The Greatest Water Problem: The Inability to Link Environmental Security,Water Security and Food Security

The world is moving towards a dangerous situation of societal instability due to our failing ability to manage the life support system on the human-dominated planet. Contributing to this problem are inherited and biased ways of thinking, originating from the 17th century and based on fragmentation and sectorization. A fundamental shift in thinking is therefore needed urgently, to better bridge the partial realities addressed up until now. Awareness has to be built up around the need for societal adaptation to hydroclimatic constraints, and strong enough institutions must be developed, capable of supporting unpopular decisions. A proper conceptualization is badly needed of the life support system in a science of 'environmentology', in which water is acknowledged as the bloodstream of the biosphere. Both land/water linkages and water/ecosystem linkages will have to be properly entered into an integrated and catchment-based land/water/ecosystem approach. The goal has to meet both societal needs and environmental sustainability conditions. Attention will have to be paid to all water, both liquid blue water, supporting humanity and aquatic ecosystems, and vapour-form green water, supporting terrestrial ecosystems, agriculture and forestry. The economic resource will have to be seen as the precipitation over the basin. Both water-dependent and water-impacting activities and ecosystems in the basin have to be analysed. Joint attention will have to be paid to environmental security, water security and food security. Methods for compromise building between incompatible water-related interests and ecosystems will have to be developed. Societal acceptance will depend on awareness campaigns - make water everybody's business - and has to be secured by participation. A new ethics of hydrosolidarity will have to be developed between those living upstream and those living downstream in a river basin.