Just Water Futures is a global network of scholars and activists providing evidence-based interventions into the questions related to water financing and the increasing power of financial actors in water governance.
Just Water Futures is a global network of scholars and activists providing evidence-based interventions into the questions related to water financing and the increasing power of financial actors in water governance. In response to a growing trend that frames the global water crisis as primarily a crisis of finance, with solutions centered on increasing private investment and the green/blue economy, we instead focus on the urgent need for alternative visions of global water stewardship.
Founded in October 2024 in Hannover, Germany, our network emerged from discussions on the impact of financialization on the hydro-social cycle, from Thames Water in London to the Water Futures market in California and new hydro-power infrastructures in Brazil and India. We identify a critical gap: while water justice movements have successfully politicised the privatisation of water services and challenged water grabs globally, international water forums continue to champion public-private partnerships, blended finance, market-based conservation and impact investing as solutions to realising SDG6 and the Human Right to Water and Sanitation. Water corporations have responded by skillfully arguing that private water can successfully contribute to the human right to water in this process. Cash-strapped municipalities and public providers often lack accessible evidence-based policy alternatives. Just Water Futures exists to bridge this gap.
The Just Water Futures network is committed to a research and pedagogical agenda that amplifies struggles for water justice. Specifically, we are committed to building and sharing knowledge that: promotes the equitable distribution, access to and control over freshwater; supports frontline contestations against the commodification, marketization and poisoning of communal water sources and systems; upholds the rights and sovereignty of Indigenous peoples; and challenges enclosures of the water commons and other forms of dispossession through market environmentalism.
Leaning on decades of experience and knowledge developed by local communities and water justice activists including public-public partnerships and common management – alongside rigorous, evidence-based academic research – Just Water Futures communicates critical analysis on governance and finance in ways that are accessible and useful to local communities, policymakers, educators, organizers, researchers and other members of the global water justice community.
