“I’ve come to think of this trend as the ‘Slow Water’ movement. Like the Slow Food movement founded in Italy in the late 20th century in opposition to fast food and all its ills, Slow Water seeks to remedy the ways in which redirecting and speeding water off the land causes problems.

Slow Water mimics or collaborates with natural systems, restoring space for water to slow on land in wetlands, floodplains, mountain meadows, forests, tidal marshes, and mangroves. Slow Water is distributed, not centralised: think of the wet zones scattered throughout a wild watershed instead of a big dam and reservoir. It is also socially just: Slow Water doesn’t take water from some people to give to others, or protect some communities while pushing floods on to another. Slow Water gives communities agency to restore resilience to their local landscapes and revive local cultures. And in taking a systems-oriented approach, it simultaneously supports local water availability, flood control, natural carbon storage, and other-than-human life.”

Erica Gies, What Does Water Want? Most Humans Seem to Have Forgotten