R. Quentin Grafton, Safa Fanaian, James Horne, Pamela Katic, Nhat-Mai Nguyen, Claudia Ringler, Libby Robin, Julia Talbot-Jones, Sarah Ann Wheeler, Paul Robert Wyrwoll, Fabiola Avarado, Asit K. Biswas, Edoardo Borgomeo, Roy Brouwer, Peter Coombes, Robert Costanza, Robert Hope, Tom Kompas, Ida Kubiszewski, Ana Manero, Rita Martins, Rachael McDonnell, William Nikolakis, Russell Rollason, Nadeem Samnakay, Bridget R. Scanlon, Jesper Svensson, Djiby Thiam, Cecilia Tortajada, Yahua Wang & John Williams (2024)
The world faces multiple water crises, including overextraction, flooding, ecosystem degradation and inequitable safe water access. Insufficient funding and ineffective implementation impede progress in water access, while, in part, a misdiagnosis of the causes has prioritized some responses over others (for example, hard over soft infrastructure). We reframe the responses to mitigating the world’s water crises using a ‘beyond growth’ framing and compare it to mainstream thinking. Beyond growth is systems thinking that prioritizes the most disadvantaged. It seeks to decouple economic growth from environmental degradation by overcoming policy capture and inertia and by fostering place-based and justice-principled institutional changes.
