Attitudes toward water resilience and potential for improvement

Abstract

Non-technical summary There is a global water crisis, brought on by human actions. The ways we make decisions about water must transform to solve it. We focused on the attitudes that people in society hold toward water to understand how close or far away we are from a broadly accepted worldview that supports this transformation (what we call ‘water resilience’). We found that, across six countries in the Global South and North, attitudes showed moderate support for water resilience. Many people also showed potential to increase their support. Technical summary Water in the Anthropocene is threatened. Water governance aligned with the complex, dynamic, and uncertain nature of social–ecological systems (a ‘water resilience’ paradigm) is needed, and requires transformative change. We queried the potential for transformative change from the perspective that societal worldviews/paradigms offer an important leverage point for system change. Our study aimed to identify attitudes about water resilience and the extent to which there was potential for greater endorsement of water resilience. We surveyed individuals in six countries using vignettes to determine their level of water resilience endorsement (n = 2649). Overall water resilience endorsement was moderate (M = 2.86 out of 4). In some countries, a vignette related to a personally relevant water issue resulted in higher water resilience endorsement. More than half of the respondents held the potential for greater water resilience endorsement. Those with the greatest potential were younger, had children, considered religion more important, were more likely to live in urban areas, and lived in the same area for 10+ years. These findings provide guidance how to engage with the public (e.g. age-specific or parent-focused framing) to potentially increase societal water resilience endorsement. Social media summary General public in six countries moderately supports water resilience to address the water crisis, with room to improve.