Reflecting on water futures: hopeful directions in a disrupted world

Water management and governance can be considered as a futures-oriented discipline. Noticing, apprehending, predicting, imagining, designing and creating changes in water quality, quantity and distribution—as a result of a myriad of climatic, human, economic, environmental, and infrastructural changes in systems—all form a core part of developing and maintaining effective and adaptive water governing systems.

1. A diversity of skills for futures

Water practitioners learn a variety of skills for proactively and purposefully considering futures, which vary according to disciplines and experience in the world. These skills set us all up for looking at and engaging in the work of reflecting on futures in various ways.

The water engineers among us may be content to manage and consider water futures as a set of design constraints, risks and economic trade-offs to meet a defined set of needs, supported by historical statistical analysis, empirical study and models of the same or an analogous water system in its present and/or designed future state.

The water lawyers among us may focus on the current and ideal functioning of the regulatory and governance system, and test a range of rules and principles against desirable or non-desirable future behaviours, using a knowledge of past regulatory failures, successes and legal proceedings to understand what has been, and might be, possible.

The water scientists and hydrologists among us may focus on the processes and indicators of the water systems that can be measured, in order to model and estimate what might be expected in the future, taking a range of assumptions on trends, uncertainties and trajectories of system states into account to simulate where we are likely to, or could, end up.

The water anthropologists and social scientists among us might reflect on the concept of future itself and develop a range of methods to enable reflection on how people can imagine and design future scenarios relevant to their own and others’ perspectives, based on different sets of cultural and behavioural assumptions about what is both feasible and desirable.

The water custodians and health practitioners among us might sense how the water systems are functioning, feeling and reacting in their greater complex and networked environment, as well as how they are being treated (including through technological supports and use). This understanding can then support reflection on futures that mirror a range of past and present health states that live on in memory today, that if not taken care of could result in degradation or death instead of thriving.

The water artists among us might want to conjure up our emotions and thoughts of what living with particular water systems might feel and be like for us, enabling us to explore and question whether the situations (pasts, presents) embedded in the artwork and/or imaginations could constitute futures we would want to build, embrace or resist.

There are many more likely perspectives on futures from architects, archaeologists to economists to more, although likely carry at least some elements of the designs, imaginations, ways of interrogating or using assumptions to investigate future possible worlds.

2. Combining insights for collective futures

How do we start to reflect on our common, or not so common, ways of engaging with futures? What futures are more likely to be created and built by us through our everyday actions as a result of these orientations? And indeed, how might novel combinations of these enable us to design, navigate towards and create more sustainable and just water futures for us all?

Around Australasia and the world, many of the aforementioned perspectives on water futures, and more, vie for our attention. There are politics and interests aligned with many of the ‘imaginaries’ we have (e.g. Jasanoff and Kim 2015), based on what orientations we typically align with in our professional work and personal lives. Convening conversations about water futures, and all those systems and communities attached to them, to actively work across these perspectives is a powerful way to learn more about each other and where we might collectively want or not want to go, and hence build buy-in and legitimacy for action that builds towards collectively created and sought-after futures.

Many people and organisations find the act of ‘creating futures’ immensely challenging beyond their practiced orientations, particularly establishing adequate practices today that will provide for positive futures more than one or more generations ahead (e.g. Miller 2018; Mortensen, Larsen, and Kruse 2021). But like many skills, orienting to futures – and knowing where to find them and take inspiration from them in other settings – can be learnt, and incredibly helpful.

Here, I reflect on where we may find glimpses of futures and can encourage structured and open engagement with them for the spaces and communities we care about. Although I lay them out in three sections, these are all typically related and interwoven, and together provide a set of perspectives for futures thinking and creating.

