Liquid Brazil and the myth of abundance: when water flows faster than consciousness. OPINION October 21, 2025

Unsplash photo by Glauber Sampaio

Liquid Brazil and the myth of abundance: when water flows faster than consciousness

By Claudia Andrade

Brazil is a liquid country. Abundant in rivers, promises, and contradictions. A territory that holds 12% of the planet's surface freshwater, yet still lives with dry taps, makeshift buckets, and wells that have become a legacy of survival. There is a painful irony in being a water powerhouse and, at the same time, vulnerable. On the eve of COP30, when the world will turn its eyes to Belém, I can't help but think that Brazil arrives on this stage with the same dissonance that runs through me when I return from the field: a speech too beautiful for the reality that slips through our fingers.

We have learned to talk green. We have learned to perform sustainability in reports, campaigns, and corporate dashboards. But we have not yet learned to act green. I've heard this from executives, politicians, and even colleagues in the field—all with the feeling that ESG has become a kind of "prestige language," a badge of approval for belonging to the modern world. And the problem is that, while green gets likes, brown continues to take over the rivers. With each impact report, I think of what Ulrich Beck called reflexive modernization: when we recognize environmental risk, but only manage it as a symbol, not as an urgent matter.

There's so much talk about planetary regeneration, but little about human regeneration. The ecological transition the world is celebrating hasn't been fair—it's been selective. And the green economy in Brazil risks repeating the pattern of the old economy: concentrating opportunities, excluding territories, and romanticizing what remains scarce.

There is no environmental justice where there's a lack of water. And water inequality is perhaps the cruelest face of Brazilian inequality. I've seen mothers boil yellowish water to prepare their children's milk. I've heard children ask why "good water is only for schools." I've seen a well become a reason for celebration. These scenes haunt me because they demonstrate how far global discourse still falls short of the mark. How can we think of a circular economy when the basics still don't circulate? How can we talk about SDG 6 when drinking water is still a luxury item in so many places? Bruno Latour said that "we were never modern." Perhaps we Brazilians have never been sustainable. We've simply refined the rhetoric of abundance while maintaining scarcity as our destiny.

Water should be at the center of the economy, politics, and life. Yet it continues to be treated as an invisible commodity, as if it were eternal. The world has already understood that the 21st century will be defined by the geopolitics of water—energy, production, food security, and survival. The UN warns that, by 2030, global demand will exceed supply by 40%. And Brazil? It still wastes more than 35% of treated water before it reaches the tap. Here, there's no shortage of water: there's a lack of vision. There's a lack of priority. There's a lack of courage to say that development without sanitation is just nice talk, eager for applause.

At major events, I notice the same script: "sustainability" is repeated in every speech, but emptied of meaning. "Just transition," "governance," "net zero." Words that sound good, but outside of air-conditioned rooms, they don't move a single water pump. The risk is that we think we're saving the planet while merely polishing our image. Innovation isn't enough if it doesn't regenerate the relationship between people and nature.

Ignacy Sachs said that "there is no sustainable development without social development." And that's what resonates with me every time I return from the backlands: the social aspect is still a footnote in climate discourse. Carbon is talked about, but little is said about children drinking contaminated water. Energy efficiency is talked about, but the effectiveness of empathy isn't measured. Water, in Brazil, is still a mirror of who we are: powerful, but negligent.

And that's why, sometimes, I think the future doesn't depend solely on new climate agreements, targets, or funds. It depends on our ability to re-enchant the essential.

Because, in the end, what the world calls a resource, I continue to call life.

And life, when it slips through our fingers, brings with it the chance to transform abundance into a legacy.

#SDG 6

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