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May 3rd, 2017

“The concept of ‘virtual water’ gets you away from simplistic and superficial technocratic solutions to water risks” – Marcus Moench

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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Editor

May 3rd, 2017

“The concept of ‘virtual water’ gets you away from simplistic and superficial technocratic solutions to water risks” – Marcus Moench

0 comments

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

At India @ 70: LSE India Summit 2017 Alexander Spalding interviewed panellist Dr Marcus Moench about his extensive experience in translating scientific knowledge about water into practice in different cultural contexts. They discussed the need to develop knowledge, capacity, and incentives tailored to local conditions, and why India is an ideal innovation space for water management initiatives.

AS: What did you do at the Institute for Social and Environmental Transition and how is this organisation contributing towards global debates on water security?

MM: ISET was set up in 1997, and although I have now moved on from the organisation, I was the CEO and President of the organisation for the first 18 years of its existence. We were translating scientific information into practice so as to bridge the water science and climate science divide. It was designed to be a direct partnership with local organisations that could implement things themselves and in their own countries and cultural contexts (as opposed to using the common Western model of implementing preconceived structures without modifying them with the requirements of the local context). It was essentially designed to be something that was ground-up and that would work efficiently with local cities, local governments, local non-governmental organisations, and local communities. In the course of that, we did extensive work on mitigating water risks and floods. I personally led a lot of ground-water initiatives across South Asia before the formation of ISET as well as during its existence. We also worked very extensively with cities across South Asia to think through what they could do as part of water resilience planning. This led to the creation of all kinds of activities, ranging from typhoon-resilient housing in certain places to groundwater management that were all bespoke for their local conditions.

All of these initiatives were backed by two philosophies. One was that solutions needed to be informed by scientific knowledge, but driven by people who lived in specific locations and who would be able to respond adequately to their localised conditions. This was one core piece of the operational philosophy. The second core piece was that there are no magic bullets; you can’t go after things as though there is some single solution that exists for all possible scenarios.  You have to be able to recognise the multiple microsolutions that are in existence, and then formulate responses and protocols that will get all of those microsolutions to aggregate. Sometimes there is a macrocomponent to that (such as the generation of the right policy environment or legal framework), but the main challenge was to give local people the necessary knowledge, capacity, and incentives to do what would make the most difference in their lives.

In the panel discussion your contributions played an important role in expanding understandings of what ‘water’ actually is when we start thinking outside what you termed as the ‘water box’. What kind of interdisciplinary dialogues should hydrologists be concerning themselves with so as to help us formulate more sustainable water policies?

I think that there is a really delicate balancing act here that we have to take into consideration, and this is where we need a new understanding of capacity. You don’t want a plumber repairing your electricity system. You need the specialised knowledge and a lot of pure hydrologists have that technical knowledge but might not be particularly adept at cooperating with disciplinary groups that exist outside the purview of that box. What we need, therefore, is more people who really understand the hydrology but that also understand the wider social and practical dimensions of the role that water and water services play in our lives in both urban as well as rural contexts.  

The panel explored the idea of ‘virtual water’ and the prospects that this concept affords for the formation of more sustainable water conservation projects, not only in India but also across the world. Could you perhaps explain this concept of ‘virtual water’ a little bit more?

To me the idea of ‘virtual water’ is a simple recognition of the water that is embedded in the goods and services that we use. If you grow wheat, the wheat represents not only the plant that is produced but also the water that was required for producing it. If you harvest energy and you need to provide cooling facilities for power plants, the water that was heated, evaporated, and also cooled in the process of making that energy is a fundamental virtual water component of the energy production process.

I think that it is also important, however, to recognise that the concept goes beyond that; that we have, for example, notions of cleanliness and of livelihood that have implicit implications for water (i.e. in relation to how people define themselves as ‘clean’). This realisation extends into dimensions that you would not necessarily think of. For example, the original meaning of the Sharia law was the path to water, and it was about how to manage culture and conflict in an arid land. If you look at the context of India, one of the most important mythical allusions to water in Hinduism is that of the Sarasvati River, whereby the search for this river operates as a very strong collective identity piece.

