Editorial: Participatory and just governance: empowering local and Indigenous communities

Melissa Haeffner, Maiko Sakamoto, Jenia Mukherjee, Hong Quan Nguyen, Soyo Takahashi

The papers in this Research Topic (RT) extend insights on the roles of social relations, institutional arrangements, Indigenous ways of knowing, local knowledge, and decision-making participation in shaping water governance and practice. Despite efforts to predict flows and possible hazards, we continue to observe "unintended consequences" when humans interact with waterscapes. What we often learn, we argue, is that what appears "unintended" often reflects a deliberate architecture of exclusion; one that becomes legible only when social power relations are placed at the center of analysis alongside hydrological variables. Doing so may illuminate where injustice complicates intentions and what difference participatory and just governance makes.The authors in this RT mix research methods to examine how hydrogeological landscapes and societal power relations coproduce one another. For example, Morales et al. (2025) identify the space between slope and elevation that exists in Peru in which humans take advantage of high-altitude escarpments to obscure mining activities that alter flows and exacerbate downstream risks. Quechua speaking communities invoke Apu Razuhuillca as a territorial guardian and water as a symbol of identity in protest to the extraction that occurs without the legally required consultation. In this way, grassroots resistance to proposed watershed disruptions are not unintended consequences that could not have been predicted, but are logical responses to a system of institutional exclusion and historical dispossession. Saunders et al. (2025) describe how highly organized fishers in Norway asserted their power to intercept decision-making at critical moments that changed institutional outcomes and processes. In this case study, economic growth narratives pushed forward offshore wind energy without consulting fishers. Saunders et al. (2025) juxtapose this case study with small fishers in Brazil who organized bycatch monitoring to reshape environmental policy and challenge stereotypes of fishers as anti-environmentalist. A third case study describes how fishers in South Africa took legal action to expose environmental and social costs of estuarine diamond mining. In all cases, resistance on the part of fishers might be seen as "unintended consequences" if one focuses only on dominant narratives and fails to account for threatened fishing livelihoods, marine ecology impacts, and/or threats to national identity. Since authorities intentionally worked with market-based entities, not consulting rightsholders and stakeholders should be understood as intentional in the sense that the system is designed to leave out certain voices. 2026) develop this argument through community water management in Colombia's Guarino River Basin, where local roundtables, emergency assemblies, and strikes emerge as responses to persistent state failure. These are not merely complaints about "being left out," but resistance to the capitalist reduction of water as a resource for extraction-driven growth -a political act that re-signifies water from its role in reproducing life. Sugiura (2026) offers a different path from exclusion, "gentle power," in which local participation in these sites is neither coerced nor completely voluntary. Rather, roles remain flexible enough to legitimize local knowledge for adaptation and transformation. They explain how the hydrological landscapes we see today in Japan, especially Tokyo's satoyama,foot_0 were shaped by centuries of water diversions for paddy cultivation. Socio-hydro-ecological processes co-create a system that supports biodiversity reproduction and carbon sequestration in which traditional farmers have leveraged local knowledge to impel policy change. The result is an improvisation that allows institutional assumptions to be challenged and power reconfigured. Understanding how different social groups interact in bidirectional ways with hydrological and ecological variables broadens the ability of sociohydrology studies to describe and understand such causal mechanisms in more detail.Yet, community participation is not straightforward. Zimmerman and Meierhofer ( 2026) explain how one-way international water system developments have evolved from importing materials to donations with strings attached to water partnerships with local communities. Drawing on cases across six countries: Madagascar, Uganda, India, Colombia, Peru, and Nepal, they identify an eight-step roadmap for participatory processes, because, as many authors in this SI and others point out, community engagement must be intentional and careful if we are to ensure real justice outcomes for communities (Rusca, et al. 2026).Aboagye and Nakamura (2026) make this concrete through a systematic review of flood early warning (FEWS) governance. They find evidence to support the claim that capabilities injustice shapes barriers to risk knowledge (e.g., awareness), monitoring and forecasting (e.g., data gaps), warning dissemination (e.g., timely messages), and response capabilities (e.g., preparedness and plans). The study further determines that injustice in one area amplifies injustice in others, particularly around capability injustice, which they define as "the unequal opportunities to utilize or access opportunities to enhance capabilities to operate or benefit from the system." Justice links territorial care, autonomy, and legitimacy to produce different trajectories of water governance and management.We close with two commitments that shaped this RT. First, we do not use "local" and "Indigenous" interchangeably. Indigenous communities are rightsholders with legitimate claims to territories -not simply stakeholders with an interest. We intentionally make visible the legitimate knowledges that are routinely absent from scientific endeavors and dedicate space to center those experiences.Second, we acted on this commitment in the conference from which this RT emerged. Representatives of Ngäbe Buglé (Panamá) and Akiak Native Community (United States), an Indigenous data sovereignty scholar (Navajo Nation citizen, United States), and colleagues who work closely with members of Raporo Ainu (Japan) and the Village of Selkie (Finland) communities headlined oral sessions -oriented not toward information transfer, but toward listening, showing up, and inviting in. After the conference, the Indigenous members and scientists traveled together to Hokkaido, where members of the Raporo Ainu Nation shared food, dance, and stories. Care, we believe, belongs within our scientific walls and in our actions.