“Understanding Human Water Systems:  A missing link to advancing water security in the climate change era”

 As climate change, political instability, and aging infrastructure destabilize water supplies, research on pipes, pumps, policy, and prices has done much to advance water sustainability. While this work is vital, in this talk I show why human water systems—the social institutions, forms of exchange, and everyday labor through which people secure water when formal systems are unreliable—are just as central to achieving water security in the climate change era. Drawing on rigorous social science methods and my theoretical training as an anthropologist, I focus on one core dimension of human water systems: informal exchanges of water. I introduce the Moral Economies Framework to explain how these human systems of sharing, informal markets, and mutual aid emerge, operate, and sometimes break down. Using mixed-methods cross-cultural research in water-insecure communities globally, I show how leveraging the moral economies framework helps us understand the social, ecological, and political conditions under which these exchange practices can strengthen household water security—and when they instead can deepen inequality, stigma, and psychosocial stress. 

I close by situating informal exchanges and moral economies within a broader agenda on human water systems—including diverse forms of human labor and other informal strategies households deploy under conditions of uncertainty. Together, this work demonstrates why understanding human water systems is essential for explaining variation in water security outcomes and for  advancing Sustainable Development Goal 6 and the Human Right to Water in the 21st century. 

Biography

Melissa Beresford is an ecological and economic anthropologist whose research investigates how humans adapt to water insecurity. Her current NSF CAREER–funded project develops the Moral Economies Framework to understand when informal social infrastructures strengthen household water security—and when they fail. Her work bridges anthropology, sustainability science, and policy, offering insights into how communities build informal systems for adaptation and resilience and how these systems can complement formal pathways to help achieve Sustainable Development Goal 6 and advance the Human Right to Water. She also a research methodologist and conducts research to advance social science research methods and research methods training. She is the Vice Chair of the global Water Insecurity Community of Practice (WISE-CP, formerly HWISE-RCN), a Co-Director of the NSF Cultural Anthropology Methods Program (CAMP), Senior Editor of the journal WIREs Water, and Associate Editor of the journal Field Methods.