ABSTRACT
In previous editions of Land, Water and Development this brief historical review had a mainly scholarly purpose: ‘to explore briefly the nature of Man’s occupation of river basins’, with the added justification that ‘the adoption of a conscious modern attempt at holistic management will almost certainly involve cultural attitudes to the problems, with their roots in history’. It is now given analytical bite by the widely cited ‘world water crisis’. Can we use historical review to discover ‘how we got into trouble’, elucidate virtues and errors along the way and identify constraints for the future in the way human society addresses its needs and the needs of ecosystems for water? Can we further identify a point at which the Anthropocene era began in terms of human impacts on freshwater systems or, alternatively, date the end of ‘natural’ rivers? We ask if there are historical analogues to current dilemmas, such as the Victorian rush to alleviate problems of health and poverty through domestic water supply and sanitation which led directly to degradation, through pollution, of the rivers serving to drain the excrement. Is this the direction now being taken by developing world cities (see also Chapter 5)? Because our focus is on land and development, as well as water, can history and prehistory illuminate the relative responsibilities for hydrological changes caused by catchment land use, land management, structural water management and climate? How have human institutions coped?