Image credit: Sarath Kuchi CC BY-SA 2.0

These examples create an inseparable tie between water and politics.  So whilst the first order conceptualisation of virtual water can be seen in the water that is embedded in the wheat, the second order acknowledges that there are notions of water that become deeply embedded in our cultural identity, our religion, and how we structure things. I think these things often get missed. We can come up with lots of solutions which then don’t happen because they conflict either with the water that is embedded in the provision of a certain good, or with these deeper structural and ideological underpinnings of the relationship between water and society, for example if it’s a change in behaviour and sanitation. I think that this is where the concept of ‘virtual water’ gets you away from the more simplistic and superficial technocratic solutions. This also identifies at which point you as an actor can enter the development process so as to instigate real and meaningful change.

You described India as an example of the ‘ideal innovation space’ that will afford us with the possibility to experiment with different kinds of water management initiatives. Why is that?

There are two key factors that make me intrigued as to the role that India can play as an innovator in these debates. One is, of course, that India is a rapidly growing society with a very large globally-educated workforce with people-oriented solutions. It’s a space where the second-tier cities are growing unprecedentedly quickly. The rule of thumb is that 80% of India’s infrastructure is yet to be built. So compared to London or other places in the West, where you have a lot of infrastructure so the question is merely that of maintaining it, India affords tremendous opportunities for innovative design. You also have a tremendous pool of talented people who are coming up with innovations.

The other thing I think helps with innovation is more unfortunate, namely pressure. The joke worldwide is that politicians don’t move where they see the light but instead only where they feel the heat. Here, even as a wealthy person in an urban enclave it is very difficult to escape water impacts so there are incentives for both the wealthy and the poor. Sometimes the most effective and imaginative innovations are those that come out of the fact that a) you don’t have something, and/or b) wherein you feel the pressure.

This is also enabled by the fact that things are growing fast here, and this requires the formulation of very quick solutions. In areas where the city is expanding but you don’t have adequate sewage and pipe systems in place, there’s tremendous incentive to innovate at a pace that will match that of the surrounding socio-economic growth. I often use the raised villages in Gorakhpur and other places that are prone to flooding as examples. Many people would identify these kinds of living arrangements as a form of innovation, and one that transforms risk exposure. The beauty of it all is that it’s something that households can do largely themselves. It is true that around 10% of the population cannot access the money that is required (building a raised home costs about 30% more than a non-raised one, and so it’s a big household expense), but that is exactly wherein a targeted programme would be able to respond and make a tremendous difference in mitigating the economic costs of flooding.

If people can take their blinkers off and also understand that creative mix between environmental pressure and a pro-innovation population, this is where the beautiful lotus blossoms, so to speak. These opportunities should not be looked upon as quick solutions for there is obviously a lot that needs to be done, but it is a space that nonetheless tends to be missed in wider water debates.

Watch the India @ 70: LSE India Summit Water Security Panel here

This article gives the views of the authors, and not the position of the South Asia @ LSE blog, nor of the London School of Economics. Please read our comments policy before posting.

About the Authors

Marcus Moench has extensive experience working with communities, non-government, government, and international organizations on urbanization, water, and energy in South and South East Asia, the Middle East, and the Western United States. He combines a strong technical background in environmental science, water resources, and energy with training and experience in the design and initiation of management institutions. He led ISET from its founding in 1997 and guided the development of its programs on urban resilience to climate change, water resource management, and disaster risk management.  

alex-spaldingAlexander Spalding is a third-year student of Social Anthropology at LSE. He spent a summer working with the Observer Research Foundation as a policy research intern with the think-tank’s cyber-security team in Delhi, and also formed part of the Communications team at the LSE India Summit 2017.

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