Fostering water resilience in the Anthropocene: call for papers
The advent of the Anthropocene presents an unprecedented pressure on the life support system of Earth and threatens to destabilize social-ecological systems across scales. In the context of rapid global change, emerging water challenges require new system thinking and ideas for governance and management, with an innovative and integrated approach that links green and blue water with ecosystems and the broader biosphere that people are embedded within and dependent upon. The human-nature intertwined biosphere of the Anthropocene is stabilized by a core of interlinked water flows, functions, and roles, fundamental for the resilience of Earth’s life support system (its climate, ecosystems, and human societies), encompassing the roles of green water (soil moisture, evapotranspiration) and blue water (surface water, aquifers) in regulating climate, supporting ecosystem service production, and securing societal needs and at the same time shaped by human actions.
Through three basic roles – as the source of resilience, victim of change, and driver of change – modified green and blue water functions tend to result in the degradation of ecosystems and potentially lead to destabilization of social-ecological systems, with or without reinforcing feedback loops. Given that social-ecological system disturbances are already widespread, governance will have to focus on resilience stewardship and resilience building.
This Collection of Global Sustainability welcomes contributions that address a variety of challenges for fostering water resilience, including research on water’s many critical roles for all Earth’s biosphere processes and on social-ecological global system resilience in the face of major global change processes in the Anthropocene life-support system. Topics of relevance include (but are not exclusive to):
- Theoretical and conceptual advancements of water resilience in the Anthropocene
- Data analyses and modelling studies of Anthropocene water resilience dynamics
- Scenario analyses of Anthropocene water resilience futures
- Water resilience in view of potentially complex and non-linear Earth system dynamics
- Water resilience governance and management in the Anthropocene
- The role of Anthropocene connectivity (e.g., of information, goods, and people) for water resilience
- The role of technology and innovations for water resilience
- Social-ecological adaptation and transformations with implications for Anthropocene water resilience
We invite authors to submit research papers or intelligence briefings sharing their research on transformations towards sustainability (see Instructions for Authors for information on different article types). For intelligence briefings, please can you reach out to Alison Paskins with a proposal in the first instance (Publishing Editor for Global Sustainability).
When you formally submit your paper or briefing, please do so via the journal’s ScholarOne site, and select the ‘Fostering water resilience in the Anthropocene” collection from the list of dropdown options. Please also indicate in the cover letter that your submission is in response to this Call for Papers on “Fostering water resilience in the Anthropocene”.
The deadline for submissions to the collection is 31st March 2022.
Lan Wang-Erlandsson (Guest editor)
Michele-Lee Moore (Guest editor)
Carl Folke (Guest editor)
Line Gordon (Guest editor)
Malin Falkenmark (Guest editor)