ABSTRACT
Rivers provide a blank canvas for expressing ethics about water. Major civilizations emerged through interacting with rivers they considered sacred and treated with respect. Napoleon’s engineers straightening the Rhine and American engineers building dams marked an era of unfettered exploitation which inspired the conservation movement, with both schools continuing to the present day. The recent resurgence of large dam construction is testimony to the resilience of the ethics of river exploitation, but the concurrent rise of ecological river management, and particularly ecological flood management and new policies to protect environmental flows, show that values are indeed changing.
