Few resources are as vital as water. But as human activity continues to shape urban rivers, that refreshing dip in the stream, summer kayaking trip, or glass of ice water can be harder to achieve.
This is why every year, on March 22, we observe World Water Day: a tradition started by the United Nations in 1993 to highlight the importance of clean, accessible water. Sustainable water management is important not just for the environment, but for the 8.2 billion people that rely on water.
As World Water Day 2025 approaches, River Basin Center authors have published a new commentary on our relationships with water resources and how we manage them: the February 2025 article provides a paradigm for shifting management of urban streams to better provide benefits to their communities, from drinking water to flood protection.
The authors argue that freshwater management is not appropriately prioritized compared to other utilities like transportation, energy and physical infrastructure. Freshwater bodies provide important environmental benefits (e.g., biodiversity), community benefits (recreation, flood prevention), and cultural benefits (religious or otherwise).
While the ecological integrity of streams and rivers is well-recognized by environmental science, policy and media, the paper asserts that too much focus on environmental benefits leads attention and funding away from the most degraded streams–areas where a stream cleanup effort or installation of flood solutions might not be an easy fix. Environmental degradation tends to be more severe in low-income communities, which often lack the resources to undertake resilience and conservation projects without support.
In order to correct an uneven distribution of freshwater management, the authors present two perspective changes for managers that better emphasize distribution of water benefits to the greatest number of people possible.
1: DEFINING THE OBJECTIVE
Currently, equitable distribution of benefits is a secondary or tertiary goal of water management. The focus of most freshwater management authorities and conservation groups is the ecological condition of water bodies–i.e., pollution, nitrates, microplastics, etc.–of which laws and funding mandates mainly exist to set limits and goals for pollution levels. Exceeding goals for water management is rarely recognized, and failure to meet goals is rarely met with additional funding to help reach them. The authors propose that equitable benefits analysis should be a primary goal of water management, which in turn promotes other goals.
“Achieving equity in ecological integrity, water quality, and flood protection would be a major advancement. But setting the equitable delivery of benefits as the objective also allows governments to embrace a broad view of the potential benefits that urban streams can provide.”
2: WORKING TOGETHER
The second step, the authors say, is working towards a more collaborative model of water management. Collaborative governance involves bringing partners from all sides of an issue into decision-making conversations. This type of communication is achieved by dismantling antagonistic relationships while providing communities with the capacity to make decisions together. Because the paper is specifically discussing water management in low-income communities, this means involving citizen groups that may not have historically had access to decision-making tools and meetings. Utility managers must make a concerted effort to involve people on every side of water management questions, an idea that has already seen success on small scales all over the world.
“The Civic Innovation Hub is a collaborative program focused on community-led stormwater management in the Calumet Region in Illinois, USA…The program resulted in community-designed capstone projects representing diverse approaches to stormwater management, from green infrastructure on school playgrounds to water infrastructure projects that support local businesses. Participants addressed capacity constraints by involving multiple levels of governance, including school districts, municipalities, and regional partners.”
The paper identifies challenges to both of these changes in four general groups: institutional shortcomings, lack of information, funding issues, and issues that negatively impact the resilience of stream management efforts. However, the authors also discuss some positive trends that point towards a better future for water resources, such as the growth of natural infrastructure organizations that specifically focus on equitable delivery of benefits (like IRIS–hello!), and knowledge-based shifts in water management practice, such as the renewed emphasis on reconnecting rivers to floodplains.
While changes in water management are still often made in response to disasters, the authors present an optimistic view, hoping to shift the focus from streams that are ecologically healthy to streams that also build healthy communities. This World Water Day, we’re focusing on how to proactively build resilience for the future while providing benefits to all today.
Check out the paper here:Reorienting urban stream management to focus on equitable delivery of benefits, PLOS Water, Seth J. Wenger, Aditi S. Bhaskar, Brian Murphy, Martin Neale, Mateo Scoggins, Isabelle Barrett, Brian Bledsoe, Krista A. Capps, María M. Castillo, Erika Diaz Pascacio, Wade L. Hadwen, Robert J. Hawley, Rhett Jackson, Belinda I. Margetts, Jen A. Middleton, Shayenna Nolan, Na’Taki Osborne Jelks, Britt Rogers, Rachel Scarlett, Charles B. van Rees
Learn more about the United Nations’ World Water Day events here. The theme of this year’s World Water Day is Glacier Preservation, but there will be webinars throughout the next few days on all things resilient water governance!
World Water Day Promotional Posters: 2023 (Accelerating Change), 2024 (Water for Peace), 2025 (Glacier Preservation). Posters created by UN-Water.
Written by Olivia Allen. Originally published on March 21, 2025 at https://iris.uga.edu/2025/03/21/world-water-day-2025-delivering-safe-water-resources-to-all/