ABSTRACT
One of my favorite aphorisms attributed to Abraham Lincoln is “Not to decide is to decide.” Something similar could be said about ethics. Not to explore the ethical content of a course of action is itself an ethical choice. Claiming that a decision is value-neutral reflects an (incorrect) assumption that there are no values underlying a particular decision or course of action. Since there is overwhelming evidence that values really do influence just about everything we do and how we do it (the disciplines of psychology, anthropology, sociology, and culture studies are part of the evidence), a refusal to explore those values could be interpreted as irresponsible, or “unethical,” reflecting an ethic of ignorance, similar to the child’s perspective that “What I can’t see won’t hurt me.” If we accept that values and ethics really are bubbling about just below the
surface of water decisions, then we have a responsibility to find out what they are, and how those bubbles are influencing the decisions which, ultimately, might affect all of us, as well as our descendants and the rest of nature. Discovering what our ethics really are requires some tools of discovery. We have made use of a very simple conceptual tool, a framework of four categories of ethics on one axis, and four domains of water management on the other (Chapter 1, Table 1.1). This framework can help us identify the values we hold within each of the ethics categories: economic, environmental, social, and cultural ethics. We might feel that we don’t really have an opinion about some of
these ethics when applied to particular water management issues. How could, or should, cultural ethics relate to urban water supply? Isn’t that a technical issue? The example of the Orangi community-managed sanitation project in Karachi, Pakistan (Chapter 4) shows how community governance of technical infrastructure (toilets and sewer lines) can do double duty of building the institutional capacity of that community. This dynamic takes on cultural significance where the community is culturally distinctive and governance autonomy empowers the community’s “right to be different.”
