I have just reviewed a paper from the USA which describes an educational intervention aimed at persuading young people to use less water. \u00a0 At the end, of what seemed a well thought through empirical study, most young people said they would use less water in their everyday habits. \u00a0Well, they would.<\/p>\n
Whilst I have no doubt that this study was carried out as effectively as is reported in the paper, I cannot share the authors' optimism about its likely impacts on water shortages.\u00a0 In many ways, this is a very familiar environmental educational intervention which can be characterised (or caricatured) in this way:<\/p>\n
1. \u00a0a socio-environmental problem is identified<\/p>\n
2. \u00a0ignorance is measured<\/p>\n
3. \u00a0somebody is blamed<\/p>\n
4. \u00a0an intervention programme is designed, implemented and evaluated<\/p>\n
5. \u00a0people promise to change<\/p>\n
6. \u00a0success is celebrated<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
We have seen this so often down the years that the wonder is how there can be any problems left. \u00a0But of course, there are.<\/p>\n
In such activities, it is often the case that all the issues and problems in a context are not properly identified.\u00a0 For example, in this present case, I looked in vain for any data on water use over time by business, agriculture, etc.\u00a0 This was not included because those involved decided, a priori, that it was only domestic consumers who were important here (ie, were to blame) \u2013 hence their intervention.\u00a0 But is this really the case?\u00a0 Stories abound across the US of industries and agriculture putting undue and often unchecked pressure on acquifers.\u00a0 So, it is all very well (and much too easy) to blame individual consumers for this problem. But can they ever make a real difference given all the other (and presumably growing) demands on the watershed?<\/p>\n
Whatever the answer, isn't it irresponsible not to ask this question?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have just reviewed a paper from the USA which describes an educational intervention aimed at persuading young people to use less water. \u00a0 At the end, of what seemed a well thought through empirical study, most young people said...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}