Abstract
This perspective paper argues that persistent global water insecurity reflects inequality rather than absolute scarcity. Despite international recognition of the human right to water, billions remain water-insecure, including many in water-rich countries, revealing a persistent mismatch between availability and access. Building on six papers in this Research Topic, we use the AAAQG framework, encompassing availability, accessibility, acceptability, quality, and governance, to develop a comparative perspective on water security as a dynamic socio-hydrological and justice-related condition. Across the contributions, water insecurity emerges less as a consequence of hydrological limits than of institutions, unequal power relations, fragmented governance, and wider poly-crisis dynamics. Our main contribution is to highlight a central tension between technically centralised water management and hybrid-localised water realities, showing that water security is co-produced through infrastructure, institutions, and lived practices. This tension demonstrates that materially and socially grounded responses must be addressed together. The paper concludes that advancing water security requires justice-oriented, adaptive, participatory, and cross-sectoral governance grounded in local contexts and lived experiences.
Introduction
In 2010, the United Nations General Assembly recognised the human right to water in Resolution 64/292 and reaffirmed in Resolution 76/153 (2021) the urgency of realising this right in practice. Yet this commitment remains unfulfilled to date: millions of people around the world still lack safe and reliable access to water. For example, more than 5.5 billion people are water-insecure () and an estimated 941 million urban residents continue to bear the costs of intermittent piped supply (Laspidou et al., 2017). This persistent gap makes clear that water insecurity is not primarily a problem of water scarcity, but of inequality. The 2026 World Water Day theme, “Where water flows, equality grows,” underscores this reality, drawing attention to the uneven distribution of water security. In this vein, conclude that persistent inequalities in access to, control over and distribution of water persist because of competing views on how water should be valued and governed.
This disconnect is further reflected in the persistent mismatch between water availability and access. The 2023 Global Water Security Assessment () shows that several water-rich countries still report low levels of access to safe drinking water, demonstrating that abundance does not guarantee security. Progress, therefore, depends on far more than supply; it requires coordinated action across hydrological, institutional, economic, and social dimensions (; ). Yet current assessments continue to privilege availability (), while accessibility remains underexamined and acceptability is largely overlooked. This is also a question of justice that extends beyond distribution alone and includes recognition of whose needs are considered, representation in decision-making, and the structural barriers that shape people’s and communities’ capabilities (). Justice also depends on confronting the drivers of inequality embedded in a profit-oriented economy that prioritises pricing and efficiency (). Building on these observations, this perspective paper draws on the six contributions in the Research Topic: Leading perspective on water security as analytically illustrative and disciplinary diverse contributions to explore how water security is co-produced across socio-hydrological, institutional, and justice-related dimensions, thereby moving beyond a simple documentation of current debates.
Current perspectives on water security
The six papers in this Research Topic collectively conceptualise water security as a dynamic socio-hydrological phenomenon emerging from coupled human–water systems. Read together, they shift the debate from water as a purely physical resource to water security as a condition co-produced through interactions among physical water flows, infrastructure, institutions, and social relations. Across the papers, water insecurity is rooted not simply in water scarcity, but in institutions, unequal power relations, and fragmented governance, thereby broadening the analytical lens.
Taken together, these papers provide an analytical basis for rethinking water security beyond scarcity, highlighting its social, institutional, and systemic dimensions.
frame water security as a systemic challenge shaped by technological, economic, environmental, and governance factors, moving beyond a narrow infrastructure perspective. demonstrates that water insecurity is socially produced, emphasising poverty, marginalisation, exclusion, and informal or decentralised infrastructures. foreground justice, highlighting that access, responsibility, and decision-making power are integral to water governance.
The papers also situate water security within wider planetary and societal transformations. places water challenges within a context of poly-crisis, where climate change, biodiversity loss, economic instability, geopolitical tensions, and technological change create cascading risks. Similarly, show that water problems—especially pollution—cannot be captured through water-cycle models alone, but require integrated analysis across water, transport, food, and energy systems. demonstrate that water security is in fact an evolving concept shaped over time by shifting priorities, infrastructures, and institutional capacities. Taken together, these contributions broaden water security from a question of sectoral management to one of systemic risk, historical change and cross-sector interdependence.
AAAQG framework to understand water security
This perspective paper adopts the AAAQG framework: Availability, Accessibility, Acceptability, Quality, and Governance. Rather than treating water as a purely physical resource, AAAQG captures the multiple conditions under which water becomes usable, equitable, and reliable.
