Water is recognized to pose some very urgent questions in the near future. A
significant number of people are deprived of clean drinking water and sanitation services,
with an accordingly high percentage of people dying from water borne diseases. At the same
time, an increasing percentage of the global population lives in areas that are at risk of flooding,
partly exacerbated by climate change. Although it is increasingly recognized that adequate
governance of water requires that issues of “equity” or “social justice” are taken into account,
political philosophers or applied ethicists have so far not or only barely been involved in the
debate on water governance. In this paper, it is argued that political philosophers or applied
ethicists should become more involved in the debate on water governance. Their role can be
twofold: (1) clarifying the debate; and (2) help analyzing some urgent distributive questions
related to water governance. The paper is concluded with an outline for an ethics of water
governance.
Key words: risk, scarcity, human rights, distributive justice, responsibility.
