Comment in 2024

By simultaneously integrating the measurements from the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite and those from other Earth-observing satellites into hydrological modelling systems, we could transform our understanding of the global terrestrial water cycle. This opportunity comes with big challenges for the scientific community.

In its 50 years, the Safe Drinking Water Act has improved public water supplies across the United States, but it has not advanced the right to safe drinking water in America to address water inequities and injustices.

Water solutions across different scales can prevent or mitigate conflict if existing obstacles to their implementation can be overcome so that water can act as catalyst to bring people and communities together to co-create collective solutions for peace.

Sanitation could evolve beyond its traditional focus on public health and environmental protection to address broader challenges. A portfolio approach is proposed, integrating diverse systems at various scales to optimize benefits including economic value, resource efficiency, climate resilience and human dignity.

Sustainable water management relies on water infrastructure that encompasses artificial structures and natural ecosystems, along with the cooperation of people and various organizations.

Reducing carbon emission in the wastewater treatment sector requires both lower energy consumption and a transition towards renewable energy sources. Utilizing the embedded energy in wastewater, which has been traditionally overlooked, could be a substantial additional step towards achieving carbon neutrality.

Improved quantification of the three-dimensional water storage continuum in the subsurface of intermediate-sized catchments is a prerequisite to improving both ecohydrological and societal resilience to droughts.

Despite international policies promoting gender equality in water resources management, significant gender disparities persist globally, as women are less likely to be in the labour force than men. Addressing this issue requires closing the gender data gap, beginning with numerically assessing women’s representation in the sector to ensure sustainable and equitable water governance.

For millennia, permafrost landscapes have gradually grown the foundation for a capillary hydrologic system. It is now being activated by unusual warmth.

Mountain communities are at risk of various climate change-related disasters, including glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs). Effective GLOF risk identification and management require a holistic consideration of the diverse controls and drivers of GLOFs. This Comment outlines primary challenges related to rapidly changing mountains and complex system response.

Science funding could contribute more towards achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Science–practitioner partnerships illustrate how a patient and outcome-based approach could improve water security for millions of vulnerable people.

Water commons are water resources collectively managed and utilized by communities as common property to support their food security, traditions, and livelihoods. Water commons are under increasing pressure of acquisition, privatization, and grabbing. This Comment analytically defines the water commons, examines their vulnerability to grabbing, and discusses the associated water justice and environmental implications.

Research on the ecological impacts of drought has predominantly focused on the scarcity of water supply, often overlooking divergent ecosystem water demands across vegetation types, regions, and time. These diverse ecosystem water demands need to be incorporated into an effective ecological drought monitoring and assessment framework.

Rivers carry large quantities of carbon and form an important link between terrestrial, marine and atmospheric biogeochemical cycles, yet our observations of river carbon are severely limited. Here we provide a blueprint to build a global River Observation System that would improve our ability to observe and predict changes in this crucial piece of the global carbon cycle.

Earth system model projections of vegetation–climate feedback frequently depend on inaccurate values of evaporation sensitivity to vegetation changes, potentially resulting in misleading conclusions. A promising avenue involves improving the transpiration partitioning parameterizations and incorporating groundwater connections to refine the modelled sensitivity.

With rapidly increasing urbanization, a substantial portion of global freshwater is used for the manufacture of construction materials, such as steel and cement. This threatens to intensify competition over the allocation of blue water (from lakes, rivers and aquifers). However, much less attention has been paid to the virtual water content of materials, and the water–materials nexus.