Water, Stakeholder Values, and Decision Making

Abstract

Water management is in a peculiar position among the various resource management regimes. Besides air quality management, perhaps, no other arena of resource management involves a substance so fundamental to human life that it can be said that, without it, there would be no human life. This paper is an attempt to draw out the significance of this aspect of water for water management as it attempts to address the multiple and often conflicting water-related values that bear on managers and policymakers. Where managers employ an ethic, either explicitly or implicitly, in their deliberations and decisions, they can, as a consequence, create conflict. The ethical perspective that best avoids the generating of conflict and enables the integration of multiple values I call an ethic of attunement, an ethic that places listening and understanding ahead of justification and prescription.