Model Projects reSources: Saving Living Systems Gallery         Help Fund This Project People’s Water: Tibetan Water Culture, a Model for Sustainable Development: A large format, dynamic book (with a 30–60-minute DVD) consisting of original research that will document 40–60 Tibetan water sites and serve as a model for an integrated approach, where the existing Tibetan culture is used as the foundation for watershed conservation and rural economic development. INTRODUCTION In Tibet, a 1,500-year-old culture exists that has ecologically sustained rural water sources (springs, mineral waters, lakes, and headwaters of rivers). This culture remains today, though it, and the water sources—which are necessary for drinking, washing, religious ritual, and to alleviate the symptoms of disease—are increasingly threatened by escalating development and are little known to the outside world. They are so little known, in fact, that my son Jon Otto—who has worked as a tour guide in the country for ten years—asked me why he didn’t know the culture of these sites. The answer, he realized, was because he hadn’t asked. This invisibility makes it easy for unchecked development—mining, lumbering, road construction, and other industry—to threaten the Tibetan watershed. Because Tibetans’ water culture is inextricable from the water itself, if a source is lost to misuse or development, so is the culture. Yet the oral tradition and practical knowledge surrounding Tibetan water sources are not being recorded in the way that other aspects of the culture—dance, music, and language—habitually are. This current plight of the Tibetan water culture mirrors the evolution that other countries underwent in the wake of industrialization. Gramercy Park in New York City, for example, was built around a natural spring—though it has since dried up due to a lack of available groundwater. The park is still used, but the spring is lost. Today, Tibetans are at the crossroads that all industrialized societies have faced: they are simultaneously losing their water sources and the traditions that have ecologically sustained those sources, while facing an unprecedented influx of pollutants. They do not yet grasp the impact these will have on their un-renewable water sources. I grasped the urgency of recording the changes occurring in Tibet when I traveled to Fei Shi (Jade Lake) in 1993 on a Jerome Fellowship. Fei Shi is a mineral water site twenty minutes from Song Pan in Northern Sichuan, which, though in use by the local Tibetan community for centuries, had been turned into a water-bottling facility by Chinese investors. As a result, the Tibetans were suddenly unmoored. The appearance of the bottling plant disconnected them from a water source that they had long preserved because they believed it was integral to the health and well being of their community. That is when I understood how the industrialized world became gradually disconnected from its water sources as it developed; I asked myself if it was possible to continue to evolve economically and culturally and retain an awareness of the sources of our water. Throughout the late 1990s to the present, I continued to visit water sources in the United States and China. I understood that by looking at cultures that still have a traditional practice that ecologically sustains their water sources, we can find innovative approaches to the urgent contemporary global issues of watershed conservation and rural economic development. For the past 15 years, I have worked in integrated sustainable water systems design, which places water as the foundation for urban and rural development. I direct and participate in collaborative projects between artists, scientists, engineers, urban planners, and government officials that focus on sustainability—a built environment that preserves or restores the quality and quantity of water—which is the foundation of any ecosystem. For the past 13 years, I have worked on many award-winning projects in China: I created the Living Water Garden in Chengdu, the first urban park to demonstrate a seven-stage biological water cleaning process. This project initiated a national dialogue about wetlands, ecosystems, and sustainability. The Chengdu Urban Rivers Association (CURA), created in 2001 inspired by The Living Water Garden, focuses on cleaning the rural water systems that deliver water to the city of Chengdu. In 2003, I conceptualized a sustainable water system plan for the Beijing Olympic Forest Park. People’s Water: Tibetan Water Culture, a Model for Sustainable Development, will be the first in-depth study of the Tibetan water culture, a record of its rapid changes, and my experience of these water sites. All people are affected by this threat to our irreplaceable water supply; it is my hope that this record will inspire changes in how we handle watershed conservation and rural economic development. PROPOSAL Currently, I am mobilizing a team of US, Tibetan, and Chinese (including a photographer and a documentary filmmaker) in order to further research the culture that has grown up around these water sources. This research will culminate in People’s Water: Tibetan Water Culture, a Model for Sustainable Development, a large format, dynamic book documenting 40–60 Tibetan water sites (I have included a selection of photographs, taken on preliminary research trips, with these proposal materials), accompanied by a 30–60-minute documentary DVD. About 80% of the book will be comprised of this original research, which will be done by Tibetans, and will serve as a record of their little-known water culture. It will be an optimistic look at the evolution of the culture and its potential as a model for contemporary water issues. People’s Water will also be a record of the oral tradition that is the backbone of this culture; the research team will gather the stories—often mythical or fantastic, which have been handed down for generations. Traditionally, these stories acted as an ethical code assuring that the highest quality water was used according to tradition, which kept it unpolluted. People’s Water will also include two or three essays by prominent international environmentalists who work with water, a short introduction (included with these proposal materials), and sidebars narrating the research team’s experience at each site. People’s Water will be around 120 pages, approximately 80 of which will be color spreads of each site, containing a small amount of text that tells its story and the research team’s experiences there. The eyes of the world are on China now as it gears up for the Olympics in 2008, the Shanghai World’s Fair in 2010, and as thriving contemporary art communities emerge outside of Beijing: 798 Art Zone, Changdian village, and Songzhuang village. With both the international focus on environmental issues and China’s changing role on the world stage, there has never been a better time to introduce a book like this. People’s Water will interest those attracted by the images, a general audience curious about Tibet, a segment of environmental professionals who understand the implications of Tibet’s environmental future, and professionals from the art and environmental design worlds who are familiar with my work. BIO Betsy Damon is an internationally known, award winning artist/ecologist who has spent the past 30 years pioneering a collaborative form of ecological art resulting in large-scale functional works that inspire, motivate, and educate. Since 1985 the focus and passion of her work has been water. In 1995, she conceptualized the Living Water Garden in Chengdu, Sichuan, China while directing Chengdu’s first environmental public event. From 1996– 1998 she directed a Chinese and US team in designing the six-acre bio-remediation park, which is now a worldwide model for urban ecological solutions. She continues to work on large-scale innovative projects in China and the US, such as an award-winning plan for Beijing Olympic Park. From 2002–2005, she directed projects for the Beijing planning bureau, three of which won awards. Damon has inspired such community efforts as Portland Urban Water Works, The Edwards Aquifer National Park in San Antonio, Texas—the first and only aquifer park in the US—and CURA, Chengdu Urban Rivers Association, which developed a model village project in Ping Yi county, Sichuan to clean upstream watersheds. Among her current commissions is the Trinity Lakes project in Dallas, Texas, which is a plan to create a 23-mile long, ecologically sound corridor on the Trinity River. Damon is the recipient of numerous grants, among them the Bush Individual Artist Grant, and was most recently nominated for the Swedish Water Prize. She believes that since water is the foundation of living systems, that it must be the foundation of sustainable design and planning.