**1.5 Methodology of soft path studies**

The concept for water soft paths is clearly attractive. Wolff and Gleick (2002) listed a number of characteristics of soft paths, but the key principles can be reduced to three:


and more partially, for water. Still today, it is fair to say that, to date, there has been no full water soft path study – at least not if by "full" we mean a semi-quantitative model of water

The early proposals for and experiments with water soft path studies published prior to 2000 are described by Brooks (2003). Since that report, there have been further publications. By far the most important is another report from Peter Gleick and his colleagues at the Pacific Institute (Gleick et al., 2003). This report provides a review of urban water use in California, and of cost-effective methods to reduce consumption. This report is both more detailed and more rigorous than anything else to date. Happily, its conclusions are equally impressive: Without any change in water end-uses, economic structure or expected growth, at least one-third of all water use could be saved by the application of technologies that are cheaper than the costs of new supply. Should these technologies be adopted (at reasonable rates of implementation), projected economic and population growth in California could be

In Canada, The POLIS Project on Ecological Governance at the University of Victoria has created an Urban Water Demand Management group. Since 2003, this group has published a series of reports (Brandes, 2003; Maas, 2003; Brandes and Ferguson, 2004). The first report used information in the Statistics Canada Municipal (Water) Use Database (nicknamed MUD) to identify wide variation in both total and domestic per capita water use in Canadian municipalities. With some exceptions, it also identified an association of lower rates of use with the presence of water metres and with higher water prices. This report notes the opportunity to reduce water use in Canadian cities just by bringing the higher water consuming cities down to best practices elsewhere in Canada, and the latest report suggests the policies that would be effective at achieving this goal (Brooks et al, 2004).

The concept for water soft paths is clearly attractive. Wolff and Gleick (2002) listed a number

• The first principle is to resolve supply-demand gaps in natural resources as much as possible from the demand side. Beyond the 50 litres per person-day commonly cited as the minimum for an adequate quality of life, there are many ways to satisfy human demands for water. The approach depends upon applying least-cost choices to every stage from water withdrawal to wastewater disposal and (ideally) reclamation plus emphasis on the need for the actual "services" desired, as opposed simply to providing

• The second principle is to match the quality of the resource supplied to the quality required by the end-use. It is almost as important to conserve the quality of a resource as to conserve its quantity. High-quality resources can be used for many purposes; lowquality resources for only a few. In contrast, we only need small quantities of highquality resources but vast amounts of low-quality resources. Of course, those uses requiring high-quality resources are critically important, as with drinking (for water)

• The third principle is to turn typical planning practices around. Instead of starting from today and projecting forward, start from some future water-efficient time and work

and certain industrial processes (as for manufacturing semiconductors).

of characteristics of soft paths, but the key principles can be reduced to three:

scenarios based on soft path methods and relying on soft technologies.

accommodated without a single additional water supply project.

**1.5 Methodology of soft path studies** 

quantities of water.

backwards to find a feasible and desirable way ("a soft path") between that future and the present. The main objective of planning is not to see where current directions will take us, but to see how we can achieve desired goals. This step is called "backcasting" (to make an obvious contrast with forecasting). It is at this stage that appropriate transition technologies must be identified to bridge the time between full implementation of soft technologies. Finally, at the end of the process politically and socially acceptable policies and programs must be defined to bring about the desired changes.

### **1.6 Differences between soft and hard paths**

The soft path can be defined in terms of its differences from the hard path. The two paths differ in at least six ways according to Wolff, Gary and Peter H. Gleick (2002):


Water Soft Path Analysis – Jordan Case 293

How can we get more from each drop of water? Water soft paths also ask the question

Supply Management

Demand Management

Desired Future State/Ecologival Limit on Water

"Why" – Why should we use water to do this at all? (Brandes et al, 2005).

Fig. 2. Planning for the future with a soft path approach. (Brandes et al, 2005)

**Time** Today <sup>2050</sup>

Probably the most legitimate criticism of energy soft path studies was that they neglected issues of equity. This led to many comments about the need to introduce environmental justice as an explicit element of policy, regardless of the nature of the policy. If that criticism was true of energy, it is even more so of water. The inequities in water and land distribution around the world are sizable and, as a result of misguided policies that promote centralization and privatization, they seem to be growing. As it is, poor people in urban areas commonly pay 10 times as much per litre for water of questionable quality as do richer people for water of good quality; and poor subsistence farmers sometimes (especially if they are women) get no water at all when commercial farms are adequately supplied (Webb et al , and Koppen et al in Brooks et al 2004). Though it is almost unquestionably true that water soft paths would improve the situation for poor people around the world, water soft paths by themselves are not sufficient. As emphasized by staff at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) in Sri Lanka, water policies must be explicitly "pro-poor" and "pro-women". Urban water systems in developing countries are notoriously leaky if one compares the difference between water put into the system and water that reaches registered consumers. Some of those leaks are true losses, but some (highly indeterminate) portion is "stolen" or redirected to illegal taps, which may serve hundreds of poor residents. Fixing the "leaks," another common recommendation, should be undertaken only if coupled with additional, and possibly free, taps in low-income neighborhoods. In short, greater efficiency for water needs to be tempered with concern for equity, and this concern must be

**1.8 One continuing gap in soft path analyses** 

Total Regional Water Use

introduced explicitly in soft path analyses.

