Language of Water

by Fernanda Baraybar | August 16, 2024

In this practical storybook and How To manual for addressing extreme weather and climate change borne of rising temperatures at the poles, deforestation, and heat islands in cities, authors Minni Jain and Philip Franses of The Flow Partnership draw from decades of experience with community-led management of floods and droughts using simple, low-cost traditional methods. They aim to replenish the world’s water bank by empowering local collective action through landscape regeneration skills and educational models that can be replicated throughout the world. Their case studies—drawn from Colombia, India, Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, the United States, the United Kingdom, and beyond—demonstrate how a rejuvenated groundwater supply can cool the atmosphere, revive local economies, restore local food sources, and allow women and children greater access to education.

The Language of Water is a message of hope for everyone invested in the future of this planet, from the urban dweller who turns on the tap without thinking twice to rural dwellers whose entire livelihood, health, and well-being can be transformed by speaking the language of water. In an era when many villages and cities are overdrawing from aquifers, directing water from floods into the sea, relying on desalination for drinking water, and breaking the relationship between humans and the water cycle, this crucial work argues that human survival will not be ensured by new, complicated hydrologic engineering and technologies, but by remembering how to speak the language of water through reviving indigenous knowledge. With ancient methods like leaky log dams and rainwater harvesting using diversion and water holding structures, we can intercept, slow, store, and filter our water, collectively slowing global warming in the process.

Everyone understands that without water there is no life, yet many are disconnected from their local watersheds and feel helpless to address the mounting ecological crises of our planet. But once we better understand the climate crisis through the language of water, we can take the effective steps to bring the earth back into balance again. The Language of Water gives us a glimmer of hope that we really can resolve our most pressing climate challenges by bringing back water—together.