AN OUTLOOK OF HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL

DIMENSIONS OF WATER TECHNOLOGY

By A. Hafied A. Gany, Ph.D., P.Eng.

gany@hafied.org

To begin with: A number of archeological evidencs, to day,

indicates that the history of human civilization could be traced back
at least up to seven milenniums. The evidence on water
technology, however, had subsequently been practiced by ancient
civilization since five milenniums back.
Under such a long time span, the human civilization has
apparently been quite familiar with the basics of water resources
technology. However, the underlying constraint of water resources
technology today, is the capability of the people to control the
uncertain water fluctuations, in addition the impacts of climate
changes. In fact, this phenomenon become increasingly escalating
parallel with the approaching of the 21st Century.
To testify the commulative cultural and behavioral impacts,
one should not ignore the hisorical and cultural dimensions of
human technology in water resources management.

1
 As far as the archeological evidences, are concerned, there
are ample empirical lessons that could be drawn. On the planning,
construction, and development stages, including operation and
management, as well as conservation of water ecosystem. For
instance, it has been noted from past experiences on planning
technology where the cases of "under-designed", and/or "over-
designed", occurred due to lacking of data and inappropriate
technology.
We learned from this context that the data base is extremely
important to keep sustainable, including collection, processing,
storage and retrieval systems. Not only hydrological data per se',
but most important also are socio-economics, cultural and other
such non-technical data supports.
It is worth noted, however, that the ancient civilization had
already implementing the concept of integrated water resources
management at the time when population explosion had yet come
up to the alarming stage, like we weitness to day.
Learning from the success and failure in the past, one has to
bear in mind that the technology alone would not, in isolation,
brought about significant impacts, without involving the non
technical aspects, including cultures, institution and stakeholder
participation in the entire phases of water resources management
processes.
Therefore, the sustainable future of Integrated Water
Resources Management by means of participatory approach, are
highly essential to put into operational. Being the case,the
accummulation of ancient experiences drawn from the history of
human culture and civilizations must not be overlooked!
Despite the fact that water potential on our blue planet will
remain constant along the time passage, however, the quality is
continuously worsened due to the human caused degradation. It is
indeed a huge challenge of us along our journey toward
sustainable water ecosystem in the immediate future, isn't it?.
To this end, we urgently need to work together, hand-in-
hand to finding innovative solutions as the subsequet milestone
laid out by The Legacy of Expo Zaragoza 2008 -- we, definitely are
looking forward to tangible materialization of "The Zaragoza
Charter". Thank you!
Zaragoza, 5th August 2008
A. Hafied A. Gany, Indonesia.

2
3