Water: The Fountainhead of Human Culture

Water: the source of life, and the lifeblood of Earth’s ecosystems. Water is also the fountainhead of human spirituality & culture – from antiquity to the present, water is a core element of humanity’s shared traditions, festivals and rituals. Some of humanity’s earliest religious practices were based on the veneration of water: early nomadic tribes would mark the locations of wells and springs with stone cairns. Those locations became the sites of early shrines, as pure life-giving water was a valuable resource to be honored and revered.

As global development continues its inexorable advance and water stewardship efforts increase for this ever more precious resource, the cultural and spiritual value of water, in addition to the fundamental value of its inherent life-giving properties, must also be taken into account when planning water management policies that balance ecological, economic, and social well-being.

Ignoring a community’s cultural dependence on water can have tragic consequences for local traditions – for example, the Black Mesa coal project in Arizona, USA, which degraded the sacred springs and sole water supply of thousands of Hopi and Navajo Native Americans in order to fuel energy projects in the American Southwest. The project was started by Peabody Energy Corporation in the 1960s and the controversy about unsustainable water use continues to this day.

This tragedy could have been easily avoided had the company performed an Ecosystem Services Review prior to designing their project. The Ecosystem Services approach provides a decision-making framework that analyzes the tradeoffs associated with resource-use issues that involve multiple stakeholders, identifying a path forward that accounts for the value of both the Provisioning and the Cultural services provided by water resources. As the private sector steps up its efforts to engage stakeholders and reduce its impacts on ecosystems, the relationships between water and cultural values need to always remain in focus.

Water is also considered to be the primordial element in many of humanity’s earliest creation myths and stories. Water creation myths are a distinct branch of the creation-myth family tree, two of the five main types of creation stories encountered in global cultures involve primordial waters as the primal substance that gave birth to the rest of creation. In Assyro-Babylonian mythology, the gods and then all beings arose from the fusion of sweet water and salt water. Hindus believe that the Ganges River is not just the dwelling place of a deity. Rather, Hindus believe that the deity is the river itself. African traditional religious beliefs are centered on the idea that water is the supreme life-giving element, such as the Yoruba river goddess Oshun and the Igbo lake goddess Ogbuide.

In Native American creation myths, water plays a primary role as well, such as in the creation story of California’s Maidu Indians, which tells the story, “In the beginning there was no sun, no moon, no stars. All was dark and everywhere there was only water.”

Native American traditions honor numerous holy water sources including Panther meadows on Mount Shasta (Shasta tribe) and Montezuma’s Well in Arizona (Hohokam and Pima tribes). Today, both of these sacred water sources are under threat due to water quality degradation and supply-replenishment constraints caused by upstream development. Within the Ecosystem Services framework, it is recommended that the upstream developers proactively examine their project’s potential impact on a broad spectrum of ecosystem services before finalizing the design of their development plans. In these situations, special emphasis should be placed on engaging regional stakeholders to identify and consciously respond to complex issues such as the religious & cultural heritage status of water sources relied upon by indigenous peoples.

The sacred aspects of water are well-evidenced in present-day spiritual traditions around the world. For example, many of today’s major religions incorporate ritual washing. In Christianity, full immersion water baptism is a central sacramental act, representing an individual’s commitment to the faith. In Islamic faith practices the five daily prayers are performed after washing certain parts of the body (face, arms, head and feet) using clean running water.

Water sites around the world are revered as sacred places of worship for various believers. Bodies of water such as the fountain at Lourdes (France), Lake Titicaca (Peru), Black Mesa (Arizona, USA), and the Zam Zam well (Mecca, Saudia Arabia), are venerated by pilgrims and devout religious lay people around the world.

Holy wells (a well or spring where there is a tradition of veneration or association with religious or magical experience) are some of the oldest sacred sites known on the planet. In the British Isles alone, hundreds of sacred wells are active shrines still in existence today. Pilgrims from around the world regularly visit these locations to pray and leave offerings of devotion, for example at the well-known Saint Brigid’s Well in Ireland.

In England there are local grassroots efforts focused on restoring highly-revered holy wells by organizations such as the Machynlleth Civic Society and the Bishop of Salisbury. Local conservation projects such as well-dressing and blessing ceremonies celebrating the restoration of local holy wells, act to simultaneously restore the ecological and spiritual values held by the local community.

An example of proactively including cultural and ecological values in corporate decision making occurred when the Canadian energy company BC Hydro completed a recent ecosystem services review, during which it engaged local stakeholders and accounted for the spiritual and cultural values of water held by the nearby Pacific Northwest First Nations tribes. BC Hydro addressed these concerns about water management and spiritual traditions of neighboring communities when implementing a new water use planning process for its Campbell River hydropower facility on Vancouver Island.

In today’s water-conscious world, companies, governments and conservation leaders are expanding their water and ecosystem stewardship activities. Now, as organizations are assessing the immediate effects of their policies on local stakeholders and the ecosystem services that stakeholders depend on, the cultural and spiritual values of water need also to be accounted for.

Water is more than just the clear liquid that flows out of the tap. It is also the sustenance of human cultural and spiritual well-being, and needs to be valued as such.

 Eric Landen is the founder and president of Landen Consulting, an environmental strategy consulting firm that helps organizations quantify and integrate the ecological and social values of natural ecosystems into business and public-sector decision-making. We provide specialized expertise in helping organizations address their strategic dependence and impact upon ecosystem services and biodiversity, including guidance on how water resources interconnect with stakeholder social and cultural values.

This post is an expanded version of an article originally requested by the Water Wide Web, who asked for an exploration of the cultural and spiritual issues associated with water management policies.