🗣️ "Water Diplomacy and Dialogue"

Hosts: Drs. Mallika Nocco, Faith Kearns & Sam Sandoval
Guest: Felicia Marcus | Fellow | Stanford University’s Water in the West Program
Category: 🗣️ Opinion

Podcast’s Essential Bites:

[3:46] “I think one of the key problems we have is that water is underappreciated. It is taken for granted. And it's a miracle in […] modern social history, [when] so many [don’t have] to worry about where their water comes from. It's incredible. […] Modern engineering and sanitation has created a situation where people [not] just think it comes out the tap, but they can take it for granted. Just like when you take energy and electricity for granted […]. And instead, if the lights go off, everybody gets pissed off.”

[4:35] “Water, I think, is consistently undervalued. And by that I don't just mean economically. And it is economically undervalued, [but] I don't think the answer is just to make it more expensive. But it's undervalued as the important life force that it is, economic driver, all those other things. So I think we really actually need to raise water literacy in order to also help the poor urban water agencies [that] now have to go out and tell their stories […] more in order to get the political will to invest the resources to retool for this next wave.”

[5:19] “The next wave has got to be integrating nature based solutions. The whole One Water Movement, which was started largely by wastewater people, [is key]. […] Promot[ing] Integrated Water Management that brings together all the things we care about in a community […] [are] huge win wins. And so a piece of where we need to go at the mega scale, is a greater understanding of that and literacy about it in the public […] largely to drive politicians.”

[8:47] “I think the tools we have are adequate in theory, but not in practice. So if you look at California law, […] dealing not just with water quality, but also with issues of flow, […] we have the tools in theory, in practice, we don't. Because the procedures that we have for implementing them are so laborious and so time consuming, it’s very difficult to do anything in the timescale it needs to be done. And the politics are so fierce that it becomes very different to make decisions and changes. […] So we need to find better ways to balance all the competing interests on our watercourses before we lose a lot of their value.”

[24:08] “Although we're California, and we appreciate science, […] we're not that good at elevating it. […] I think it's important to do a little cross training. And that's not just going to seminars, that's individual effort, to go talk to people to follow what's going on in a different language than the language of talking to each other. And there are some academic institutions and other institutions that encourage that, but more often, you've got folks […] focusing more inward on what they need to do to succeed within a narrower world. […] But I do think really not turning a blind eye to what's happening in the outside world, or what policymakers are struggling with is really important.”

Rating: 💧💧

🎙️ Full Episode: Apple | Spotify
🕰️ 35 min | 🗓️ 06/25/2021
✅ Time saved: 33 min