10949 New frontiers in water governance

Many of our time’s greatest challenges are linked to water. Climate change is primarily and increasingly felt through floods, droughts, and water contamination – affecting all beings in every part of the globe. Current governance arrangements often are no longer able to match the complexity and uncertainty of the challenges we face. As the world is not on track to achieve SDG6, increasingly calls are made to change the frameworks that guide our way of thinking about and governing water.

Governance is inherently complex, and well-established institutional arrangements seem difficult to change. However, recent thinking on how societies govern themselves shows that nothing is inevitable or predetermined about existing arrangements. Many societies and communities used to govern themselves differently – so different approaches to water governance should be possible.

With a range of experts, we will explore diverse approaches and new frontiers for governing water in the Anthropocene. The session will include a focus on practical case studies where different and new institutional arrangements are starting to emerge. This will drawing from the following perspectives:

• Indigenous co-governance

• Legal personality of rivers

• More-than-human

• Decolonial