Rivers and Society

Landscapes, Governance and Livelihoods

Malcolm Cooper, Abhik Chakraborty, Shamik Chakraborty

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780367403836
• eBook ISBN: 9781317396116
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

Rivers and their watersheds constitute some of the most dynamic and complex landscapes. Rivers have sustained human communities, and human societies have utilized and altered river flows in a number of ways for millennia. However, the level of human impact on rivers, and on watershed environments, has become acute during the last hundred years or so.

This book brings together empirical research and theoretical perspectives on the changing conditions of a range of river basin environments in the contemporary world, including the history and culture of local societies living in these river basins. It provides theoretical insights on the patterns and nature of the interaction between rivers and their use by human communities. The chapters are written from a variety of positions, including environmental science, hydrology, human ecology, urban studies, water management, historical geography, cultural anthropology and tourism studies.

The case studies span different geographical regions, providing valuable insight on the multifaceted interactions between rivers and our societies, and on the changing riverscapes in different parts of the world. Specific detailed examples are included from Australia, Brazil, France, India, Iran, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, UK and USA.

Chapter 11 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

1 Introduction

The rivers and society debate revisited

Abhik Chakraborty

Encountering a river

A weak stream that barely moves. A waterbird stands on the barely perceptible flow, perhaps looking a bit confused. On the banks, and floating on the stream, are different types of garbage; plastic catches the eye, but there is more discarded stuff from our everyday lives. This is how the Yamato River near the large metropolis of Osaka looks like on an average day. I have a chance to meet this river frequently, yet I must say, I do not know it enough: how did the river come to this state? What are the sources of its ills? Is there any way to possibly re-engineer the river to a more natural state? Although it is a snapshot framed by a particular glance at a particular time, it sums up a disturbing reality of our rivers today. That reality is this: though the nature of their plight differs from one place to the other and the scales and complexities involved are widely different, rivers have a troubled existence. And this has profound repercussions on our society.

To paraphrase Tim Ingold (2015): to be a river is a verb. Rivers are always in motion, cutting across landforms and landscapes and societies. While rivers provide us with vital life-supporting services such as water, fertile soil, and food (fish and other aquatic creatures), their flow is regulated by geological, geomorphological, and climatic conditions; and therefore, rivers do not exist out of a necessity to sustain life. The river’s motion does not exist for anthropocentric, nor even biocentric reasons; the motion exists because it connects spatial change with time, across multiple levels of landforms and landscapes. However, the nature of rivers is poorly understood by human societies, and this incomplete understanding gives rise to schemes that seek to ‘control’ rivers. Rivers and their flows become value-laden in the process, they can be misconstrued as agents of sustenance or equilibrium defined by human stakeholders; and that is why, from time to time, the river’s needs come in conflict with ours. Humans may try to alter rivers when our needs and the reality of a river’s nature clash; but the river in the long run will always have its say. If it is trapped behind concrete walls it might start to withhold the very function of sustenance which we humans try to reserve for our society. Newson (1992) observes that the need to maximally exploit a river’s capacity to provide benefit for our society through artificial means, and then regret when the environmental costs pile up is a consistent trend throughout the history of civilizations. In this sense, the plight of the river and the plight of humans can be seen as an almost perpetual, self-repeating process.

From control to comprehension?

The urge to control the unpredictable and mind-bogglingly complex flow of rivers is an ancient one in human society. Biswas (1967) notes how, nearly 4000 years ago, the Babylonian king Hammurabi laid down strict rules for managing dams in his landmark ‘codes’: if a dam did not work properly and the river flooded cornfields, the person in charge of the dam was liable to pay a high amount in reparations. Wittfogel (1957) termed complex agricultural civilizations that prospered in large river valleys as ‘hydraulic civilizations’, which according to him were primarily based in the orient (Asia and Africa) where early technologies to harness rivers evolved and were aided with the ability of the centralized state to utilize labor. During the twentieth century, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) type river management possibly marked an equally significant way of harnessing rivers. The TVA style management is characterized by the ‘parceling’ of rivers and their watershed components into sections based on a reductive logic of their functions, and mobilizing a complex web of landscape designing and urban-industrial development agendas with tightly controlled feedback loops (Downs 2014; Newson 1992). Hargrove (1994), in his authoritative analysis of the complexity that eventually came to be associated with the nature of the Tennessee project, has a note of caution: those tightly controlled feedback loops are a myth, a discourse created to suit a society’s agenda, and can be prisoners of their own time and style.

