In a recently published editorial, Nature Sustainability has suggested that water research has become somewhat stagnant. While the increased pressure of publishing and the role of funding are identified as contributing factors, the editorial contends that as water studies have become increasingly quantified and technical they have become less grounded in historical context and institutional change. “Engineering solutions to water problems are portrayed in elegant terms that may appear simple and make us feel better, precisely because they ignore the messy institutions, norms and processes that underlie our relationship, as individuals and as a society, with water in the first place. In a world suffering, as we speak, from increasing threats of both too much water and not enough at the same time, water studies needs to confront the reality that it may be pursuing too many publications and not enough ideas; this is an untenable model for the field and a potential danger to society.”
Read the Nature Sustainability editorial here.