ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes a particular pragmatist approach to ethically reflecting on water-related policy-making and management decisions. This approach puts emphasis on specific contexts and the various practical implications of particular water management options, without, however, joining the camps of moral relativism or radical contextualism. Developing such an approach first requires a discussion of fundamental philosophical issues of ethical epistemology, including how to determine ethical problems, and how to come to reliable hypotheses to convincingly address these ethical problems. The chapter explains this approach in more detail, including how to appropriately identify and frame key ethical issues of water management; based on that, it develops a model for how to provide ethical advice to water management processes. It compares the proposed pragmatist approach, mainly with the popular ambition to develop general ethical principles or values for water management. The chapter evaluates economic approaches predominating in water management in light of the proposed approach to water ethics.