Unfortunately, while it is relatively easy to criticize the idea behind ‘controlling’ rivers, it is not equally easy to offer solutions. The lack of feasible alternatives is, at least to a part, what drives the continued damming and course alterations of rivers around the world today. McCully (2001) narrates how large dams have silenced rivers and their natural rhythms; generating a complex cascade of problems. Based on the World Commission of Dams’ analyses, Scudder (2006) examines the impact of large dams; a more detailed account on large dams and development is available in the two-set volume by Berga et al. (2006).

Despite these clear lessons of the loss of ecological connectivity and cultural diversity from several large dam projects, the quest to harness rivers for the sake of ‘economic development’ continues. The number of dams on the planet’s watercourses is poised to see a net increase with dams planned on the watersheds of the Mekong, the Congo, and the Amazon; each of those basins housing many species unknown to modern science. Out of the debated terrain shaped by claims of benefits and services secured by damming rivers, and claims of irreversible environmental damage caused in the process, an issue of fundamental import to the well-being of human society stands out: it is the issue of uprooting of native culture, vernacular landscapes, and the diversity of local value systems, which are, along with the geological and geomorphological aspects, vital assets for comprehending rivers.

Such ‘river cultures’ or ‘river experiences’ are place-specific, so when we lose one of them it is nearly impossible to fully replace it. While these are essentially human accounts based on subjective experiences of the environment and may be shaped, to an extent, by an emotive response; the inherent heterogeneity of such accounts directly stems out of the diversity of each river they are attached with. Indeed, the value systems and the associated local knowledge of rivers are as diverse as rivers themselves: they can range from local perceptions of glaciers (Cruikshank 2005) that are in essence ‘frozen’ rivers that flow in a different timescale; to a consciousness shaped by an iconic tree species that is in turn influenced by patterns in ancient floodplains, drought-and-flood pulses, and forest fires in an arid environment (Colloff 2014); to the always fluid dynamics of forest and cultures in the gigantic Amazon basin (Davies 2014).

As we enter the Anthropocene (Davies 2016), the effect of human control of rivers for the benefit of our society, and whether this notion itself is an elaborate yet myopic myth, must come under renewed focus. A notable point of inquiry is the river as a geomorphological agent and the mountain-watershed-coast continuum (which includes fluxes as well as contiguous processes). The report from a large-scale study is already available on this issue; derived from research on this set of interactions based on case studies under the UNESCO International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) (Crossland et al. 2005). The report devotes a section on ‘The Catchment to Coast Continuum’. A question of import in this arguably ‘new’ geological epoch is: whether our actions and their accumulated impacts have fundamentally altered the biophysical processes of watersheds which in turn will affect land-formation and landscaping mechanisms that in turn will impact biodiversity. A related, but equally important, question is this: how those actions and impacts have altered our ways of interacting with rivers, i.e. how the rivers and society interaction is being transformed from within.

While scientists will assume the key role of deciphering the signs and magnitude of change in the biophysical continuum, social scientists have an equally important and complementary role in deciphering how the society itself is undergoing change even as it changes the river. Analyzing how modernity, or industrial and urban development specifically, shapes our needs and gives rise to evaluation, management and conservation discourses (and the value system engendered therein) on rivers is therefore both timely and important. What is the rupture that modernity has caused to rivers? Is it a rupture of landscapes where biophysical units are fragmented from one another? Or is it also a fracture in our knowledge system, symbolizing our increasing inability to coexist with geological and geomorphological forces and a growing chasm between our species and the rest of the geo-biosphere that will arise as a logical consequence? Does our present relationship with rivers forebode a troubled future for humanity? These are some questions that merit urgent attention by river scientists, sociologists, and planners.

Fortunately, there is a growing amount of scholarship that aims to understand the modern society’s relationship with rivers with a critical perspective, and this allows us to hold out hope that rivers will not end up being contested spaces for the extraction of resources and the exercise of power but they will be valued as a unifying force for an ecologically conscious humanity.

