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                              Nature Sustainability                          volume 5, page 92 (2022)                     
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To the Editor — In a recent (August 2021) Editorial1, the editors of Nature Sustainability argue that little innovative research seems to emerge in water studies. They invite the community to reinvent what they see as a ‘stagnant’ field. Central to their argument is the statement that “water studies as a field may have largely given up on historical context and institutional change … as [it] has become more quantified and technically driven, it has also become less grounded”.
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UMR GEAU, IRD, University of Montpellier, Montpellier, France
Jean-Philippe Venot & François Molle
WRM Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands
Jeroen Vos, Gert Jan Veldwisch & Rutgerd Boelens
Water Governance Department, IHE-Delft, Delft, The Netherlands
Margreet Zwarteveen, Jeltsje Kemerink-Seyoum, Michelle Kooy & Klaas Schwartz
UMR GEAU, CIRAD, University of Montpellier, Montpellier, France
Marcel Kuper
water@leeds, School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
Anna Mdee
Civil Engineering and Geosciences, TU Delft, Delft, The Netherlands
Maurits Ertsen
Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
Frances Cleaver
School of International Development, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
Bruce Lankford
SEED, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Larry Swatuk
GEOLAB, University of Limoges, Limoges, France
Jamie Linton
IRS, GRSJ, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Leila M. Harris
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Correspondence to                 Jean-Philippe Venot.
The authors declare no competing interests.
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Venot, JP., Vos, J., Molle, F. et al. A bridge over troubled waters.                     Nat Sustain 5, 92 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00835-y
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Published: 23 December 2021
Issue Date: February 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00835-y
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