ASPECTS OF THE COMPARATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY: INTEGRATED WATER MANAGEMENT (IWRM) FROM A WATERSHED PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The broad complementarity of the respective objectives and practices of modern approaches to water management is organized in a functional hierarchy based in a comprehensive conceptual framework of integrated water resources management (IWRM) by identifying, on the one hand, more pronounced institutional and social goals with governance and, on the other hand, ethical aims with the sustainable development approach. These management approaches have adopted the watershed as a management unit. For its part, antiquity shows comparable cases that may provide not only lessons of the past, but also a laboratory to enrich the conceptual content of these management approaches. These two sources of knowledge −empirical of the Ancients and scientific of the Moderns− evolve at the same time, as the nascent discipline of comparative environmental history does not incorporate a time horizon covering past-present-future while comparative studies of modern approaches to water resource management do not go much beyond the pragmatic framework necessary to assess achievements and challenges. Considered jointly, the two approaches may generate promising methodological research avenues. We have chosen therefore the system of social representations as a qualitative value assessment tool for analyzing the impacts of society-natural environment interactions which leads us to identify the waterside ecosystem as a relevant socio-environmental system −Riparia – which may be considered appropriate for the purpose of developing the basin wide management approach.