The Waterwheel

An essay/presentation to accompany the Waterwheel project - presented for the Symposium 'Water Issues Relating to Environmental Landscape Sustainability’ – 22 March 2012 – International Water Day, Convened by the Horticulture, Landscape & Environment Research Unit of Higher School of Agronomical Sciences of Chott Meriem, IRESA, Sousse University – Tunisia.

ABSTRACT
Water is what we make of it. (Linton, J)
Water: A colourless, see through, lightly tasting, scentless compound, made from molecules of oxygen and hydrogen - an innocuous-sounding composite that circulates throughout our biosphere - always in a state of continual flow; always in flux, neither created nor destroyed.
But, water is much more – it is as much an object of ‘culture’ as it is of ‘nature’. Water is clearly therefore “what we make of it”.
There are many ways to understand water beyond those lenses that science and functional thinking have given us. How about ethics of water for example; its politics; or the social systems that water constitutes? How do we really ‘think’ about water and therefore treat it? Who controls its flow and quality and what happens when it runs out? How many days might there be between a disconnected pipe and outright war?

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