Over millennia, plants, animals, insects, fungi and bacteria have evolved elegant and complex choreographies to purify water, hold it in the landscape, and create the conditions for all life to thrive. From the generation of clouds to the replenishment of aquifers, the creation of a life-giving hydrosphere is a collaborative project — one that Indigenous peoples have understood and tended across these territories since time immemorial. A widening web of water stewards is learning about how to care for these systems, but disconnection remains widespread. Extraction, urban sprawl and unattuned development can destroy or disrupt the networks water depends on, producing conditions of scarcity, fire, flooding and contamination on top of the devastating effects of climate change.  

A future with abundant shared water — the elemental foundation of a good life — requires that many take part in understanding, defending, and caring for these living relationships. Amidst retreating glaciers, exhausted aquifers and dry river beds, we are re-learning how to weave human life in harmony with other species. The result will be vital and permeable cities and landscapes, but the enabling factor will be a cultivation of hydrological literacy.