The river as a system or entity

A simplistic, but analytically powerful way to comprehend a river is to conceptualize it as a system consisting of mutually interacting components (or sub-systems) over a spatial unit. The system has one or multiple ‘key function/s’. Schumm’s (1977) influential work, ‘The Fluvial System’, marks a milestone in this regard: his representation of the watershed (with a main river and its tributaries) as a sediment transfer system remains a powerful analytical tool. The system can undergo change over time. Change can be fundamental and irreversible, such as the formation of the rift-valley of Africa due to the break-up of ancient continental landmasses and separation of the Nile system from the Congo system (Wohl 2011), or it could be episodic such as the flood and drought cycle of the Nile (Ortileb 2004; Sutcliffe 2009). Episodic changes in the river regime can be integrally linked with ecosystem responses (Benke 2001; Tockner et al. 2003), and social dynamics and human well-being. The river can be the backbone of a ‘socioecological system’, a complex dynamic web of adaptive interactions where surprise and change are part-and-parcel of the system dynamic; the system periodically undergoes swift (apparently destructive) release of energy but reconfigures itself due to its ‘memory’ etched in the landscape over time. (For more, see Gunderson and Holling 2001; Gunderson et al. 2009.) Increasingly ecologists are recognizing sudden, abrupt change as an inherent part of the river system (Tiegs et al. 2005; Middleton 2002; Espinola et al. 2014); such ‘shocks’ facilitate landscape level heterogeneity, ecological diversity, and capacity of regeneration (resilience); rivers in this sense are truly systems in perpetual flux.

The idea that the river forms a riverscape over time and across a large spatial unit is another influential one for understanding its functions. Haslam’s (2008) work remains a milestone in this regard. The opening sentence of her seminal book reads: “The riverscape and the river share the sheet of water which covers the land: in whole or in part, permanently or intermittently” (Haslam 2008, 1). The riverscape thus encapsulates many apparently contradictory scales and processes; it is shaped by, and it shapes, the water body of the river. It has the three characteristics of “structure, function and change” (Haslam 2008, 2) and it can be generally conceived of as a three-tiered landscape comprising the river itself (and aquatic biota), the riverside (and riparian biota and relief) and “the land beyond” (which can be mountains, forests or pastures; Haslam 2008, 3). It is clear from this observation that the riverscape is as much a product of our comprehension as much it is a natural entity. Haslam points out that the riverscape is also a working or cultural entity, and its appearance and identity (and thus its value) can change with the transformation of social interaction pathways (Haslam 2008, 4). The riverscape therefore is very much a pathscape of interactions.

Another equally important viewpoint is to comprehend water itself as an entity. This is done mainly through anthropocentric meaning-making processes, but such explorations eventually expand into awareness about the other and how that other is related to the self in the waterscape. One of the most notable treatises on this type of reflexive inquiry is Strang’s The Meaning of Water (2004). As this work eloquently shows, while each water-body and the value systems attached therewith is different, there are issues of common importance and general applicability. The river in this sense is a source of knowledge, which can assume different forms such as scientific and ethno-ecological knowledge. A related lesson stands out from Strang’s work: even a little known, unassuming river has a wealth of information in the richness of its landscape, fluvial patterns, biota, and history of human interactions that is waiting to be discovered. In our volume, several chapters touch upon this important realization.

The changing river landscape and implications for governance and livelihoods

The ‘riverscape’ and ‘meaning of water’ ideas converge around the issue of fragmentation of rivers in our times. Haslam cites Rackham (1986) who argued that the landscape of the UK witnessed more destruction in four decades beginning from 1945 compared to the previous 1,000 years. Strang (2015) also writes about the drastic change in our relationship with water. Once a source of spiritual sustenance, the society’s view of water underwent phase transitions over time; and today the fate of this precious resource appears uncertain due to agricultural and industrial consumption patterns and contested claims for control. The WWF reports that only 64 out of the 177 rivers that are over 1000 km in length flow undammed today, and only 21 of those are allowed to flow directly into the sea (WWF n.d.). A related report mentions that 20% of the nearly 10,000 species that...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• 1 Introduction: the rivers and society debate revisited
• 2 Rivers as socioecological landscapes
• 3 Rivers and communities: can we drought proof a catchment or an entire country?
• 4 Arid lands, saline lands: water in the form of a major river under stress, the Murray-Darling system in Australia
• 5 Life, identity and work in an arid river basin: the case of the Zayandeh-Rud (life-giving river) in central Iran
• 6 Rivers and water security: supply adaptation strategies in the city of Chennai, India
• 7 The Velho Chico: perceptions and conflicts
• 8 Rivers as vernacular landscapes: place and experience in making the Clutha River, New Zealand
• 9 Keep it flowing: the restoration ecology of indigenous culture and language along the Missouri River
• 10 The end of the Los Angeles River: a paradox
• 11 The river’s embrace: the Rhine-Meuse delta (re)imagined
• 12 Art custodians of our rivers: Basia Irland, Daniel McCormick and Mary O’Brien
• 13 Hydrocitizenship: concepts and insights from the Lee Valley, UK
• 14 River Tourism
• 15 Social landscape and environment: the Hérault River in Southern France
• 16 Concluding remarks and the way forward
• Index