Water security remains an ambiguous concept with an uncharted path to achievement. Water is an essential resource to our survival and livelihoods, yet most countries lack a clear strategy for how to protect and manage it. With increasing rates and sources of consumption, a growing population, and shifting frequency and intensity of rates of precipitation, continued inaction will have serious impacts on our national security, economy, and environment.

As the United States drafts its first water security strategy under the Paul Simon Water for the World Act of 2014, we need a clearer understanding of what water security actually means, how our needs depend on water, and how existing laws reflect and direct those relationships. What is the right balance of oversight and protection? What issues should be addressed, how do they interact with one another, and what are the mechanisms to decide tradeoffs?

These are just a few of the questions we will ask over the course of “The Water Security Challenge,” a series of white papers and workshops launched by the Center for Water Security and Cooperation this week to develop the concept of water security. Each white paper analyzes the matrix of laws that govern 1 of 10 individual nexuses we have identified that reflect the contours of water security. The final white paper will discuss the intersection of these nexuses and provide recommendations for how they can be reflected in a comprehensive water security framework.

Definitions and Critical Facets

There are many definitions of water security – we counted at least 10 as part of this project – and the words selected to define the scope and purpose of water security really matter as many governments step back to reevaluate circumstances and start anew.

The Center for Water Security and Cooperation defines water security as the ability to safeguard an availability of water sufficient to sustain lives and livelihoods and protect against threats to and from water. There are a few critical realities that informed our definition and the selection of the 10 nexuses which form the elements of water security.

The first critical facet of water security is that water is life. At the most basic level, humans die without water within three days. Without food, humans die within a week. We need water to drink and water to grow food just to be.

Second, society has advanced and developed beyond that simple reality. Our existence relies on energy to power computers, satellites, GPS, hospitals, and streetlights – energy that consumes huge amounts of water in its production. Our health and wellbeing is protected by water infrastructure that brings clean, safe drinking water and that carries away and treats our life-threatening waste. Our agriculture depends on carefully timed irrigation systems, pumps that bring up groundwater, and systems of dams and reservoirs that store water for later use. Our society has increased the complexity of our relationship with water and that complexity and nuance must be reflected in our approach to water management and provision of access.

Third, livelihoods and life are entwined. Infrastructure has allowed people to dedicate their lives to all kinds of pursuits beyond meeting basic needs. These advancements rely on a balanced and reliable water supply.

Fourth, it is not just any water use that is a threat; rather it is overuse and irresponsible use that is of deepest concern. What complicates our assessment is that while a specific use may seem reasonable when considered in isolation, when you expand your view and consider it in the context of a thousand other inputs and outputs in a water system, it may all of a sudden seem unreasonable. Sustaining lives and livelihoods requires balancing a long list of uses as well as the variety of impacts those uses may have.

Fifth, water may sustain life, but it can also destroy communities. Too little, too much, and too dirty water threatens both lives and livelihoods. Almost 800 million people already lack access to safe, reliable drinking water – and not just abroad. The crisis in Flint demonstrated how vulnerable some communities in the United States are to contaminated water and how costly  infrastructure decay can be for our health and wellbeing. Achieving global water security means addressing this inequality while simultaneously meeting the challenges of increasing demand and unreliable supply.

Getting to a Systems Approach

Our laws must reflect this complex definition of water security with its many facets. The approach to date has been to address water issues as a tangential concern. Water as a driver of food insecurity, as a cause of conflict and mass migrations, as an issue of environmental protection, as a cause of energy blackouts, and as a barrier to breaking the poverty cycle.

This approach is not good enough. Water demands its own legal framework that can nimbly and responsively balance the vast number of consumers looking to meet their needs.

Understanding and illustrating the influence of law and governance on water security is essential to building effective water security strategies. Our laws, policies, strategies, and industry standards are all influencing the decisions we make about water, including how much we use, what we discharge into water, and the methods of use and treatment.

The Clean Water Act, adopted in 1972, for example, requires dischargers of pollutants from point sources into the waters of the United States to apply for a permit before beginning their activities. Because of the Clean Water Act, more than 60 percent of waterways are “fishable and swimmable” today compared to just 40 percent in 1972. But by excluding discharges from nonpoint sources, the government also limited its authority to manage agricultural nutrient and sediment runoff. This kind of farming-related runoff is now the largest contributor to water quality degradation, domestically and worldwide.

These are the kinds of influences, causes, and effects we need to understand before developing water security strategies. Understanding how existing laws are shaping our decision-making allows us to evaluate their effectiveness, determine whether it is the right approach, and see how groups of laws act as a system.

“The Water Security Challenge” series will analyze U.S. water laws, with discrete international case studies, in 10 critical areas: national security; energy production and use; natural and manmade disasters; agriculture; peace and conflict; sanitation, health, and hygiene; global markets; natural resources and services; infrastructure; and governance and institutions.

Each white paper will review existing legal frameworks governing the use of water in a single nexus and how the law manages the foreseeable and unforeseeable impacts on water quality and quantity as well as other uses. Once these relationships are well documented and understood, we will show whether the matrix of laws as they exist creates an effective and harmonious system to support water security and begin to work toward an adaptable water security framework.

Through the series, we hope to identify the strongest methods of creating a systems-based approach to water management and construct a framework that effectively balances the tradeoffs of different water uses to meet current and future needs.