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

![CDATA[This paper identifies some challenges in developing culturally intelligent approaches to urban water planning and services. Recent research on connections between urban water managers and social and cultural researchers highlights the need for better alignments between ordinary people's practices, motivations and aspirations around water and climate change, and the forms of knowledge water planners and policymakers take into account. Despite their lip-service to 'triple bottom line' assessment of policies and developments in terms of their economic, environmental and social costs and benefits, 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 marketing psychology, 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 - including by collective innovations in values and practices.]]