Traditional Water Cultures and the Modern Life

We are standing on the verge of a challenging time pertaining to the relationship between society, nature, and technology. Throughout history, people have come up with adaptive mechanisms of life in various environments. The cultural legacies of communities can revive to apply for the sake of our new environmental situation. Nowadays, we are facing environmental risks like climate change which brings about immediate and unpredictable consequences. Among them, the water crisis is one of the most fundamental threats for many historical civilizations. Water had a cardinal value in traditional cultures which is nearly forgotten in the modern era. In this panel we are going to discover how the traditional water cultures can be implemented in new ways of water governance, international politics and economy of water, water consumption in different sectors of the society, human behavior toward the environment, and finally, saving Earth.

These are some but not all themes we will discuss in our panel:

- Scientific narration of local water cultures and their legacies.
- The relationship between traditional water culture and new water governance/ politics/ economy and consumption.
- Traditional water culture and the issue of climate change.
- Drawing comparisons between water cultures.
- Bringing traditional water culture into the current lifestyles, possibilities, and benefits.
- Traditional water culture and the process of reflexive/ecological modernization.
- Water cultural education and local communities’ empowerment.
- Sustainable development based on traditional water culture.

Furthermore, related conceptual and practical topics around traditional water culture and the current environmental concerns are very welcomed as well.