Congratulations My Friend

I woke up this morning with a big smile on my face. Today, the world will recognize my hero — and one of my closest friends — for her extraordinary work on global water issues. Sandra Postel will today be awarded the Stockholm Water Prize, widely held to be the equivalent of the “Nobel Prize for Water.”

I cannot imagine a more deserving recipient. You can watch the live presentation at 10am Eastern (16:00 CEST) today.

For the ‘official’ accounting of her accomplishments you should read the Stockholm International Water Institute’s overview of her life’s work. In my own letter of support for her nomination, I said that Sandra has an uncanny ability to see the future. Her intellectual acuity cuts right through the morass of laws, regulations, policies, data, and bureaucracies surrounding water management, enabling her to see the big emerging trends in the world of water. She put those insights to paper in many books and other publications including her cautionary forecasts of global water challenges in Last Oasis and Pillar of Sand, and of the pathways forward in her hopeful and inspiring book, Replenish: The Virtual Cycle of Water and Prosperity.

I got to know Sandra in 2001 when I tried to recruit her to write a book about the rapidly growing field of environmental flow protection. She agreed to write the book but only if I would co-author it with her! The experience of writing Rivers for Life together became one of my most cherished collaborations of my lifetime. I fondly remember many phone calls of more than three hours’ duration, during which we would challenge ourselves to offer new insights on strategies for protecting the water flows necessary to support river ecosystems and the livelihoods that depend upon them.

One of our key concepts, which Sandra and I both continue to reference in our public presentations and publications, is the notion of a “sustainability boundary” for the use of river water. The concept is very simple, suggesting that as water managers allocate water for human uses they must be mindful, and respectful, of the need to leave some portion of the natural water flows alone, to set a limit or a cap on water extractions from the river ecosystem, lest we damage the life support systems upon which we all depend.

As water negotiations become ever-more difficult under the influence of climate change in places like the Colorado, the Nile, the Murray Darling, and thousands of other rivers around the globe, we hope that consideration of the sustainability boundary will come to the fore.

Please join me in congratulating one of the world’s most important water leaders.

The concept of a sustainability boundary in water management implies that water extractions for human uses (H) can be allowed to increase over time, but only to the limit of the sustainability boundary. By limiting or capping extractions at this boundary, the biodiversity and ecosystem services associated with river ecosystems (E) can be protected. From Rivers for Life: Managing Water for People and Nature, Island Press, 2003.