It is summer. It is very hot. We don't stop drinking liquids and we would spend the day in the water, be it in the sea, in a river, in the pool, under the shower. We would like to live soaking. Do we clearly understand the privilege of opening the tap and always getting a good stream? Millions of people suffer from water scarcity in urban environments. And at the same time, they feel the recurring threat of cold drops (danes). Viewed globally, water is not a scarce commodity: it is simply poorly distributed. Technology helps a lot, but it is not everything. Everywhere, agriculture-livestock-fishing, tourism, and urban planning generate needs that are difficult to balance. AI has just been added to the intensive demand for water.
Ariadna Romans i Torrent (Girona, 1997) is a researcher at the University of Amsterdam. In Sweet or Salty. An Ethics of Water (Edicions Enoanda) she immerses us in a new liquid culture. She addresses it in search of solutions, without hiding contradictions and gaps. Along with food, water is essential for human survival, as much or more than education and health services. On the other hand, it is talked about much less. We take it for granted. It is difficult to get clear water from its management and governance. One fact: the price in Barcelona, where private management has a history of more than a century, is the highest in the State.
The extreme drought of 2023 and the Valencian dana of 2024 brought us face to face with the harsh reality of the planetary climate crisis. Water became the core of our laments. We thought we had mastered it. Historically, we have wanted to subject it to human whims, colonize it, control it. But it does not allow it, it escapes. Always. Since time immemorial. Until today.
Behind the concept of panta rei –flow as the condition of all existence–, Heraclitus left his famous saying: "You will never step twice into the same river". Water is always another and you are also another. Everything changes. In an adult body, 60% is water. We are liquid. For Thales, water is the arkhé, the principle of all things: flow, relationship, and power. Persistent and mutable. Symbolically, we relate it to the ideas of purity, cleanliness, fertility, and life. Religions grant it an essential role. It is not just matter, it is also energy and consciousness of our interdependence with nature. If there is a universal deity, it is Nature, always thirsty.
From Panikkar's ecosophy or Vandana Shiva's ecofeminism, through the examples of Honduran Berta Cáceres (murdered in 2026 for defending the Gualcarque River) and South African Wangari Maathai (2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner), the author reviews the trajectory of many female fighters who have valued the role of women in the daily management of water in environments of scarcity and cites good initiatives, including Waterspace, a platform promoted by the Barcelona-based Fundació Enric Miralles.
Stijn Neuteleers, a Dutch philosopher and engineer, and one of the most influential voices in water ethics, advocates a simple idea: technical decisions about water are always moral decisions. Our water footprint is also an ethical footprint. When we build a dam, purify an aquifer, or set the price of water, whom do we benefit and whom do we harm? Water should make us thirsty for justice.
It is a common good that is a source of quality of life: health, well-being, joy, intimacy, peace. It cannot be solely a source of wealth. Although it can be. In South Africa, a few years ago, "poo protests" proliferated due to the lamentable sanitation of water after cases of children drowning in latrines occurred. Having clean and safe water should be a planetary priority. From microplastics to cruder and more aggressive actions, the polluting pressure is intense. So is the need: 16,000 liters are needed to produce one kilogram of beef and 160 liters for a cup of coffee.
The oceans produce more oxygen than forests. Indonesia, straddling the Indian and Pacific Oceans, is a country of 275 million inhabitants surrounded by water, made up of more than 17,500 islands. The sea – fishing, corals, the fabulous underwater biodiversity – is its future. It is also the world's future. A sea that is deteriorating before our curious and helpless eyes. Sweet or salty, we urgently need a universal ethic of water. It's obvious, isn't it? But at home we often say: you wouldn't find water in the sea!
