Language of Water

Ancient Techniques and Community Stories for a Water Secure Future

The Language of Water addresses climate change and the global water crisis by shifting the existing paradigms around our relationship to water with powerful stories and tangible techniques from communities worldwide who are reviving ancient water holding methods, inviting every human being into a new consciousness around our most precious resource.

“‘Water’ and ‘survival’ are pretty much the same thing, so it’s no wonder that local communities, facing record drought and heat, are taking matters into their own hands. These are stirring stories of the recovery of time-honored techniques that will be desperately important as the climate crisis keeps building.” —Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

Going beyond simply addressing climate change, The Language of Water addresses how to actively change the climate by learning from communities around the world and their traditional relationships with water. With powerful stories demonstrating tangible, successful water-holding techniques, this book extends an invitation to us all: can we keep the world in balance by learning to speak the language of our most precious resource?

Authors Minni Jain and Philip Franses of The Flow Partnership draw from decades of experience with community-led management of floods and droughts in India, Africa, the United States, Europe, the United Kingdom, and other regions of the world to demonstrate, again and again, how rejuvenated groundwater can cool the atmosphere, revive local economies, restore food security, store carbon, and rebalance our planet. This timely book offers new clarity about the actions that can be taken, individually and collectively, to address our climate challenges. In an era when many villages and cities are overdrawing water from aquifers, relying on desalination for drinking water, and breaking the relationship between humans and the water cycle, this crucial work presents a vision for renewal.