Water Negotiator Aaron Wolf Spreads Liquid Hope

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With the world’s population growing and rainfall patterns shifting due to climate change, Wolf’s general glass-half-full attitude surely will be tested in coming decades. “Two and one-half million to five million people die every year because of a lack of access to safe, clean water,” he says. “That’s on the same level of magnitude as AIDS or malaria. It’s a huge catastrophe now, and climate change will beget more variability in the hydrologic cycle, including longer droughts and bigger floods.”

On the other hand, Wolf notes that “all spiritual traditions—not just [those] in the religions that come out of the desert—seem to tap into water as healing, soothing, and cleansing.” This shared sense of sacredness gives him hope, as does the resilience of many water agreements. “India and Pakistan have a water treaty that has survived since 1960—through two wars,” he says. “In the middle of one of the wars, India made payments to Pakistan as part of its treaty obligations.”

“Water hits us at a profoundly different level than other resources,” he says. “People are willing to do horrible things to each other. What they seem not willing to do is turn off each other’s water.”

Excerpted from Miller-McCune (Jan.-Feb. 2009), a solutions-minded magazine published by the Miller-McCune Center for Research, Media, and Public Policy that harnesses academic research to address social concerns; www.miller-mccune.com.

Miller-McCuneis our 2009 Utne Independent Press Award winner for science-technology coverage. Read about all the winners at Utne.com/Uipa2009.

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