Over the last decade, water security has replaced sustainability as the key optic for thinking about how we manage water. This reframing has offered benefits (including clear recognition of the link between humans, the environment and the right to water) and also posed challenges (the tendency in some quarters to interpret “security” solely in terms of geopolitical or economic “securitisation”). In this collection, the authors offer a radical repositioning of these debates updated to reflect the concerns of our post-pandemic world. The chapters in this volume examine several different themes including how water security articulates with locality and culture, how it operates across spatial scales and its moral/ethical resonances. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journals Water International and International Journal of Water Resources Development.

The privatization of water supply and wastewater systems, together with institutional restructuring of governance - through decentralization and the penetration of global firms in local and regional markets - have been promoted as solutions to increase economic efficiency and achieve universal water supply and sanitation coverage. Yet a significant share of service provision and water resources development remains the responsibility of public authorities. The chapters in this book - with case evidence from Argentina, Chile, France, the USA, and other countries - address critical questions that dominate the international agenda on public versus private utilities, service provision, regulations, and resource development. This book presents varied perspectives - largely complementary but at times contrasting - on public and private governance of water. Public authority in general is being reasserted over service provision, while resource development and investments in infrastructure continue as a mix of public and private initiatives. But more important, increased oversight and regulation of market-based initiatives that until recently were touted as panaceas for water supply and sanitation are increasingly being reconsidered on the basis of social equity, environmental, and public health concerns. This book was based on the special issue of Water International.

The privatization of water supply and wastewater systems, together with institutional restructuring of governance - through decentralization and the penetration of global firms in local and regional markets - have been promoted as solutions to increase economic efficiency and achieve universal water supply and sanitation coverage. Yet a significant share of service provision and water resources development remains the responsibility of public authorities. The chapters in this book - with case evidence from Argentina, Chile, France, the USA, and other countries - address critical questions that dominate the international agenda on public versus private utilities, service provision, regulations, and resource development. This book presents varied perspectives - largely complementary but at times contrasting - on public and private governance of water. Public authority in general is being reasserted over service provision, while resource development and investments in infrastructure continue as a mix of public and private initiatives. But more important, increased oversight and regulation of market-based initiatives that until recently were touted as panaceas for water supply and sanitation are increasingly being reconsidered on the basis of social equity, environmental, and public health concerns. This book was based on the special issue of Water International.

Over the last decade, water security has replaced sustainability as the key optic for thinking about how we manage water. This reframing has offered benefits (including clear recognition of the link between humans, the environment and the right to water) and also posed challenges (the tendency in some quarters to interpret "security" solely in terms of geopolitical or economic "securitisation"). In this collection, the authors offer a radical repositioning of these debates updated to reflect the concerns of our post-pandemic world. The chapters in this volume examine several different themes including how water security articulates with locality and culture, how it operates across spatial scales and its moral/ethical resonances. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journals Water International and International Journal of Water Resources Development.