Consider the issues associated with the Ogalalla Aquifer presented in Chapter 3. Using the two images of sustainable development in Figure 7.2, sketch the relationship between the environmental sustainability of the aquifer and sustainable development using aquifer water.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers will vary, and students may have difficulty with the nuances of this question and the models in Figure 7.2 without further discussion and exploration.



Chapter 3 notes simply that the Ogallala Aquifer is an ancient groundwater reserve, and that water from this vast aquifer is being withdrawn faster than it is recharging. There has been a net decline of total aquifer storage of 9% compared to predevelopment levels and it is agricultural irrigation that is driving the rate of use. Not noted in chapter 3 is that the aquifer has significant spatial variation; some zones are already fully depleted and will take thousands of years to recharge; other zones are experiencing accelerated abstraction of groundwater.



Sustainable development as portrayed in the constrained growth model of Figure 7.2 is depicted as an intersecting set of the three pillars of sustainable development, where human need is balanced against environmental constraints and potential economic costs and benefits. From this perspective, it could actually be possible to continue to over-withdraw from the aquifer, but just at a slower rate. In this context, unrestrained agricultural irrigation becomes constrained growth that is adapting to issues associated with the long term groundwater supply.



The resource maintenance model shows the three pillars as a nested set of relationships, where the environment establishes the defining limit on human social and economic activity. The goal here is to sustain the environmental resource, not human development per se. From this perspective, the goal is to maintain the resource to the greatest extent possible; it suggests that we should extract from the aquifer only what is recharged each year. If we followed this principle of environmental sustainability, the foundation of American agriculture in the Great Plains would have to be drastically altered and restructured (and may not survive at all in some places). These two different approaches to sustainable development can consequently lead to fundamentally different ways of defining problems and their solutions.