Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 4
Environmental History of Water
Resources
St
phane Frioux
é
Abstract Water resources, indispensable to life, are relatively limited with respect
to the Earth surface and unequally distributed in the humanized spaces. They have
been targeted by many different human actions through the centuries, which makes
environmental history of water a well represented approach, among environmental
history in general. In addition to its use for drinking and cleaning, water has
contributed to the development of an increasingly productive agriculture with
irrigation; and for centuries, rivers and canals have also played a major role in
facilitating the traf
c of people and merchandise and have structured the economics
of many cities. Historians have emphasized in their researches the changes occurred
during the Industrial Era (ca. 1780
1960 in the West). This period was crucial for
the use of water resources because of the competition between different activities
needing water: washing, factories needing pure water, factories using rivers as a
receptacle for their wastes, professional or leisure
-
shing, etc. With the decrease of
industrial discharges and boat traf
c, in the last decades of the twentieth century
(and mainly in the Western countries), water has been integrated in many urban
development programs as a source of leisure and of aesthetic value. Restoration
projects allowed for the return of salmon and other
sh species, but history raises
the question of how to restore. After having played an important role in culture and
leisure, water resources remain an object of public policies that nowadays defend a
very different goal from the post-WW2 modernist ideologies which led to vast dam
and irrigation schemes. Nevertheless, great disparities still exist on a global scale.
Climate change, making
“
wars for water
”
a potential threat for the next century, can
be used by environmental historians to
nd lessons from the past which could be
provided to policy-makers.
