S2 EP9: God, Money and Water in the Sahara

In this final podcast of the season, Paul discovers that religion can have an important influence in how we use natural resources. He continues his journey South, finally reaching the Sahara Desert. At a well frequented by nomads, local guide Zakarya explains why water is precious but also why you shouldn’t have to pay for it. 

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Transcript

In the last episode we heard how traditional farmers in the Draa Valley in Southern Morocco think about water as  a commons – a shared resource around which a centuries-old  culture has evolved. In this world, water is attached to the land that feeds the community, and shared by farmers accordingly. Everyone gets the same share as they would have done 500 years ago. Before leaving the valley, I asked Alami, my guide, whether it was possible to buy a bigger share if one needed it – but he was very clear that no-one would be allowed to do that. 

PHJ: So if could I buy some more if I was one of the families and I said I'd like some more, more than two hours please? Can I buy, can I pay people to have more water?

Alami: That's the not possible. You can buy land but you don’t buy water. The water, it's not to buy -  clear? You can buy the land but the hours of water, it's still always for that family.

PHJ: Why is that?

Alami: That's the traditional law.  It's also we can’t change it. Maybe you can take hours of water if this family is not here – clear? Or maybe if the family move from the area to the other area so they’re never here. Maybe the family who is near, they can take the hours, but they can’t buy the hours of water. They can take it. If maybe this family comes back from 60 or 70 years ago, they can use their time of water. They can use it one day. So if somebody's not using the water you can have it, your friends can have it yes, but not buy it.  You can't buy water because the water is not to buy. The water is the life and you don’t buy your life.

PHJ: I understand 

Alami: The water is (like) a life, you’re not to buy water. 

PHJ: Is that is that a good thing then, that you can't buy water?

Alami: Of course.

PHJ: Why do you why do you think it's a good thing?

Alami: well …water it is the life and then also in, like, in the religion for the people: If you buy water for someone then it's not good with Allah, with God – clear? And also because the people have a vision that if they buy water it's a problem in the future for our family or for them, and so the people respect it:  that idea that the water is not to buy. It’s not haram, but it's also like it's like a pillar of Islam so also respect it.

Last time we also met Sabina Pedrazzini who was researching commons at the University of Bern in Switzerland. She’d been looking at what factors get involved with making sharing arrangements work. But I couldn’t remember her mentioning religious belief or shutting the door to money, so I went back to Sabina and asked about these things:

PHJ: So, I mean, the situation that I've been observing is about the sharing of water resources. And something that struck me, well, there's two things that struck me, which I don't know what the bearing, what bearing this research has on those, but religion seems to be quite involved. When I'm asking, why do you do this? Why do you not do this? Part of it is that water is from Allah. We didn't make water. And so there's this spiritual element that becomes drawn into it. I'm just wondering how that might relate to some of the research.

Sabina: Yeah, that's true. I didn't find anything about spirituality. Sorry, I cannot say that. But I think it can be linked in somehow to my results because, for example, I didn't mention it before, but I found that personal values and dispositions also play an important role. And these are the things that are more difficult to influence. But there are different degrees, for example, on how people care for others, or how people feel a moral obligation to cooperate or to act for the greater good, or also to the degree they feel themselves as a collective or more as an individualistic. And I think that religion and spirituality in general can be fit in these topics of personal values and dispositions. So probably if you feel that the resource is a gift from God or from Allah, this is very important for you because you are a very religious person. You are also more willing to respect, in a sense, the resource and not to overuse it.

PHJ: The other thing which might or might not be related, I don't know, but there seems to be a real unwillingness to get money involved in the situation I'm looking at. I ask the question, well, if somebody just needs a bit more, can they pay for it? And there's a real resistance saying, no, no, that's completely unacceptable. This isn't a resource that can be bought or sold. Is there some reason why money just doesn't fit in very well to a common system?

Sabina: Yes, that's very interesting because I think it relates a bit to this incentive system that can be set up. Because what the results show is that once there is this incentive system, people can cooperate because of the incentives and no more because they really feel like it's the right thing to do. So probably this willingness to keep money out of it could be related to that. So it could be related to the fact that they really want it to be like an internal disposition to be part of it, rather than something that you can just buy. So something more like commercial. Because money is seen as corrosive to those personal values, which are absolutely really important in terms of making the commons work. And maybe it's also the fact that they are afraid that once people start buying it, like at the beginning, maybe it's just a little bit and then the mentality is switched. And now there is the idea that I can buy anything I want because now it's just a commercial thing and it's not more like a cooperative thing.

PHJ: Yes, it detaches the personal cooperative element, doesn't it, once you introduce money because it's something you can just walk away with without any further contract, if you like. The contract is ended once the money has been exchanged, once it's exchanged hands. Yeah, I can see that.

PHJ: Allah has created every living creature from water. Of them there are some that creep on their bellies, some that walk on two legs, and some that walk on four. [Quran 21:30].

PHJ: Shared religious belief and religious values can help identify you as part of an in-group and help maintain trust around sharing water within that group, especially when the religion promotes the idea of water as a divine gift – and that all life and knowledge originate from water. It seemed to me that this perspective on water as an issue of values and religious belief was being tested by the hotels and their swimming pools that were draining off the water from the reservoir upstream. This huge modern demand for water was a big part of why dam the was opening less times during the year. That meant less opportunities for local farmers to use and share water in the traditional ways. In turn, farmers were now sinking more private wells to access diminishing ground water. Those involved with the upstream tourist economy were not, of course, part of the commons network to which the local farmers belong – no traditional forum for discussion. But, aligned with the principles of what makes a commons work, Alami saw the way ahead as being about negotiation .

