From Understanding to Transforming

Abstract

Many of the reflections on governance in this book do not apply only to the governance and management of water but also to environmental and resource governance in general. Then what makes water so special? Why did I write a book focusing on water and not on resource governance? Water is pervasive—it connects all other resources and other environmental components. By addressing water, the transformation towards sustainability requires and will promote transformative change in resource and environmental governance in general. I argue that it is the most demanding and challenging resource governance problem humankind is facing. Solving the water problem will solve the sustainability problem. Water governance is an agent of change (Pahl-Wostl et al. in Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 5:708–714, 2013c).