The Emergence of Water Resilience: An Introduction

Abstract

Water quality and availability is critical for sustaining life on earth. However, lack of access to potable water and safe sanitation services for billions of people, deteriorating infrastructure, degradation of ecosystems, and impacts of climate change signal a global water crisis. This crisis is unfolding in the era of the Anthropocene, where human actions are a major driving force of change at a global scale. Instability and surprise are expected in this era, where the interactions and impacts of our decisions can have far-reaching and uncertain impacts. How do we navigate water management and governance in the face of these challenges? A new water paradigm – water resilience – has emerged that acknowledges and considers the complex, dynamic and uncertain nature of social-ecological systems. It emphasizes the need for systems to both persist and provide a set of functions and to adapt to changing conditions. Water resilience has been advanced in scholarship over the past 15 years and is gaining traction in practice and policy realms worldwide. Acknowledgement of the complex nature of water systems coincides with the recognition that the past, command-and-control approaches to management and governance, must give way to inclusive, adaptive and polycentric approaches. Considerable inroads are being made into how we advance management and governance approaches in this new water paradigm. The contributors to this volume represent voices that are making important contributions to the way forward.