3. Futures in the present

The present, or the ‘everywhen’ of this current moment (e.g. McGrath, Troy, and Rademaker 2023), can be an excellent place to go looking for what we might expect or future generations might experience, particularly around questions such as impacts of climate change on water systems and the kinds of conditions for which we might need to create governance regimes. Here, we can add to previous discussion (Daniell 2022; Bell 2021a, 2021b) on how the overquoted science-fiction writer William Gibson considers that ‘the future is already here, it is just unevenly distributed’.

In terms of future climate change impacts, there are many communities around the world who currently experience, and have created, functional co-governance approaches to manage the changes and extremes of climate disruption; and many more who are reimagining what these could look like (e.g. Lammes et al. 2023). One example I had the honour to experience late last year while with the Rivers Committee of the Initiatives of the Future of Great Rivers was the novel and holistic approach to community governance, planning and community management in the Chars of Bangladesh (the nomadic islands of the Brahmaputra), where an NGO called Friendship has been supporting the marginalised communities who call this mobile and rapidly changing place home. The system gives us glimpses into the potential for hopeful futures in a world of disruption and rapid climate-induced change.

Due to the Chars eroding and reforming in periods of intense flooding and river movement, the system co-developed with the communities openly engages with the need for mobility and preparedness. This includes schools able to be dismounted in three hours and put on boats to move to another island, raised boat-shaped plinth villages built by community to house the most vulnerable island residents and provide refuge in intense flooding for an entire village, floating toilets for sanitation that can be hauled to the plinth village, hospital boats, and all the services for setting up and functioning out of flood times including village participatory, agricultural and nutrition planning and implementation, economic training and garment production facilities, locally supported preventative health and legal support, inclusive citizenship endeavours such as theatre raising awareness about issues such as child marriage and flood-preparedness youth volunteer groups (https://friendship.ngo/).

Perhaps due to the islands in some places resembling Australian farms with their eucalyptus trees and fresh-water dams (see Figure 1), it was possible to imagine and indeed connect viscerally to Australian climate disruption migratory needs during recent mega-bushfires and other extreme hydroclimatic events (e.g. Daniell 2020, 2022).

Figure 1. Transitory and mobile futures – a scene from the Chars in Bangladesh.

This current system enables those in other parts of the world to realise that holistically planning for migratory practice during climate-driven disruption and movement of living environments can empower and provide hope and opportunities for communities.

Other glimpses of possible water futures are all around us, and thus give us insight that can inform our imaginations and choices for planning and action.

4. Futures in the past

Much of how society envisages future cycles of life comes through the experience of past cycles of life, and the stories we tell and can still access through networks and stored information in our memories and archives. This is typically also the realm of much scientific and political exploration that currently supports future decisions and development of governance regimes for our water-entwined spaces and places.

From available histories and memories, we can observe trends, extreme events and societal and ecological responses to them. This includes management responses from the legal, social and/or creation and use of technology to modify and shape environments, as is common in water systems, from tools to dig wells, to dams, transmission and storage/sanitation systems. This issue of the Australasian Journal of Water Resources provides many examples of this and suggestions for how we should be aware of these processes for future decisions and creating more desirable futures. This ranges from our two Munro Orations on the 2011 Wivenhoe dam situation from the perspective of the dam operators (Ayre, Malone, and Ruffini 2024), the use of hydroclimate and hydrological modelling for future Australian projections (Chiew 2024), to a range of situations in the past we should seek to avoid in the future including health implication of water pollution events (Prickett, Chambers, and Hales 2024), irrigation leading to desiccation of endorheic lakes and seas (Wine 2024), a lack of integrated management of urban waterways (Hart et al. 2024), and certain forms of salinity management (Walker et al. 2024, commenting on; Williams et al. 2023). Another paper looks at the specific challenges of correcting data as it affects simulation results and thus possible future hydrological system states (Gibbs, Alcorn, and Vaze 2024).

