Post date 9 Feb 2026 (original LinkedIn date)
Original LinkedIn version· 1,569 words
Water has always connected us. Now it’s becoming a fault line. We no longer have the capacity to be the bridge over troubled water (thanks S&G)
I spent a day last week with the Moors for the Future Partnership, escaping the whirlwind that was IPBES 12, out in the Peak District in sub zero temperatures, seeing restoration up close with my wonderful colleague, Prof Neil Entwistle. Not the tidy, brochure version of nature-based solutions, but the real work. Wet boots, wind in your face, and the quiet satisfaction of seeing human effort reverse human damage.
We stood on peat that has, in places, been carved open by erosion mainly from 150 years of industrial pollution. Deep gullies where water has been rushing off the hill, taking the landscape with it. And then you see what the fix looks like. Simple, patient, almost humble.
Small gully blocks (peat, wood or stone) that slow the flow, hold water back, and start rebuilding the sponge. Re-vegetation that stabilises bare peat. And sphagnum, the ‘super moss’, that turns a fragile surface into functioning blanket bog again, with all the knock-on benefits that come with that. Re-wetting, in other words, not as an abstract concept, but as a physical change you can see happening in front of you.
On the way back to Manchester for the rest of my IPBES week, I kept thinking about a line a friend wrote recently: “Water has long been a connector. Increasingly, it risks becoming a strategic fault line.” That struck harder after a day like mine, because you can feel both truths at once. Water connects landscapes, communities, economies, and ecosystems. But when it’s scarce, polluted, or politically contested, it can also connect us to instability, resentment, and crisis. Except, if I’m honest, ‘crisis’ is starting to feel like the wrong word.
From “water crisis” to “water bankruptcy”
The UN’s “global water bankruptcy” framing might seem melodramatic on the surface but it is powerful because it’s familiar. We understand what it means to live off income versus run down savings. Applied to water, that becomes renewable flows versus long-term stores like aquifers, wetlands, soils, glaciers, and functioning river systems. When withdrawals exceed replenishment for long enough, and when the damage becomes irreversible or effectively irreversible on human timescales, we’re not just stressed. We’re bankrupt.
That framing also matters because bankruptcy is not only about scarcity. It’s about governance catching up with reality: admitting what can’t be restored quickly, protecting what remains, and reallocating rights and responsibilities fairly.
Cooperation is under threat, and that should worry us
The danger isn’t ‘water wars’ as a Hollywood trope (cue Kevin Costner coming over the horizon!). It’s the quieter risk that we dismantle the institutions and habits of cooperation that have helped prevent conflict for decades, and lose the benefits that shared governance can deliver. Once you accept the “bankruptcy” idea, you also accept this: water is now a strategic variable in almost everything. Food security. Energy. Public health. Urban resilience. Nature recovery. Political trust.
So yes, this is a global story. But it’s not helpful to talk about it as if the UK is watching from the sidelines.
The UK: not ‘water scarce’, but increasingly water fragile
We’re a rainy country with a surprisingly fragile water system. We have poor water quality in too many places. We have ageing infrastructure and leaky networks. We have catchments that shed water too quickly in winter and hold too little in summer. We have landscapes that have been engineered for drainage and extraction, then we act surprised when floods and droughts both increase.
We’re also learning, sometimes the hard way, that wildfire risk isn’t just a Mediterranean issue. Dry peat burns. And when peat burns, it doesn’t only release carbon. It strips the land of its ability to regulate water, amplifying downstream impacts long after the flames are out. Visibility dips to dangerous levels as it did on the M62 just a few years’ ago. This is why days like today matter. Because you can literally stand on an answer.
The moors as water infrastructure
If you want a mental model that helps shift behaviour, try this. We could think of treating upland peatlands as national water infrastructure. Not metaphorically, but functionally.
Healthy blanket bog slows water, stores it, filters it, and releases it gradually. It reduces peak flows, lowers sediment loads, improves raw water quality, and builds resilience to dry spells. It also locks up carbon and supports biodiversity, which matters in its own right, and because biodiversity and water function are tangled together. When the ecosystem goes, the hydrology goes with it.
