CONCLUSION - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 310

THE AGE OF RESTORATION
The greatest threat to freshwater supplies is human indifference. It has allowed disease,
poverty, conflict, and environmental destruction to proliferate. Some fear that humans
have already passed the world's hydrologic tipping point.
In an influential 1968 article in Science,titled “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Gar-
rett Hardin , a leading American ecologist, wrote of “the damage that innocent actions
by individuals can inflict on the environment” and described the pattern by which
people acting in their own self-interest destroy shared resources. The hypothetical ex-
ample he used focused on medieval farmers who shared a field, “the commons,” and al-
lowed their cattle to graze indiscriminately. As each farmer added more and more cows
to the field, he reaped benefits, but with each cow added, the field became more de-
graded; eventually, all of the grass on the common was eaten, at which point all of the
farmers and their cows suffered. The shared resource was destroyed by individuals con-
cerned only with their own well-being.
The field in Hardin's parable is a metaphor for the unrestricted use of modern “com-
mons,” such as the earth's atmosphere, national parks, and fish stocks. Lately, Hardin's
theme has been taken up by water experts. By allowing virtually unlimited access to wa-
ter, and by focusing on individual success rather than on collective benefit, they fear,
humans are running blindly into a tragedy of the hydrologic commons.
Unless people snap out of their apathy, no amount of investment, regulation, lofty
goal-setting, or technical breakthroughs will save the planet from a hydrological
tragedy. Success, even partial success, in overcoming ignorance and inaction will help
end many of the root causes of the problems discussed in this topic and allow people to
live healthy lives. Surely, this is worthy of our time, interest, and resources.
There is reason for hope. Because humans cause most of the world's water problems,
we have a degree of control over them, and we can choose to solve them.
In the summer of 2008, Bob Hirsch presented the annual M. Gordon “Reds” Wolman
Lecture to the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science
Inc., in Boulder, Colorado. * For an audience of some 250 of the nation's leading water
scientists, USGS's former chief hydrologist described how Stephen Ambrose's writings
about Lewis and Clark had shaped his thinking about the evolution of American hy-
drology. The historian characterized the nineteenth century as an era of “discovery and
description,” and the twentieth century as an era of “command and degrade”; he hoped
the twenty-first century would be regarded as “the century of restoration.”