Water is usually a non-partisan issue in the United States, with support from across the political board. In a recent analysis in the Circle of Blue, Brett Walton discusses whether water could bring people together in a divided country.
Joe Biden’s team outlined four priorities after winning the election: COVID-19, economic recovery, racial equity, and climate change. Opinions ensued, noting that water was a common thread to all of those concerns: necessary to wash our hands and also for factories, farms and cities; communities of colour sometimes have been deprived of access to water, and water is the medium through which climate change will affect societies the most.
While The Economist suggests American politics tends to be split along urban-rural lines, that political divide fades away when it comes to water issues. Public opinion polls by U.S. company Gallup have found that water pollution and drinking water are important concerns for all Americans. Manny Teodoro, associate professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, explains that water can bring together urban and rural interests around common water problems: affordability, access or quality.
And people, in general, are pro-water not only when polled, but also when they vote. Sri Vedachalam, from the Environmental Policy Innovation Center has studied ballot initiatives at state level, mainly dealing with water infrastructure funding, finding that almost 90% of them were approved. He thinks that the reason water initiatives enjoy widespread support is because they provide tangible, local results.
Given the power of water to unite people, and in order to bypass the political division that does exist around climate change, it might be a good idea to reframe climate actions around water. That is, we talk about water and do water policy, which is often, indirectly, climate policy. As Walton explains in his article, water conservation and efficiency reduce energy use; eliminating coal emissions will also eliminate an important source of water pollution, and wetland conservation stores carbon, cleans water and provides flood protection.
Along the same line, climate adaptation efforts tend to be well received because they relate to the impacts of climate change – avoiding damage to homes and towns – and they can be a preliminary step for further climate action, argues Felicia Marcus, formerly at the California Water resources Control Board. She proposes water as and entry point for responding to a warming planet, a way to engage communities. She also vouches for technological innovation together with investment in water infrastructure: water technology that is smarter, more efficient, and resilient to a changing climate.
