WRC Lecture- Aaron Wolf

Healing the Enlightenment Rift: Rationality, Spirituality, and Shared Waters

Abstract: Water management is, by definition, conflict management: Whether in the Western US or internationally, competing stakeholder interests include domestic users, agriculturalists, hydropower generators, recreators, and environmentalists – any two of which are regularly at odds, and the complexity of finding mutually acceptable solutions increases exponentially as more stakeholders are involved.  Add international boundaries, and the difficulty grows substantially yet again.  While press reports of shared waters often focus on conflict, what has been more encouraging is that, throughout the world, water also induces cooperation, even in particularly hostile basins, and even as disputes rage over other issues.  This has been true from the Jordan (Arabs and Israelis) to the Indus (Indians and Pakistanis) to the Kura-Araks (Georgians, Armenians, and Azeris), as well as here in the US where collaborators span political and economic spectrums.  This presentation will discuss conflict and cooperation over shared water resources internationally and in the US West, and reflect on processes of conflict transformation, including lessons from both Western and spiritual models of dialog.

Aaron Wolf, Professor, Dept of Geosciences, Oregon  State University

3:10pm  |  Oct 24, 2018  |  PACCAR (PETB) 202 

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