72
5 Sequity (Sustainable Equity)
aggregative and distributive principles, which are explicitly revealed by focussing
on distributive equity and Sefficiency. Similar to this arrangement is the Difference
Principle of Rawls (A Theory of Justice 1999) as explained by Sen (The Idea of
Justice 2009): “The second part of the second principle (called the ‘Difference Principle’) is concerned with distributive equity as well as overall efficiency, and it takes
the form of making the worst-off members of the society as well off as possible.”
Let us remember that the distributive-aggregative dichotomy from a water-centric
point of view is part of the theory elaborated earlier in this book. For instance, this
implies that the state of institutions and technologies are not dealt with directly in
this Chapter, but both are bounded by the FIWs in the context of a learning approach
discussed in Chap. 3.
The rest of this chapter develops an approach to enable transparent communication, to focus attention on problematic situations through targeting, and to elaborate
policy guidelines in order to coherently and consistently solving those management
issues.
5.1 Categories
The interactions between water managers, politicians and people are sometimes
intense and more so as water scarcity, global warming and problematic precipitation
patterns increase. How, then, water managers can present their policies in such a way
that reveal elegance, insight, and strategy, while being aligned to societal objectives?
For the purposes of this book, the answer is through water categories by setting fair
thresholds. “Political reasoning involves metaphor-making and category-making, but
not just for beauty’s sake or for insight’s sake. It is strategic portrayal for persuasion’s
sake and, ultimately, for policy’s sake.”(Stone 2012) Transparent categories make
the art of persuading people and politicians much easier. For example, explaining
the percentage of a city population under the category ‘Extreme Water Poverty’
significantly facilitates the reason for investing in water infrastructures for that group.
For these reasons, employing categories is a routine practice. Few examples are:
• Water Framework Directive of the European Union (European Parliament &
Council 2000) with five classes and corresponding colours for the ecological
status of surface waters
• Human Development Index with four classes (UNDP-HDR 2018)
• Climate Change Performance Index with five categories from “very high” to “very
low” (Burck et al. 2018)
• United Nations (UN-SDG 2019) with five categories about the proportion of the
global population that uses various levels of drinking water services
There are many ways defining categories that cover all the possibilities of an
indicator or descriptor. In this book, we consider the amount of water allocated to
a member in a period of time as the indicator of interest (refer to Sect. 2.3 for
explaining ‘allocation’). Employing four or five categories is common, with five
5 Sequity (Sustainable Equity)
aggregative and distributive principles, which are explicitly revealed by focussing
on distributive equity and Sefficiency. Similar to this arrangement is the Difference
Principle of Rawls (A Theory of Justice 1999) as explained by Sen (The Idea of
Justice 2009): “The second part of the second principle (called the ‘Difference Principle’) is concerned with distributive equity as well as overall efficiency, and it takes
the form of making the worst-off members of the society as well off as possible.”
Let us remember that the distributive-aggregative dichotomy from a water-centric
point of view is part of the theory elaborated earlier in this book. For instance, this
implies that the state of institutions and technologies are not dealt with directly in
this Chapter, but both are bounded by the FIWs in the context of a learning approach
discussed in Chap. 3.
The rest of this chapter develops an approach to enable transparent communication, to focus attention on problematic situations through targeting, and to elaborate
policy guidelines in order to coherently and consistently solving those management
issues.
5.1 Categories
The interactions between water managers, politicians and people are sometimes
intense and more so as water scarcity, global warming and problematic precipitation
patterns increase. How, then, water managers can present their policies in such a way
that reveal elegance, insight, and strategy, while being aligned to societal objectives?
For the purposes of this book, the answer is through water categories by setting fair
thresholds. “Political reasoning involves metaphor-making and category-making, but
not just for beauty’s sake or for insight’s sake. It is strategic portrayal for persuasion’s
sake and, ultimately, for policy’s sake.”(Stone 2012) Transparent categories make
the art of persuading people and politicians much easier. For example, explaining
the percentage of a city population under the category ‘Extreme Water Poverty’
significantly facilitates the reason for investing in water infrastructures for that group.
For these reasons, employing categories is a routine practice. Few examples are:
• Water Framework Directive of the European Union (European Parliament &
Council 2000) with five classes and corresponding colours for the ecological
status of surface waters
• Human Development Index with four classes (UNDP-HDR 2018)
• Climate Change Performance Index with five categories from “very high” to “very
low” (Burck et al. 2018)
• United Nations (UN-SDG 2019) with five categories about the proportion of the
global population that uses various levels of drinking water services
There are many ways defining categories that cover all the possibilities of an
indicator or descriptor. In this book, we consider the amount of water allocated to
a member in a period of time as the indicator of interest (refer to Sect. 2.3 for
explaining ‘allocation’). Employing four or five categories is common, with five