The Soft Path Approach

Since River Network launched the Saving Water, Saving Energy program in late 2007, we have been advocating for nontraditional water supply solutions that protect our rivers and reduce energy use. For lack of a better framework, we have distilled these approaches into four main strategies: water conservation, water efficiency, water reuse and low impact development. Well, as many of you may already know, it turns out a more-encompassing term exists that captures the water management techniques we are encouraging and much more. That term is called “the soft path.”

The soft path approach is a holistic way of thinking about managing water resources that differs from traditional, or “hard path” approaches which tend to focus solely on meeting increasing water demands through building new infrastructure and moderate investments in water efficiency and conservation. With the soft path approach water efficiency is still critical, but it is seen as the first of many steps that must be taken to put us on a path toward truly sustainable water use.

The soft path approach to water management has been described as the following:

For the most part, contemporary urban water efficiency efforts are viewed as ad hoc measures aimed at buying time until new supplies can be secured and developed. The soft path differs fundamentally from these efforts in its focus on services.

Soft path planning directs planners to look beyond programs aimed at simply using water in more efficient ways. Instead it encourages a different approach to meet the underlying human needs for services, such as sanitation and irrigation to maintain pleasing landscapes. It promotes using alternative and more ecologically sustainable water sources such as rainwater harvesting and water reuse and recycling.

The soft path tackles broad questions—asking not only how to use water more efficiently, but, in some cases, why use water at all? This shifts the objective of water management from expanding and maintaining water supply infrastructure to providing water-related services, such as new forms of sanitation, drought-resistant landscapes, rain-fed ways to grow certain crops, or even influencing what crops are grown in the first place.

I first learned about the soft path approach after reading a report published by the POLIS Project on Ecological Governance, a Canadian research center located at the University of Victoria. The report was written by Carol Maas, researcher who has been doing some excellent work on the water-energy nexus for POLIS’s Water Sustainability Project. The POLIS Project has compiled a collection of helpful resources on the soft path approach, including research reports, discussion papers, briefing notes and case studies that provide a comprehensive look into soft path planning and its implementation.

After speaking with some colleagues, I learned that the soft path terminology has been around for a while but it failed to take hold in the United States. Apparently, the public never fully grasped “the soft path,” and many of its broader principles have been incorporated into today’s Low Impact Development programs. Thus, the point I would like to make is not that soft path approach is new or innovative in and of itself, but it provides a great way to describe the types of water policies we need.

Although it might not be ideal for messaging, the soft path framework is a great way to think about dealing with water in your watershed. The soft path approach to water management consists of four core principles that distinguish it from conventional water planning and management:

• Treat water as a service rather than an end in itself – Consider alternative ways to deliver services that commonly use water—air-based cooling, rain-fed agriculture, waterless sanitation, low-flow fixtures—that maximize water productivity.

• Make ecological sustainability a fundamental criterion - Recognize ecosystems as legitimate users of fresh water; work within local eco-hydrological limits by setting limits for water withdrawals and standards for water returned to nature.

• Match the quality of water delivered to that needed by the end-use – Design policies to match the quality of water supplied to the quality required by cascading water systems, ensuring that wastewater from one use becomes input for another use—from a washing machine to a garden, or from a cooling system to other industrial uses.

• Plan from the future back to the present – Use the soft path planning technique of “backcasting” to define a sustainable future scenario, then work backward to identify policies and programs that will connect the future to the present. This requires open, democratic and participatory planning that engages the entire community and ensures that a broad public good is served.

Following the principles described above will direct us toward sustainable water supply solutions that include water conservation, efficiency, reuse and low impact development—with the added benefit of encouraging new and innovative approaches to our water and climate change problems.

Let’s take cooling systems as an example since cooling towers are among the largest users of water in the commercial and industrial sectors. Water efficiency dictates that cooling towers should use less water. Reuse and LID tell us to use harvested rainwater, greywater or recycled wastewater. But the soft path approach begs the question, “Why use water at all?” Why not use dry cooling for industrial facilities, or integrate passive cooling designs for commercial structures so that cooling towers are not needed at all?

This is not to say that there will always be alternatives to using water - indeed, water is and will always be essential for a number of processes. But the soft path framework encourages new ways of thinking and fosters innovation. By taking a broad look at water issues and treating water as a service rather than an end in itself, it is easier to think outside the proverbial box and develop the types of radically innovative solutions we need to deal with the looming water and climate crises.

For individuals and groups working to protect rivers and watersheds by improving water quality, sustaining instream flows, mitigating climate change and avoiding the need to develop new water supplies, the soft path approach offers an improved framework to describe the wide array of policies that our rivers need. Because the soft path approach takes a broader view of water management, new ways to protect water resources will be revealed as water planning becomes integrated with energy, land-use, agricultural and economic policies.

The soft path approach provides a theoretical framework describing a world where, as Maude Barlow recently explained, we can abandon the "hard path" of large-scale technology—dams, diversion and desalination - in favor of the "soft path" of conservation, rainwater and storm water harvesting, recycling, alternative energy use, municipal infrastructure investment and local, sustainable food production.

Sure sounds like a nice world, let’s just hope we pick the right path.

Update: The Pacific Institute also has a page on their website describing soft path approach. Here's six ways that the soft path differs from taditional, hard path water solutions:

1) The soft path directs governments, companies, and individuals to meet the water needs of peoples and businesses, instead of just supplying water. People want clean clothes, or to be able to produce goods and services – they do not care how much water is used and may not care if water is used at all.

2) The soft path leads to water systems that supply water of various qualities for different uses. For instance, storm runoff, gray water, and reclaimed wastewater are well-suited to irrigate landscaping or for some industrial purposes.

3) The soft path for water recognizes that investing in decentralized infrastructure can be just as cost-effective as investing in large, centralized facilities. There is nothing inherently better about providing irrigation water from a massive reservoir instead of using decentralized rainwater capture and storage.

4) The soft path requires water agency or company personnel to interact closely with water users and to engage community groups in water management. The hard path, governed by an engineering mentality, is accustomed to meeting generic needs.

5) The soft path recognizes that the health of our natural world and the activities that depend on it (like swimming and tourism) are important to water-users and people in general. Often times, the hard path, by not returning enough water to the natural world, harms other water users downstream.

6) The soft path recognizes the complexities of water economics, including the power of economies of scope. An economy of scope exists when a combined decision-making process would allow specific services to be delivered at a lower cost than would result from separate decision-making.