Below the double bottom line : the challenge of socially sustainable urban water strategies

Recent interview-based research on how Australian urban water professionals grasp the social aspects of sustainable water management suggests that interest in these dimensions outstrips understanding of them, and that more culturally intelligent, socially realistic and ethically sensitive notions of people, culture, society are needed. Despite lip-service to “triple bottom line” assessments of policies and developments, Australia’s policymakers have advanced no further than a “double bottom line” based on economic and environmental values, the latter preferably expressed in dollar terms. The economic (or market relation) also substitutes for the social dimension in a continued policy emphasis on customers rather than citizens or community members. An overemphasis on behavioural economics, a lack of social, political and cultural theory, and neglect of people’s actual practices means that much policy and research around water fails to grapple with such basic social elements as gender, different roles and access to resources within households, cultural diversity, or ethical orientations. A major challenge is to mobilise rather than ignore the altruistic and socially-oriented human capacities for adapting to change beyond the customer relation or the confines of technical and economic rationality; including by collective innovations in values and practices of caring for water.