The water and soil conservation society?

Excerpt

Afriend called recently to compliment me on the 2006 annual conference program. He went on to say that he thought we needed to change our name to the Water and Soil Conservation Society because so much of the conference program was about water. I told him I was about as interested in changing the name of our Society as I was giving away all my fly rods.

We were both joking, of course, but his comment has stuck with me because there is some truth in his observation. Managing, conserving, and protecting water resources has moved to center of our agenda. Work related to water resources dominates articles in the Journal, presentations at our annual conferences, and is increasingly the focus of our special projects. We didn't consciously plan this transition. Instead, I think we are responding to what is going on in the larger community.

Recently I heard an expert predict that water will replace oil as the resource of greatest concern to the global community—there are alternatives to oil, but there are no alternatives to water. Globally, 4 out of 10 people currently live in river basins experiencing water scarcity. By 2025, 3.5 billion people—nearly half …