Oregon Public Broadcasting

There’s a saying in the West: whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting. But what if you could take the fight out of water conflicts?

Oregon State University is offering a series of courses that aims to do just that. The goal is to teach water users to make peace, not war. But will it work? Correspondent Austin Jenkins reports.

In a classroom at OSU, students prepare to do a role-play. They pair off and drag their chairs so they’re facing each other.

Marisa Sowles interviews fellow student Jeff Stott about how he persuaded real farmers in Idaho to support a river restoration project.

Marisa Sowles: “What were the strategies that you used to speak to your neighbors and show them?”

Jeff Stott: “When we restored the watershed we got beavers back, we got all sorts of birds back.”

The participants in this summer course are mostly graduate students in their twenties. They’re preparing for careers in fields like water resource engineering, waste water reclamation and soil and water conservation.

The class is part of new graduate certificate program at OSU in water conflict management.

Aaron Wolf is the program’s director. He says recent high profile water fights -- like in Oregon’s Klamath Basin -- demonstrate the need for an academic program like this.

Aaron Wolf: “We can’t keep doing things the way we’ve been doing them unless we think deeply differently about how to manage the resource we could be walking into a real troublesome time.”

Wolf knows from firsthand experience. When not teaching water conflict management, he works as a water mediator all over the world.

He says the new program at Oregon State University aims to teach environmentalists, farmers, water managers and anyone else with a stake in how water is used to do something seemingly simple: listen.

Aaron Wolf: “And so if you come at me with full bore anger, I mean you just want to tear into me there is a way that I can just profoundly and transformatively listen to you in a way that allows that anger to dissipate. People who do this really, really well can dissuage a lot of anger in a lot of very, very hostile settings."

Wolf insists this isn’t ivory tower talk. But what do veterans of Northwest water wars think?

Greg Addington represents farmers in the Klamath Basin. He says a degree program in water conflict management is a good idea. But recommends putting those listening skills to use over a beer.

Greg Addington: “We’ve all been through mediation and facilitation till we’re all blue in the face and really none of that got us to a solution. What got us to a solution was some of the stakeholders drinking beer together in the bar after meetings - that’s what got us moving down a path towards a settlement.”

You can bet there’s going to be a lot more beer drinking and fighting over water in the coming decades in the Northwest.

OSU’s Aaron Wolf predicts a perfect storm of events is approaching that will make water even more precious than it is today.

Aaron Wolf: “These profound shifts that are coming: population, climate, treaty renegotiation, recognition of ecosystems and tribal rights. All of these are about to start clashing with each other in unprecedented ways.”

Which is why Oregon State University wants to prepare the next generation who will sit at the negotiating table. But at least one student in the water conflict class is skeptical.

Josh Owens is doing graduate work in water resource engineering. In the hallway after class, he questions whether peaceful solutions are always possible.

Josh Owens: “We strive for a win-win and that’s kind of a paradigm where well everyone can have what they want and I think there’s a possibility that in the future some people are going to lose out on the resource and there’s going to be a group of people who aren’t going to be able to continue what they want to do because there won’t be enough water to go around.”

Owens is on track to graduate with a master’s in engineering next year. He hasn’t decided for sure if he’ll pursue the certificate in water conflict management. But he says a policy minor to go along with his technical degree could be very helpful.

Online:

http://www.transboundarywaters.orst.edu/