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Insights: Dr Anna Hurlimann (left)
and Dr Emily Potter.

Critical and contentious water issues in Australia today are addressed in a timely collection of essays – Fresh Water: New Perspectives on Water in Australia – launched recently by Melbourne University Publishing.

The essays offer a range of insights into the history, politics, ethics and cultures of water in Australia – and its global environmental context – that suggest a need to radically rethink our relationship with this fundamental substance.

University of Melbourne ARC Postdoctoral Fellow in Architecture, Building and Planning, Dr Emily Potter, is a co-editor of the book and, along with colleague and Lecturer in Urban Planning Dr Anna Hurlimann, is also a contributor.

Dr Potter writes a chapter in which she contends that what is ‘natural’ is not at all straightforward when it comes to public space design and its eco-social possibilities.

Dr Hurlimann, who recently investigated community attitudes to water recycling in a South Australian community, suggests that the sustainability of water policy on a social level is as crucial as it is on an environmental one.

University of Melbourne Voice writer David Scott asked Dr Potter and Dr Hurlimann about the book, which includes contributions from fields as diverse as anthropology, environmental science, Indigenous studies, cultural theory, law, urban planning and visual arts.

DS What does water mean to you?

EP Water is complex; it is by no means a straightforward substance, and is caught up in human lives in a myriad of ways. For me, as a cultural researcher, the story of water in Australia – how we live with it now, and how we have lived with it in the past – is also the story of colonisation and cultural difference. It’s about how Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians traditionally understand the environment in vastly different ways, and how the dominance of the latter in environmental policy and economic endeavours has brought us to this point of water crisis.

DS What is your fondest memory of water?

EP I think that would be of the seashore along the beaches of Adelaide, where I grew up. As much as I loved the breaking waves and the smell of the ocean, I was also awed by its vastness, and had such a strong feeling – which I still have – that we don’t belong there. I think it’s important for humans to accept that there are some environments where we are just not designed to go. We should respect out vulnerabilities and the limits of our environmental belonging.

DS Why ‘New Perspectives on Water in Australia’? How should people be looking at water today?

EP One assumption the book aims to dispel is the idea that only science, technology and policy can adequately redress our water problems. The book’s 18 essays ­covers a wide range of approaches to Australia’s water crisis from the disciplines of anthropology, landscape design, history, cultural studies, and Indigenous studies, to urban planning, museum studies, environmental science and visual arts.

All of these voices bring particular knowledge and insights to bear on the topic and if Australia’s water situation is to improve, we need this diversity of views at the table. In modern history water has been treated as a resource ultimately under human control – something we manage, allocate and consume. This is the attitude that enables ­rivers to be redirected, wetlands to be drained and dams to be constructed. While this tradition can’t be undone, we do need to change our imaginative relationship with water for a sustainable future in this country.

AH When making decisions about water futures in Australia there has often been little rigorous consideration of the sustainability of proposed options. One such example is with recycled water projects. Recycled water use may have economic, social and environmental impacts which will vary from project to project – and may render it an unsustainable solution.

DS What do you hope people get out of the book?

EP The understanding that water is a profoundly cultural, social and political issue, and its future health has implications beyond the environmental. For instance, it connects to the potential for Indigenous and non-Indigenous reconciliation in Australia and the issue of democratic governance and political enfranchisement. Our current water crisis demands questions concerning the kind of society we want to live in, and the potential structures of governance that could emerge from human and non-human alliances.

I hope too that, rather than looking always to the future for solutions, people will also look to the past. We need to understand our history with water in order to overcome an apparent amnesia that allows us to repeat the same environmental mistakes over and over again.

DS Do you think there are people who still take the issue of water for granted?

EP I think this is much less the case than it was, partly because of an increasing general awareness of environmental issues, including climate change, but also due to the prominence of water, especially drought, in the media, and personal experience with domestic water restrictions and increases in some grocery prices. But while there is an awful lot of good will out there towards the goal of water sustainability, there is still not enough awareness of the complexity of the issue.

AH Yes, I think a lot of us do. Australians are still amongst the world’s highest consumers of water per capita. I believe this is the heart of our water crisis and there is still much more we can do to address this as individuals and collectively. We need a change of water culture.

Fresh Water: New Perspectives on Water in Australia, edited by Emily Potter, Alison Mackinnon, Stephen McKenzie and Jennifer McKay, e-book 221pp, ($39.95) and d-book.