Water security between Scylla and Charybdis

Against the background of more than one billion people worldwide without regular access to clean water and sanitation, an intensive debate has been going on about water security for many years now. The social sciences have been dealing with the phenomenon of (environmental) security for some time. Their interest relates on the one hand to the meaning and content of security, but also to the contexts, practices and discursive intentions of those who engage in security debate. In this respect, there is a division between those researchers who want to actively engage in creating of water security, but who run the risk of legitimizing problematic policies, and those who, in the poststructuralist tradition, take a critical eye on discourses and practices of security, but who hesitate to offer guidance for action. This paper explores this dilemma of water security between Scylla and Charybdis and hints at contributions of application-oriented ethics to navigate this dilemma.