is shallow enough for frogs spawn to live in.   Or a cubic metre of water provides 5 cm of depth for growing rice – spreading nearly 20 square metres.
  • Water has depth but can drown: A cubic metre of water up-ended on a 65 cm x 65 cm footprint is 2.37 metres high, enough to drown a human.
  • Water is for visual joy: A cubic metre of water delivered in one second by a power equivalent of ten Formula 1 car engines will create the world’s tallest (but brief) fountain of about 330 metres high.
  • Water is for spiritual health: The sound and sight of a cubic metre of water passing over rounded pebbles in a mountain stream 80 centimetres wide and 25 centimetres deep will slow your busy mind and inspirit your heart (while it flows for five metres in length).
  • Water is for play: A medium to large inflatable paddling pool contains about a cubic metre of water. As friend Ruth says “Splashing, jumping, throwing, swimming, playing, care free times. Tis liberating.”
  • Water flows with an energy that can kill: A cubic metre of water travelling 1 metre in 0.1 seconds has the same kinetic energy as a medium family car travelling at 35 km/hour.
  • Water poisons: A cubic metre of groundwater from an aquifer in Bangladesh can contain 1000 milligrams of arsenic, approximately 10 times the lethal dose for a human.
  • Water is a habitat: A cubic metre of water in a pond or stream contains myriad creatures, plants, micro-organisms, nutrients, enzymes, molecules (e.g. oxygen), natural salts and artificial chemical and pollutants. These changing constituents make for infinitely different water qualities.
  • Water consumed in transpiration provides food: A cubic metre of water will give 5 mm of transpiration for a day’s growth of a crop in an area of 200 square metres (about 14 x 14 metres wide and long).
  • Water generates power: One cubic metre of water falling 1000 metres for one second through a hydropower plant will provide enough power to boil a kettle of water about three times over.
  • Water for livestock: A cubic metre of water will provide drinking water for livestock and other farm animals. One cubic metre of water supplied to 4000 egg-laying hens will last about a day.
  • Water holds heat: A cubic metre of water may be too warm or too cold to allow freshwater fish to spawn
  • Water is for transport: A cubic metre joins about 140 to 200 other cubic metres of water to operate a lock on the 200 year old canal system of the United Kingdom.
  • Water embedded in all goods provides for our lifestyles and diets: The virtual water consumption of a consumer person in the global North is about 5,000 to 10,000 litres per day (and depends on many factors!).   A cubic metre of water therefore supports your lifestyle for about 2-5 hours.
  • Water connects communities over thousands of kilometres: A cubic metre of water evaporated in an irrigation system is no longer available for a village downstream.
  • Water is timing: A cubic metre of water delivered to your irrigated field in a queue of farmers comes with time and timing implications; you’ll be anxious that it does not arrive after your crops have wilted.
  • Water is lost: When a cubic metre of water (promised to you as the whole 1000 litres) fails to water the whole plot as it did the previous time, you’ll know that during conveyance some water was lost to you.
  • Water is relative: The delivery of a cubic metre of water during a two-day downpour of rain is not the same as a cubic metre of water gratefully received during a two-year drought. Likewise, a cubic metre of water at the top-end of an irrigation system will usually not be noticed; a cubic metre of water at the water-short tail-end of an irrigation system will make a difference to a farmer.

Water is stored, divided, cleaned, guided, reused, consumed, returned, delayed, degraded and cycled. Water puzzles humans in ways that that can test and grow our humanity. Water and irrigation interested Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom throughout her career.   Water’s coaching of society’s early civilisations drew the attention of Karl Wittfogel.   Water joins nations in treaties and brings together villagers in small associations.   Yet water asks engineers, lawyers, economists, anthropologists to watch how nature and people actually use water (and other resources) without recourse to training and ‘disciplines’. I call people who closely and carefully rely on water for their living ‘waterists’. Waterists, such as a marginal farmer at the tail end of an irrigation system are unlikely to confidently represent themselves and their ideas at a participatory workshop where the consensus is building towards expert or bold solutions. But if waterists are engaged with sensitively and genuinely they might contribute their experiences on managing a resource prudently and cautiously. By observing and listening to these waterists, water experts might step out of their ‘ex-officio’ often pigeonholed viewpoints and be less forthright with familiar or predetermined solutions.

Instead we would see that water’s forms and behaviours are mysterious. If treated as mysterious, water teaches us and binds us together. Water is for bridging to another person’s perspectives; water is for learning; water is for peace.

Bruce Lankford is Professor of Water & Irrigation Policy at the University of East Anglia.

Notes:

[i]One cubic meter is equal to 264.172 US gallons.

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2 Responses to One cubic metre: a reflection on water for mystery, learning and peace

  1. Malcolm Dent says:

    A very interesting and thought provoking article. Water is the very essence of life on this fragile planet of ours. We must utilize and share this precious resource wisely!

  2. inayat khan says:

    Very interesting, people are needed to be educated on the wise use water, particularly, people of poor countries.

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