This post was updated April 8 11:36 p.m.

Panelists from the anthropology department called for a reframing of Los Angeles’ approach to water conservation in a talk hosted by the UCLA Graduate Student Water Resources Group in March.

The talk, held at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, was part of the resource group’s initiative to invite multidisciplinary perspectives to the conversation surrounding water conservation and management, said Gregory Pierce, the founder and director of the GSWRG.

Jessica Cattelino, a professor of American Indian studies, anthropology and gender studies, and Kelsey Kim, a doctoral candidate in anthropology, presented insights from their recent ethnographic study of daily water use across diverse LA households at the event.

Their findings pointed toward how current water conservation campaigns fail to address the roles gender, immigration and class play in shaping household water use, Cattelino said in the presentation.

Kim said the team asked households to keep “water diaries,” in which participants tracked their daily water use. The diaries, in conjunction with interviews of their families, revealed that the responsibility of managing water fell disproportionately onto women, Cattelino added in the presentation.

“Water conservation campaigns that focus on the household, on things like brushing your teeth with the water off, timing your shower shorter, etc., have a disproportionate burden on women,” Cattelino said in the presentation.

This unpaid labor often goes unrecognized and is undervalued – which contributes to shaping gender disparities, even in households that perceive their labor divisions to be egalitarian, Cattelino and Kim said in the presentation.

Cattelino also discussed how cultural practices in migrant communities influenced households’ approaches to water conservation.

“Sometimes water agencies and policy experts frame immigrant communities as having cultural barriers to water conservation,” Cattelino said in the presentation.

Immigrant communities often possess a wealth of knowledge on water conservation that is largely left untapped as a resource for educating water policy in LA, Cattelino said. She added that one of the households they interviewed was the multigenerational Park family, whose everyday water conservation practices were managed by their grandmother, Young-ja.

“She would, for example, wash vegetables and then take the leftover water from washing vegetables out and pour it on the plants,” Cattelino said in the presentation.

Young-ja grew up during the Korean War, which influenced her interest in reducing water wastage, Cattelino said during the presentation.

Kim added in the presentation that another participant grew up spending Sundays by the river with his family in Colombia and referred to the river as his “church.” The researchers found that water held significant spiritual value for his family, which influenced the way his family managed its water use, Kim said.

The issue of water conservation in LA seemed to fall more along class lines, rather than cultural lines, Cattelino added in the presentation.

Around 80% of LA’s water is imported, some from land-occupied Indigenous communities who struggle for their water rights, Cattelino said.

“Los Angeles Tongva people say, every day when you get up in the morning, you think about where your water comes from,” Cattelino said. “Thank the water. Thank the people.”

Michael Rincon, a graduate student in public policy and member of the GSWRG who attended the talk, said he appreciated the space the organization provided for discussing environmental justice issues, especially at the graduate school level.

“There is no single discipline or sector where water isn’t necessary,” Rincon said. “I would also argue that if you’re going to become an advocate for anything, if environmentalism is not considered in your focus or in your framing or whatever that you end up doing in your sector, I think you’re not seeing the entire picture.”