World Water Week 2025

Curated by: Soma Sarkar

With the climate rapidly changing, water emerges as both a frontline casualty and a critical solution. Scholarship on water has also shifted from viewing it as a material substance to seeing it as part of a system that links the social, political, ecological, and economic forces shaping our cities and communities. Rapid urban transformations are now stimulating a more intense and complex flow of water through pipes, drains, aquifers, and rivers—all woven into the fabric of daily life. And with that complexity comes vulnerability.

Increasingly, cities around the world—Flint, São Paulo, Cape Town, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Bengaluru—are already facing the harsh realities of water crises in many forms. These crises are layered with shortages, contamination, infrastructure breakdowns, governance gaps, and unequal access. Climate change is further aggravating these fissures. With rising seas, melting glaciers, and shifting rain patterns, water is at the core of our environmental challenges. At the same time, it is also central to our capacity to respond with nature-based solutions, climate-smart infrastructure, inclusive governance, and adaptive policy frameworks that build resilience from the ground up.

Aligned with the World Water Week 2025 theme, “Water for Climate Action”, this web series curates a set of articles that foreground water as a pivotal medium for both climate mitigation and adaptation. Traversing disciplines and geographies, the series delves into critical aspects of urban water governance, from non-revenue water management and water contamination to safe water practices and the futures of mountain and coastal cities. It also explores the rejuvenation of urban waterbodies, innovations in water systems, and pathways for transboundary cooperation. Together, these contributions illuminate how water systems can function as engines of ecological resilience, social equity, and transformative climate action.

Water is not merely a sectoral concern but the very medium through which climate-linked emergencies and environmental degradation are often experienced and addressed. By foregrounding strategies to strengthen resilience across scales—whether within households, across watersheds, among grassroots communities, or through global institutions—the series underscores the urgency of reimagining water as central to climate action.