'A.N.Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution RAS - IEE RAS'
Abstract
Proceedings of the 2003 Georgia Water Resources Conference, held April 23-24, 2003, at the University of Georgia.Earth’s water managers live constantly
with inadequate policy directives; most water policy
having been formulated years ago, to serve in situations
that no longer exist.
Policy makers today prefer directing their attention
to sexier, more immediate problems than water, despite
constant warnings about expanding threats to the
planet’s waters. Historically, water policy changes, at
any level of government, come slowly.
Water managers own a significant share of the fault
for this situation. They know, more than any other
group, what is needed to protect waters, but for the
most part they keep it to themselves. Such policy
related threats to water supplies as population growth,
urbanization, climate change, and new water borne
pollutants are mounting, as the new century wears on.
Yet water managers continue to talk only with one
another, most often about technology, rather than enter
the political fray where policy is made.
Now, water managers everywhere face an issue,
already of concern to many of them, which will require
of them a most active participation in political affairs.
This issue, the privatization of water supplies, is being
exacerbated by another matter; globalization, which
itself is causing great disquiet among many of the
world’s citizens, including water managers.
Both privatization and globalization are issues that
need to be addressed immediately, at many levels of
government, by significant changes in state, national
and global water policy
