11 Protect and Restore Water Sovereignty

Water is life; Design Justice demands that we center community-held water management practices, and stop the extractive, exploitative culture and practices that position water as an element to be controlled and commodified.

Water is life; Design Justice demands that we center community-held water management practices, and stop the extractive, exploitative culture and practices that position water as an element to be controlled and commodified. For too long, water systems contaminated by colonial paradigms of development, governance, and power structures have poisoned communities (disproportionately BIPOC communities). These same communities are also at the front lines of impending sea level change. Design Justice calls for environmental justice by de-privatizing our fundamental rights to water, including access, movement, storage, and treatment) and for direct reparations to communities living in the legacies of disinvested water infrastructure.  Design Justice demands that we center Black and Indigenous leadership in community-held water management practices, address existing infrastructure failures, and uphold all Indigenous water claims.  This demand is a direct challenge against the system of racial capitalism that continues to create toxic hazards and “sacrifice zones”. While we envision a new relationship to water that is rooted in justice, we also hold the parts of the design industry, such as pipeline construction, that are accountable for the complicity of worsening the climate and water crisis we are collectively facing.