Water injustice in a changing climate: a literature review of empirical cases across OECD river basins

Climate change intensifies droughts and floods, altering the supply and demand of water resources in ways that may produce or reproduce water injustice. Understanding where, when, and how these injustices emerge is critical to ensure fair water governance. Using a systemic literature review, this paper seeks to advance research on water governance by compiling and analyzing empirical examples of water injustice in a changing climate across OECD river basins.

The review finds a predominant focus on water scarcity. Manifestations of water injustice vary across contexts, and responses are insufficient to address their root causes. Water injustice is for the most part operationalised in ways that integrate distributional, procedural, and recognitional dimensions.

The literature highlights four distributive water injustices, including maladaptive outcomes, unequal adaptive capacities, unjust energy transitions, and state and industry priorities. Two procedural water injustices emerge, namely historical exclusion from water governance and practical barriers to participation. Participatory interventions are put forward as a response.

The literature on recognitional water injustices points to the misrecognition of Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies, local knowledge, and root causes of water injustice.

These findings lead to four recommendation for future research and practice: (1) take the local context seriously when researching and addressing water injustice, (2) adopt a systems perspective, (3) accelerate societal transformations to tackle the root causes of water injustice, and (4) address underexplored research areas including unintended consequences emerging from participatory interventions, epistemic injustices in water governance, social vulnerability and water (in)justice, and implications of maladaptation for water injustice.