Socio-hydrology: Use-inspired water sustainability science for the Anthropocene

By M Sivapalan, M Konar, V Srinivasan, Ashwini Chhatre, A Wutich, C.A Scott, J.L Wescoat, Rodríguez-Iturbe.I
Earth’s Future | April 2014

DOI

doi.org/10.1002/2013EF000164

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Citation

Sivapalan, M., Konar, M., Srinivasan, V., Chhatre, Ashwini., Wutich, A., Scott, C.A., Wescoat, J.L., Rodríguez-Iturbe.I. Socio-hydrology: Use-inspired water sustainability science for the Anthropocene Earth’s Future doi.org/10.1002/2013EF000164.

Earth’s Future, 2014

Abstract

Water is at the core of the most difficult sustainability challenges facing humans inthe modern era, involving feedbacks across multiple scales, sectors, and agents. We suggest that atransformative new discipline is necessary to address many and varied water-related challenges in theAnthropocene. Specifically, we propose socio-hydrology as a use-inspired scientific discipline to focuson understanding, interpretation, and scenario development of the flows and stocks in the humanmodified water cycle across time and space scales. A key aspect of socio-hydrology is explicit inclusion oftwo-way feedbacks between human and water systems, which differentiates socio-hydrology from otherinter-disciplinary disciplines dealing with water. We illustrate the potential of socio-hydrology throughthree examples of water sustainability problems, defined as paradoxes, which can only be fully resolvedwithin a new socio-hydrologic framework that encompasses such two-way coupling between human andwater systems.

Ashwini Chhatre is an Associate Professor of Public Policy and currently serves as the Executive Director of the Bharti Institute of Public Policy (BIPP) at the Indian School of Business (ISB). Professor Chhatre is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research interests broadly centre on the dynamic cross-scale interactions between governance, economic development, and environmental protection. He relocated to India from the US in 2014 to join the faculty at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad. He spent 13 years in the US, including five in graduate school at Duke University, where he was awarded a PhD in Political Science. In 2006-07, Professor Chhatre became the first Giorgio Ruffolo Post-doctoral Fellow in Sustainability Science at Harvard University, before joining the Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.

Between completing his BA in Economics from the University of Delhi in 1990 and starting his PhD at Duke University, he spent 11 years working in different parts of India, primarily as a community organiser and social activist on issues related to natural resources such as land, forests, and water. A background in Economics, graduate training in Political Science, and a long-standing engagement with scholarship in Geography, Anthropology, Landscape Ecology, and Environmental History ensure that his research is never confined to a single discipline.

Professor Chhatre’s main research interests lie in exploring the intersection of democracy, environment, and development, with a focus on decentralised forest governance, climate change vulnerability and adaptation, and multifunctional agriculture. Over the past 20 years, the scope of his research projects has ranged from household-level to global analysis, consistently bridging research, policy, and practice.

He was the founding Editor-in-Chief of World Development Perspectives (2016-19), served as Senior Editor of Conservation Letters (2009-2014), and has published one book and several articles in leading journals including Science, and PNAS.

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