Equity and the Ethics of Water Governance

Water is recognized to pose some very urgent questions in the near future. A significant number of people are deprived of clean drinking water and sanitation services, with an accordingly high percentage of people dying from water borne diseases. At the same time, an increasing percentage of the global population lives in areas that are at risk of flooding, partly exacerbated by climate change. In this paper, it is argued that ethics should be an integrated part of water governance in order to address these pressing issues. This paper consists of two parts. In the first part, some conceptual groundwork is done to clarify a number of persistent ambiguities and misunderstandings in the debate on water governance. In the second part, three distributive questions are outlined, concerning (1) the distribution of scarce resources, (2) the distribution of risks, and (3) the distribution of responsibilities. The paper is concluded with an outline for an ethics of water governance.

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