Availability, accessibility, acceptability, and quality
The Danish Institute for Human Rights () has developed an interpretation of the AAAQ to describe what these dimensions mean regarding the right to water. Availability refers to having sufficient quantities of water and a continuous supply. Accessibility concerns whether water can be reached and afforded in practice without discrimination and whether people have access to relevant water-related information. Acceptability considers whether the water and its delivery are socially and culturally appropriate, taking into account characteristics such as colour, odour and taste. Quality refers to the safety of water and service conditions, meaning that water use and sanitation should not pose a risk to health.
Governance
Following and , governance is treated as a central and overarching dimension of water security. Governance is understood here as the combination of formal and informal institutions, regulatory frameworks, administrative arrangements, accountability mechanisms, and participatory processes through which water is organised, regulated and managed across societal groups. Strictly speaking, governance is only implicitly acknowledged in the DIHR definitions. We therefore combine DIHR’s emphasis on information accessibility, which is defined as the extent to which institutions provide clear, accessible, and responsive information to support transparency, participation, and accountability () with the broader regulatory and institutional perspective (). In this paper, governance therefore refers to both institutional capacity and to meaningful access to decision-making in water-related institutions and processes. In this sense, AAAQG provides an operational lens for analysing water security as a combined social and hydrological condition, linking material water conditions with social, institutional, and political dynamics.
Mapping AAAQG to assessments
The mapping of the AAAQG framework dimensions () onto the Global Water Security Assessment components () is heuristic and serves analytical comparison rather than strict equivalence (see Table 1). This comparison shows, for example, that current assessment components do not address acceptability and adopt a relatively narrow perspective on accessibility.
Table 1
| AAAQG framework dimensions | Core definitions after | Assessment components after | Technical centralised framing | Hybrid localised framing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Availability | Adequate quantity and continuity of supply | Water availability; water value/use efficiency; water resource stability | Water security is framed as system performance: balancing supply and demand, optimising allocation, using modelling and data, and increasing resilience across sectors and scales. | Water security is framed as locally securing dependable water through context-specific storage, distribution, and self-supply/decentralised arrangements that work in practice, even where centralised systems remain weak. |
| Accessibility | Physical, economic, and non-discriminatory access, including access to water-related information | Drinking water (proportion of population using safe drinking water) | Access is framed through formal service delivery: network extension, tariffs, service reliability, and institutional prioritisation of basic needs. | Access is framed through lived inequalities: affordability, exclusion, power relations, and the time, labour, and risk involved in obtaining water through hybrid or informal arrangements. |
| Acceptability | Social and cultural acceptability of water characteristics (colour, odour, taste) and delivery; cultural appropriateness | No indicator addressing this dimension | Acceptability is implicitly treated as a matter of reliable, standardised, and user-oriented provision, even though it is rarely measured directly. | Acceptability is framed as trust, cultural fit, everyday usability, and the social meaning of water systems, especially for marginalised groups and local communities. |
| Quality | Safety and absence of health risk in water and service conditions | Sanitation; good health; water quality | Quality is framed as monitoring, pollution control, infrastructure reliability, and technical management of health risks at the system level. | Quality is framed as what users actually experience: contamination risk, fluctuating quality, usability, and the health implications of decentralised or uneven provision. |
| Governance | Participation, accountability, responsiveness, and access to decision-making in water-related institutions and processes () In addition, governance is defined by its regulatory and institutional capacity () | Water governance; human safety; economic safety | Governance is framed as regulation, institutional capacity, coordination, legal frameworks, and formal cooperation across jurisdictions. | Governance is framed as local rules, informal institutions, co-design, community control, and recognition of local and Indigenous knowledge. |
Mapping the special research topic onto the AAAQG framework—contrasting technical-central versus hybrid-local framings of water security.
The framing columns distinguish between water security as planned and managed through formal, centralised, and technical systems, and water security as experienced and negotiated through local, hybrid, and context-specific arrangements. We found arguments for both in the different Research Topic contributions.
Between technically centralised systems and hybrid-localised water realities
Building on the six papers in this Research Topic, together with insights from the Frontiers Townhall Panel Discussion (see Frontiers Townhall Panel Discussion: Perspectives on Water Security), this perspective paper develops its own analytical argument through the AAAQG framework. Although these contributions do not constitute a representative account of all water realities, their disciplinary diversity is analytically valuable for identifying recurring tensions, complementarities and blind spots in current water security debates. We take this perspective to highlight a central tension that runs through current water security debates, which helps to illuminate key challenges and potential directions for governance and research.
This central tension lies between large-scale, formally structured water management, here termed technically centralised, and pluralistic, hybrid, and locally negotiated water realities, here termed hybrid-localised. These two perspectives reflect different ways of understanding socio-hydrological dynamics: one emphasising system optimisation and control, the other foregrounding lived practices, social relations, and adaptive arrangements. This tension shapes how the AAAQG dimensions are understood (Table 1). In the technically centralised view, availability, accessibility, acceptability, quality, and governance are primarily matters of infrastructure, planning, regulation, and institutional control. In contrast, the hybrid-localised view emphasises lived provision, social fit, practical usability, local power relations, and context-specific governance. Seen through socio-hydrological and hydro-social lenses, these dimensions are not fixed categories but emerge differently depending on how human–water interactions are structured and governed. The analytical value of this comparison lies in showing that AAAQG dimensions are continuous, with meanings that shift depending on whether water is framed as a system to optimise or as a locally embedded reality.
