Theoretical frameworks on water and society

Abstract

The natural and social sciences have generated multiple theoretical frameworks on the interplay of water and society. As we will show in this chapter, these theoretical frameworks differ in their focus on specific aspects of this relationship, but they all conceptualize water and society as coevolving. In other words, while biological evolution focuses on a single species' development over time, coevolution proposes that coupled systems change in tandem because of mutual interactions and feedback (Sivapalan & Blöschl, 2015). Drawing from these different perspectives, we will use the term “coupled human-water systems” (CHWSs) to refer to all manifestations of the complex relations between human and water systems, including all processes where water and society coevolve over (potentially multiple) spatial and temporal scales. The approaches have different goals—to understand system behavior, to recommend a course of action, or critique the objective itself. They may seek to explain how the system may have evolved in the past, understand the system as it is today, or predict how the system might evolve in the future. Finally, they focus on different outcomes.