There are many simulation modelling and forecasting methods (e.g. Kelly et al. 2013) that enable the past to help us inform futures yet to be seen, including across sectors, geographies and system types. One we have been experimenting with in the ANU’s School of Cybernetics is called ‘cybernetic pre-histories’ where one cybernetic system from past times that has developed and often receded (e.g. the telegraph or the steam engine, with all its technological, societal and ecological facets) can be used as an analogy for new systems and how they are transforming and may transform the world (e.g. the metaverse, cyber-physical systems) (e.g. Bell et al. 2023). Like the weight of water required to move steam trains full of coal (about half the weight hauled!) to drive the industrial revolution, large amounts of water can be required to utilise today’s data-driven and AI-enabled world – for example approximately 500 mL water for 20 chat GPT prompts (Li et al. 2023)! Specific types of complex multi-scalar system dynamics can then be investigated between known and imagined future systems.

5. Futures in the future

In addition to looking in the histories and present moments for glimpses of futures, we can also work with imaginations and scenarios that are less attached to current and past worlds until purposefully connected (e.g. through back-casting). This is typically the realm of artists, writers (e.g. speculative fiction and science-fiction prototyping, see Johnson 2011; Rae and Coleman 2023), story-tellers and those with futures literacy who engage in the design of multiple scenarios of futures and seek to anticipate risks, uncertainties and opportunities, or indeed just build new futures that are desirable (e.g. Alexandra et al. 2023). In this issue, the risks and anticipations include those around a precautionary approach to groundwater regulation in the Northern Territory of Australia (Currell, Jackson, and Ndehedehe 2024) and scenarios for the development of managed aquifer recharge in the irrigation region (Harvey et al. 2024).

Indeed, returning to the skills and professions explored at the beginning, there is a profession of ‘futurists’ who make a living from their abilities to apprehend, sense and imagine where we could take ourselves in the world, intelligence officials who seek signals and patterns identifying possible eventualities, and designers who draw on multiple perspectives and insights to create new prototypes for what could be, before any decision to build that particular future into existence.

These kind of skills are important and influential, as they can lead to the development of ideas, images and ‘imaginaries’ we take forward with us of what futures could be built, and what they might look, feel and even smell like. Water is often woven into stories and plans for the future, even if it is not the central organising function.

Like the 1950s stories of futuristic technologies based on computing – and images of dams on banknotes that show the power of water development in a very particular way that imagines particular water development futures (see Nabavi 2017) – the moment is ripe to develop new and more hopeful stories and designs for water futures that we want to see ourselves in, and through which we can continue to feel a sense of opportunity and empowerment. This is a time for us to bridge the disciplinary silos and collectively pool our strengths from all our ways of seeing and engaging in water-entwined futures to develop.

By acting together with our diversity of futures perspectives and skills – and drawing on a range of futures methods relating to inspirations from intertwined present moments, pasts and futures – we can build better worlds for current and future generations with water, taking into account and developing systems that are ready to positively navigate disruption.

Acknowledgements

The perspectives here represent collectively informed ideas, developed through the interaction with diverse people from across Australasia and the world, including those from the ANU School of Cybernetics, Institute for Water Futures, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Institute for Pacific Studies, Peter Cullen Water and Environment Trust, Initiatives of the Future of Great Rivers, AFRAN, IHSEP, Engineers Australia and the Board of AJWR. I thank them all. Any errors are mine alone.

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Notes on contributors

Katherine A. Daniell

Professor Katherine A. Daniell is a transdisciplinary academic and Interim Director of the Australian National University’s School of Cybernetics, also working in the ANU Institute for Water Futures and Fenner School of Environment and Society. Trained in engineering, arts and public policy, her work focusses collaborative approaches to policy, action and education for sustainable development. Katherine is a John Monash Scholar, Director and Board Member of the Peter Cullen Trust, member of the National Committee on Water Engineering, Editor of the Australasian Journal of Water Resources, member of the Rivers Committee of the Initiatives of the Future of Great Rivers, President of the French-Australian Association for Research and Innovation (AFRAN) Inc., and a Chevalier (Knight) in the French Ordre National du Mérite.