A broadening of the concept of water security is evident, ranging from conceptual reframing to historical and empirical social-hydrological analysis. A shared thread is the call to adopt a systemic perspective while grounding action in local contexts, rather than treating justice as an add-on. Taken together the contributions emphasise the need for a more integrated, justice-oriented, and adaptive approach to water security. This does not reject technological solutions but calls for more inclusive governance and greater attention to lived realities and the ongoing interactions between human and water systems. On this basis, we argue for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches that span the full AAAQG spectrum, bridging centralised systems to hybrid and local arrangements. This is particularly important when including the justice perspective, which needs to address both systemic and everyday inequalities () and when including a governance perspective that bridges the tension between planned and managed through formal, centralised, and technical systems, and experienced and negotiated through local, hybrid, and context-specific arrangements.
Implications for water security research
A key implication of this perspective is that advancing water security requires moving beyond diagnosing deficits across AAAQG dimensions toward actively reshaping the institutional and social conditions that produce them. The six papers of the Research Topic do not point to a single model reform. Rather, when read through the tension between technically centralised and hybrid-localised water realities, they suggest governance approaches that are flexible, adaptive, and context-sensitive, capable of responding to variability, uncertainty, and evolving societal priorities.
This also means that water governance cannot remain organised around assumptions of climatic, hydrological, and institutional stability. Management frameworks designed for relatively stable climatic and hydrological conditions are increasingly misaligned with contemporary realities of poly-crisis, uneven access, and cross-sector dependence. At the same time, it becomes evident that more inclusive and participatory governance is not only normatively desirable but analytically needed: the perspectives of local communities, Indigenous peoples, and marginalised groups are essential for understanding how water security is experienced, negotiated, and governed in practice. In particular, bridging centralised and decentralised approaches requires stronger participatory mechanisms that connect formal institutions with local grounded knowledge and practice. This is not only a matter of fairness, but also essential for developing socially legitimate and practically effective policies. Finally, water governance must be understood as inherently interconnected, requiring integration across water, energy, food, climate, and ecosystem domains, since addressing water challenges in isolation often shifts risks and costs elsewhere.
This perspective builds on advances in recent socio-hydrological research, particularly the conceptual, modelling, and empirical contributions developed during the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) Panta Rhei decade (; ). At the same time, it argues that water insecurity cannot be understood through coupled human-water system dynamics models alone. It must also be analysed through the lenses of justice, local governance, lived inequality, acceptability, and the institutional conditions of access and decision-making. Drawing on the six papers in this Research Topic, we therefore argue for expanding socio-hydrological thinking toward a more participatory, locally grounded, and normative agenda, in line with the new IAHS HELPING decade (; ) and recent calls for a grounded, context-sensitive approach to socio-hydrology (; ).
Statements
Data availability statement
The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.
Author contributions
BH: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. MB: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. SP: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. MS: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing.
Funding
The author(s) declared that financial support was received for this work and/or its publication. MMdB was funded by the “EXTREME-ADAPT: Quantifying the effect of adaptation measures on spatiotemporal changes in flood and drought risk” project granted by the Innovation Pool of the Research Field Earth and Environment of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres.
Conflict of interest
The author(s) declared that this work was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
The authors SP, MS declared that they were an editorial board member of Frontiers, at the time of submission. This had no impact on the peer review process and the final decision.
Generative AI statement
The author(s) declared that Generative AI was not used in the creation of this manuscript.
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Summary
Keywords
AAAQG framework, acceptability, centralised systems, equality, hybrid-localised systems, interdiscipinarity, participation, water insecurity
Citation
Höllermann B, de Brito MM, Pande S and Sivapalan M (2026) Rethinking water security: integrating justice, governance, and socio-hydrological dynamics. Front. Water 8:1843836. doi: 10.3389/frwa.2026.1843836
Received
31 March 2026
Revised
07 April 2026
Accepted
10 April 2026
Published
28 April 2026
Volume
8 - 2026
Edited by
Roman Seidl, Risk-Dialogue, Switzerland
Reviewed by
Sara Gottenhuber, Linköping University, Sweden
Updates
Copyright
© 2026 Höllermann, de Brito, Pande and Sivapalan.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Britta Höllermann, britta.hoellermann@uni-osnabrueck.de
Disclaimer
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.