Drinkable rivers, swimmable cities – Towards a new standard for urban water
In August 2025, during World Water Week in Stockholm, delegates marked the inaugural UN World Lakes Day by entering the water of a nearby lake. The gesture reflected a broader international discussion on the role of urban and regional waterways, increasingly viewed not only as engineered systems for drainage, navigation and supply, but also as environmental assets that can support recreation, ecological function and public health.
The increasing visibility of initiatives centred on “swimmable cities” and “drinkable rivers” signals a shift in ambition within global water governance. Across continents, cities and regions are exploring what it would mean to restore water bodies to a condition where direct human contact is safe, and where drinking water quality could once again become an attainable benchmark.
These developments are discussed in the Waterproof podcast episode “Drinkable Rivers, Swimmable Cities”, produced by Partners for Water, in which practitioners, writers and cultural thinkers reflect on changing relationships between society and water systems.
Swimming as an emerging urban standard
In the lead-up to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, substantial investment was directed towards improving water quality in the Seine to enable open-water events. Measures included upgrades to wastewater infrastructure, reductions in combined sewer overflows, and enhanced monitoring systems. While the improvements were event-driven, they demonstrated how coordinated investment and regulation can improve river conditions in dense urban environments.
At a broader scale, the Swimmable Cities initiative has developed as an international platform that promotes safe public access to urban waterways. Since its launch around the Olympic period, it has been endorsed by more than 150 organisations across approximately 80 cities. The initiative frames swimability as a practical indicator of water quality and system performance, linking it to factors such as wastewater treatment efficiency, stormwater management, and regulatory enforcement.
From a policy perspective, swimability provides a relatively clear and communicable benchmark. It translates technical water quality parameters into a condition that is directly understandable to the public, while also requiring integrated management across infrastructure, governance and environmental monitoring.
From swimmable to drinkable: raising the ambition
The concept of “drinkable rivers” extends this logic further, by using drinking-quality standards as a long-term reference point for river restoration. The initiative Drinkable Rivers, founded by Dutch water advocate and university teacher Li An Phoa, seeks to reframe rivers as living systems that can, over time, be restored to drinking-quality standards. Watch the TEDx talk by Li An Phoa for further insight into this vision.
A notable example is the Scheldt river walk, during which Phoa and participants covered approximately 370 kilometres along the river, engaging over 1,300 people and involving citizen science activities with schools and local communities. The initiative culminated in a “River Intention Declaration”, expressing a shared long-term aspiration for a drinkable Scheldt. This declaration has since been endorsed by two municipalities, marking an initial step towards policy recognition of river restoration ambitions.
The Dutch contribution to this movement is particularly significant in connecting civic engagement with governance structures and applied water expertise. The Netherlands’ long-standing tradition in integrated water management, spatial planning and delta governance provides a foundation for exploring higher-performance standards in urban water systems, including transitions from compliance-based approaches to ambition-led restoration frameworks.
As Phoa has argued, transformative change does not necessarily require formal mandate at the outset: local engagement, stewardship and collective responsibility can act as catalysts for broader institutional alignment.
Rivers in governance, culture and legal discourse
Complementing these initiatives is a growing cultural and legal discourse on the status of rivers and marine environments. In 'Is a River Alive?', writer Robert Macfarlane explores evolving perceptions of rivers within legal and ethical frameworks, questioning why natural systems are not accorded forms of legal standing comparable to corporations.
This debate aligns with emerging international practices recognising ecosystems as entities with rights or protected status. In the Netherlands, initiatives such as the Embassy of the North Sea, developed in The Hague, examine how marine environments might be represented within political and decision-making systems, including the concept of the North Sea as a stakeholder with its own interests.
These developments reflect a broader shift from managing water solely as infrastructure towards recognising it as a living system embedded in ecological, cultural and political relations.
Towards new benchmarks for urban water
Collectively, these movements point towards a redefinition of success in water management. Rather than relying solely on technical compliance indicators, there is growing interest in outcome-based and publicly legible standards such as “swimmable” and “drinkable” water.
Such benchmarks translate complex systems - wastewater treatment, nutrient loads, hydrological regulation and ecological recovery - into outcomes that are directly experienced and understood by citizens. In doing so, they strengthen public accountability while encouraging long-term investment in water quality.
In the Dutch context, where water governance has historically combined engineering excellence with adaptive spatial planning, these emerging standards offer an opportunity to contribute to international leadership in urban water transformation. They also reflect wider international discussions on how cities can adapt water systems under conditions of climate change, urbanisation and ecological pressure.
As urban areas face intensifying water challenges, the question is no longer only how water is managed, but what level of water quality society collectively considers acceptable. Swimmable and drinkable rivers provide a clear articulation of that ambition.