This is where the Moors for the Future Partnership work lands with such force. Gully blocking and sphagnum planting are not simply nice to have. They are risk management and they are catchment repair. And it raises a slightly uncomfortable question.
If we can see the interventions, understand the logic, and quantify many of the benefits, why aren’t we doing this at the scale the moment demands? Are we sat in meeting rooms having too may grand discussions about planning and what might be?
The constraint isn’t knowledge. It’s courage.
In many cases we already know what works: restore wetlands and peatlands that act as natural reservoirs. Slow the flow in headwaters and make space for water in floodplains. Reduce diffuse pollution at source, especially nutrients and sediment. Fix leakage and modernise treatment where grey infrastructure is failing. Plan for drought and heat with the same seriousness we now plan for floods.
None of that is mysterious. The harder part is choosing to act decisively when the benefits are dispersed, long-dated, and shared, while the costs are immediate and sit on somebody’s budget line. So this is why ‘bankruptcy’ is such a useful word. It forces a balance-sheet conversation. If we keep paying out short-term dividends while liquidating the underlying asset, collapse is not a surprise. It’s the logical endpoint.
A better question perhaps for us here in the UK: how do we rebuild the water balance sheet?
Here are a few practical shifts that feel within reach, if we’re willing to be honest and do the hard graft (kudos to the volunteers atop Snake Pass out planting in the freezing fog).
First, stop treating water as a downstream problem. If we only focus on the product, clean water delivered at the tap, we miss the processes that create stable water systems in the first place. Catchments are the engine room.
Second, invest where leverage is highest: in catchments. If you improve the condition of a catchment, you get multiple returns. Better raw water quality, lower treatment costs, reduced flood peaks, improved baseflows, biodiversity gains, carbon benefits, and often stronger local buy-in because people can see the work.
Third, pay for outcomes, not discussions. If we want private capital alongside public funding, it needs credible revenues tied to measurable outcomes. Cleaner water, reduced sediment, lower flood risk, and more reliable supply - we know the formula. This is where “nature as infrastructure” stops being a slogan and becomes a true contract between us and the planet.
Fourth, make resilience a political story people can live in. Most people don’t wake up thinking about hydrological overshoot. They do care about whether their kids can swim safely in rivers, whether homes flood, whether food bills spike after droughts, and whether summer hosepipe bans become normal.
Fifth, put fairness at the centre. Water bankruptcy is a justice issue as much as a technical one. If reforms feel unfair, they will fail.
Water can still be a connector, if we choose it
Water connects upstream and downstream, rural and urban, nature and economy, health and food, people and place, Manchester and the Pennines. It can still be a bridge, even in a fractured world, but only if we keep the institutions, incentives, and shared sense of purpose that make cooperation possible.
And at least in the UK, there’s a hopeful twist. We are not short of capability. We have brilliant practitioners, land managers, scientists, engineers, and community partnerships. That day was proof enough for me. We have answers to hand in so many cases.
What we’re short of is the collective bravery to move from discussions thru pilots and patches to transformation at scale.
So, two questions I’ll leave here:
If healthy peatlands, wetlands, and catchments function as water infrastructure, why aren’t they funded and governed like water infrastructure?
What would it take for us to treat restoration not as optional ‘environmental spend’, but as one of the cheapest and most durable forms of national resilience we can buy?
If you’ve worked on catchment partnerships, upland restoration, water company strategy, or finance for nature-based solutions, I’d love to hear what you think is the biggest unlock. And if you ever get the chance to go and see gully blocking and sphagnum planting in action, take it. It’s one of the most quietly optimistic things you can do with a day!
References
Moors for the Future Partnership website:
https://www.moorsforthefuture.org.uk/
Peak District National Park Authority, Moors for the Future project page: https://www.peakdistrict.gov.uk/looking-after/projects-and-partnerships/mff
United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era (the PDF you attached)
The New Security Beat (NewSecurityBeat.org), “Water Cooperation Is Under Threat: Water Has Always Been a Connector, But a Look at the Future Makes Us Worry”: https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2026/01/water-cooperation-is-under-threat-water-has-always-been-a-connector-but-a-look-at-the-future-makes-us-worry/