Alami: We need to respect the nature, we need to respect the next generation, and then we need to look for some solution. Not only for the hotels, it's for the hotels, for the swimming pool, and also for the family also, when they use the water at home, for shower, for the bathrooms, that we need some solution today, some discussion between people, between associations, with the government also, because it's for the future. We need many hotels, because we need the tourists to come here. Why don't we build hotel ”يئي “-  it means good for the nature, ecologic hotel, no swimming pool, because the bathrooms take a lot of water, the swimming pool uses the water, and maybe to give just list some, Maybe like this vision, we need to look for the future about this vision. Inshallah. 

It’s almost time to start the 4-day journey back to the UK, but before I do, I can’t pass up the opportunity to travel a few miles further South into the Sahara desert. I want to go to places that rely almost exclusively on ground water drawn up into wells.  This would surely a place where water was its most precious – so would the same ideas about water being a shared resource exist there too? There are no buses or trains that would allow me to do that, so I hired a car and a driver called Zakaraya – who was a local Berber guide who knew how to reach one of the wells that serve the nomads in the area. After a long drive along the bumpiest and dustiest of roads, we reached the first well…. 

PHJ: What does water mean to the people here? What is the value of water?

Zakarya: Of water? Water is everything here. It's like our life. Because the nomads here, it's always next to the water. Because in the desert, there is no water, there is no life.

PHJ: And how did they find water here? Who found it?

Zakarya: Just like you take two “woods”, like this, it has to be the professional. Somebody who knows how to find the water. From years ago, yeah. With two sticks of wood. Old man. He comes old man. Always old man check in the water, in the earth. By two woods, like this, and when the wood is moving, that means there is water in the earth.

PHJ: And now water is here, and I see that they've dug a well, who can have the water? Who is the water for?

Zakarya: Yeah, it's for all.

PHJ: Everybody?

Zakarya: Yeah, everybody.

PHJ: So nobody has to pay for it?

Zakarya: No, nobody has to pay for it. It's free.

PHJ: It's free?

Zakarya: Yeah, for all, for all, for everyone. For the nomads, the nomads make this growth of the water, but they make it for all the people.

Coming from a country where it rains so much, but where water bills are so expensive, I wondered how it was possible to make water free – especially when it’s so scarce. So on the way back to the camp, when we’d stopped for a rest, I asked Zakarya what he thought about this.

PHJ: So, I'm wondering if you can help me understand something. In our country, we pay about 50 dirhams every day for water, and every day for the last two months, actually, every day for the last two months has rained. So we have rain coming down all the time.

Zakarya: The price is the same. Even it's raining a lot.

PHJ: That's true. Yeah, that's right. 

Zakarya: I understand, yeah.

PHJ: But here, you told me that water is like gold.

Zakarya: Yeah.

PHJ: And it's free.

Zakarya: It's free, yeah, in the desert.

So...?

Zakarya: Yeah, because in our country, even the water, it's like gold. But our life, it's much, it's much, much, much, much expensive. Our life is number one, and the water is number two. Even we say is the water, it's everything, but our life, it's number one. It's very important also. Also, in the water, it's very important to live, to live. That's why it's not much expensive, because it help us to stay alive. 

PHJ: But if people were paying for water, then maybe you could have more water. I don't know, because they pay for water in the cities.

Zakarya: Yeah.

PHJ: Yeah, don't they?

Zakarya: Yeah, but it's not, it's like four dirham for one ton of water, for 4,000 litres.

PHJ: Right. So that's very good. Four dirham.

Zakarya: Yeah. You don't pay the water. You pay the service.

PHJ: Do you think people would ever prefer to pay for water here?

Zakarya: No.

PHJ: No, why not?

Zakarya: Yeah, because it's water, it's not something that people make it. Yeah, it's natural. Why to pay for something, it's natural. We find it in all the earth. We pay for something, but the people make it, create. It's not them who create the water. Yeah, it's from the natural.

PHJ: Do you think everyone thinks about water in the same way, or do you think people in cities think about water in a different way, too?

Zakarya: Oh, it's the same way.

PHJ: It's the same way.

Zakarya:  Yeah, it's the same way. In the city, in the village, like this. Yeah, it's the same way.

PHJ: In previous episodes of this mind, brain and planet podcast, we’ve talked about brain regions where activity means we really intend to take urgent action, and which activate when we imagine living in the future with climate change. There’s a close neural connection, therefore, between our motivation to act and our imagination. But the same research also reveals individual differences – this critical imagining and motivation apparently depends on how self-transcendent we are – in other words, whether we can get over ourselves and care about a bigger world. A world in which we are only one small part. So yes - religious belief can sometimes close minds and suffocate us with dogma, but its role in recent conversations has made me wonder. Can it also shift us towards being more self-transcendant, to getting over ourselves, and aid our imagining so help us care about the bigger picture?

[Music….]

PHJ: Well …I don’t know….this journey has probably generated as many questions as it has produced answers. But around me are new friends, music and a roaring campfire – while above me is a Saharan night sky that’s revealing a starry and beautiful universe like I haven’t seen for many years – providing much needed nourishment for both my self-transcendence and my imagination. 

Thanks for listening. This has been Season 2 of Mind, Brain and Planet.