Meeting 4

Meeting 4

Tuesday, March 20, 2012
4:00 - 5:30 pm
Carr Center Conference Room
Rubenstein Building
(Floor 2, Room 219)
Directions to Venue

Click to watch this event on video!

'The Ethics of Evapotranspiration'

In this talk, Professor Wescoat will situate human rights and duties with respect to water within the context of the large-scale agro-ecological systems in which they often arise. We begin with the "duty of water" concept in early western water law. That standard of water use can be analyzed using water budget models, in which processes of evapotranspiration figure prominently (i.e., soil moisture evaporation and transpiration by crops, landscape plants, and natural vegetation). Reframing the duties of evapotranspiration management in relation to the life of soils, plants, and animals can help provide an environmental ethic in support of human right to water.

Speaker: James Wescoat

James Wescoat is the Aga Khan Professor of Architecture at MIT.

Moderator: Sharmila Murthy

Suggested Readings:

James L. Wescoat Jr., "The 'right of thirst' for animals in Islamic law: a comparative approach." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 1995, volume 13, pages 637-654.
James L. Wescoat, Jr., Rebecca Theobald, Lisa Headington, "Water and poverty in the United States," April 29, 2008.
James L. Wescoat Jr., "Water-Conserving Design: Contributions of Water Budget Analysis in Arid and Semi-Arid Regions."

Follow-Up Materials:

James Westcoat, presentation slides, "The Ethics of Evapotranspiration."

More about the presenter, James Wescoat:

James Wescoat is a landscape historian of Mughal gardens in South Asia, an environmental geographer focusing on water management and policy, and a conservationist who has worked on Indo-Islamic sites in India and Pakistan. His research has concentrated on water systems in South Asia and the US from the site to river basin scales. Professor Wescoat has organized recent conferences on Rethinking Water: A Critical Resource at MIT (2010); and Disaster-Resilient Design with the National Academies Disaster Roundtable and National Academy of Environmental Design in Washington DC (2010).

His publications include: Sources, Places, Representations, Prospects, and The Mughal Garden: Interpretation, Conservation, and Implications; Water for Life: Water Management and Environmental Policy with geographer Gilbert F. White; Political Economies of Landscape Change: Places of Integrative Power.

Additional information can be found at these MIT web sites:

print |