During this week of classes, we reviewed the relationship between human behavior and the natural and built environment. One of the activities was to address the dilemma of resources. I chose to talk about the use we make of water, specifically when we bathe, and water our plants and gardens. Originally I am not from here, I am from a tropical country that fortunately has many water resources, but not all of them are treated to be suitable for human consumption.
Access to water has been affected in recent years because the rainy season is becoming shorter, and in some areas up to two years have passed without rain. This change in the rainy season has meant imposing water rationing measures for homes in certain areas of the country. Additionally, these rationing measures (which the population rejects) tried to implement other types of measures (Wegrowski, 2019).
Caracas (the capital of Venezuela) is not a very large city in terms of area, but in terms of population, it is a city with approximately 5 million inhabitants. The most common construction to provide housing for citizens is buildings, although there are also urbanizations with big houses. Architecturally, both buildings and houses usually have large garden spaces, what we call green spaces. The maintenance of these gardens usually requires the use of a lot of water, and it is very common for the person in charge of the maintenance of these gardens to water the planters and grass for more than an hour using water suitable for human consumption, this occurs because they are not many new constructions, and old constructions hardly have a system to recycle water, to be used to water gardens.
When the “shortage” of water began to be more alarming, there was talk in the media about how the population could use less water during bathing and also recommendations on how to water the gardens more efficiently. This did not constitute a public policy, it was rather a social action that invited citizens to implement changes in their behavior to guarantee access to water in the future.
According to data from the United States Environmental Protection Agency, it is recommended that a person take a shower for around 8 minutes, this time involves the use of a little more than 16 gallons of water, think that every time we bath, we use that amount of water is alarming, especially if there are people who take more than one shower a day (EPA, 2017 a). Now let’s review some information about water consumption in irrigation: According to the same organization, EPA, a family uses an average of 320 gallons of water per day, of which 30% are used to water plants and lawns (EPA, 2017 b ). Reducing this consumption is of vital importance, the question is how to promote a more responsible use of water, and what is the best way to intervene at the population level to generate behavioral changes that are sustainable over time.
I believe that for these behavioral changes to be possible we must rely on professionals who know how to intervene at the population level and generate behavioral changes collectively. In this aspect, applied social psychology is of great help, using theories of behavior change, and the health belief model, interventions could be designed to improve the health of the population (Gruman, 2016).
Reference:
Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (Eds.). (2016). Applied social psychology : Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. SAGE Publications, Incorporated.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (2017). Save Water and Energy by Showering Better. Available on: https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2017-02/documents/ws-ourwater-shower-better-learning-resource_0.pdf
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (2017). Outdoor Water Use in the United States. Available on: https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/www3/watersense/pubs/outdoor.html
Wegrowski, B (2019). Deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest. Ballard Brief. Available on https://ballardbrief.byu.edu/issue-briefs/deforestation-in-the-amazon-rainforest#:~:text=The%20significant%20loss%20of%20vegetation,but%20also%20around%20the%20world.