Rethinking water security: integrating justice, governance, and socio-hydrological dynamics

This perspective paper argues that persistent global water insecurity reflects inequality rather than absolute scarcity. Despite international recognition of the human right to water, billions remain water-insecure, including many in water-rich countries, revealing a persistent mismatch between availability and access. Building on six papers in this Research Topic, we use the AAAQG framework, encompassing availability, accessibility, acceptability, quality, and governance, to develop a comparative perspective on water security as a dynamic socio-hydrological and justice-related condition. Across the contributions, water insecurity emerges less as a consequence of hydrological limits than of institutions, unequal power relations, fragmented governance, and wider poly-crisis dynamics. Our main contribution is to highlight a central tension between technically centralised water management and hybrid-localised water realities, showing that water security is co-produced through infrastructure, institutions, and lived practices. This tension demonstrates that materially and socially grounded responses must be addressed together. The paper concludes that advancing water security requires justice-oriented, adaptive, participatory, and cross-sectoral governance grounded in local contexts and lived experiences.