Paper presented at RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 31 August 2011 to 2 September 2011, Imperial College, London

1. Seven core issues for water demand
management under CC and
uncertainty: Reflection on practice
and sociological approaches
Dr Alison L Browne
Lancaster Environment Centre
With Dr Will Medd (LEC) and Dr Ben Anderson (Essex)

2. 1. Why do some approaches to demand seem so
formulaic and others so fluffy?
And can these differences be resolved?
• pcc=ioi.Fi.VI + pcr (Herrington, 1996)
• “What emerges from this systematic
investigation is a picture of a highly complex
relationship with water, in which physical,
sensory and cognitive experiences articulate
with cultural meanings and values” (Strang,
2004, p. 3)

3. 2. Embracing Complexity and an Idea of
DISTRIBUTED DEMAND: Different lenses see
different things
• A practice based lens sees water demand as
distributed amongst a wide array of systems
within and outside of peoples homes and daily
lives.
• Different levels of intervention, adaptation and
change:
– Micro (practices, individuals, households, technology)
– Meso (streets, communities, families, decentralised
systems)
– Macro (systems of provision, infrastructure, societal
values and images of water use)

4. 3. If we recognise complexity as important is there
anyway we can quantify it? We want numbers!
• We can try to develop proxies of practice
• Datasets that reveal information about stuff
related to different practices e.g., Expenditure
and Food Surveys capture (in a lot more detail).
– Laundry related items e.g., detergents
– Personal hygiene items e.g., soaps, shampoo
– Food consumption items e.g., leaf and stem veg
– Drinking related items e.g., fruit juices and tea
– Gardening items such e.g., seeds, flowers and plants

5. 0.300
0.200
0.100
0.000
-0.100
-0.200
-0.300
-0.400
Lawn mowers
vegetables
Tea
Coffee
Soap/shower gel
Leaf & stem
Vegetable juices
Mineral/spring water
Potatoes
powder
Plants, flowers,
Detergents/washing
gloves/cloths
seeds
Pasta
Garden tools
Rice
Kitchen
Fruit juices (incl
squash)
Laundry/Laundrettes
95% CI (upper) 95% CI (lower) b (coefficient)
Figure 4: Effects of practice proxies on water
usage (metered households), Error bars are +/-
95% confidence intervals for the estimates.
Error bars straddling zero indicate non-
significant effects at the 0.05% level.

6. 4. How will demand respond to key
technological, cultural and weather changes?
• Mixed methodologies e.g.,
– Tracking ‘stuff’ associated with water use over time to
spot trends.
– Time use data
– Micro-component data
– Engaging with ‘managers’ of distributed demand
– Capturing practices and change (qual and quant)
• BUT Doesn’t history show us that the
‘spontaneous and chaotic’ are probably the
biggest influences to social order, technology and
infrastructure development? Not planning?

7. 100
90
Phone/email friends
Travel
80 Computer
Hobbies/other
70 Going out
Friends/Family at home
Sport/exercise
60
Reading
TV/radio
%
50 shopping
adult care
child care
40
civic acts
education
30 work
housework
20 eating/drinking
washing
sleeping
10
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
00
:0
:0
:0
:0
:0
:0
:0
:0
:0
:
06
08
10
12
14
16
18
20
22
00
0:
Time
Figure 1. Time Use Surveys Source UK ONS 2005 (Ben Anderson calculations[)

8. 5. Managing drought as crisis (not as increasing
variability under CC scenarios and conditions)
• Role of crisis definition in communication
• Role of crisis definition for legislation
• Does this definition restrict adaptive options?

9. 6. Has the UK really thought about
Maladaptation of Water Resources?
• 5 characteristics of a maladaptive system
(Barnett & O’Neill):
– Increasing emissions of greenhouse gases
– Disproportionally burdening the most vulnerable
– Having high opportunity costs
– Reducing incentives to adapt
– Increasing path dependencies

10. 7. What would happen if we stopped thinking
just about water?
• Responsibilities shift from individuals (in homes,
individual companies) to a range of interventions
focused on a range of different actors at various scales
(micro-meso-macro)
• Research pushing this agenda forward:
– Practice based survey: quantifying a practice based
understanding of demand
– Micro-econometric modeling
– Trajectories of practices: Workshop on imagining future
trajectories of sites of demand
– Interviews on practice based change during and after
metering of households
– Broader ARCC-Water project: agricultural demand,
licensing, institutional and legislative change etc