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Achieving universal, safely managed water and sanitation services by 2030, as envisioned by the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, is projected to require capital expenditures of USD 114 billion per year (1). Investment on that scale, along with accompanying policy reforms, can be motivated by a growing appreciation of the value of water. Yet our ability to value water, and incorporate these values into water governance, is inadequate. Newly recognized cascading negative impacts of water scarcity, pollution, and flooding underscore the need to change the way we value water (2). With the UN/World Bank High Level Panel on Water having launched the Valuing Water Initiative in 2017 to chart principles and pathways for valuing water, we see a global opportunity to rethink the value of water. We outline four steps toward better valuation and management (see the box), examine recent advances in each of these areas, and argue that these four steps must be integrated to overcome the barriers that have stymied past efforts

The planetary boundaries framework defines the “safe operating space for humanity” represented by nine global processes that can destabilize the Earth System if perturbed. The water planetary boundary attempts to provide a global limit to anthropogenic water cycle modifications, but it has been challenging to translate and apply it to the regional and local scales at which water problems and management typically occur. We develop a cross‐scale approach by which the water planetary boundary could guide sustainable water management and governance at subglobal contexts defined by physical features (e.g., watershed or aquifer), political borders (e.g., city, nation, or group of nations), or commercial entities (e.g., corporation, trade group, or financial institution). The application of the water planetary boundary at these subglobal contexts occurs via two approaches: (i) calculating fair shares, in which local water cycle modifications are compared to that context's allocation of the global safe operating space, taking into account biophysical, socioeconomic, and ethical considerations; and (ii) defining a local safe operating space, in which interactions between water stores and Earth System components are used to define local boundaries required for sustaining the local water system in stable conditions, which we demonstrate with a case study of the Cienaga Grande de Santa Marta wetlands in Colombia. By harmonizing these two approaches, the water planetary boundary can ensure that water cycle modifications remain within both local and global boundaries and complement existing water management and governance approaches.

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A major opportunity exists in the transition from the disciplinary Millennium Development Goals (MDG's) to the more interdisciplinary Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's) to transform the dialogue around the environment from its current conceptualization as a constraining factor towards its utilization an enabling force for sustainable development.Agricultural ecosystems are the ecosystems closest to human well-being providing 31% of global employment, and the sustenance for the entirety of the global population. Despite this central contribution, agricultural systems or agroecosystems are responsible for driving significant environmental pressures while failing to provide sustainable diets for a world that is increasing either under-or malnourished. Agriculture's dual change is often presented as a trade-off between conservation and development objectives. However, an increasing body of research demonstrates that agricultural systems are both wholly dependent on, and potentially net providers of ecosystem services beyond food production. Recognizing this dual role allows for greater convergence between conservation and development objectives and leverages environmental management of agricultural system as a means to achieving global sustainability goals. We propose a simple framework for ecosystem services and resilience in agricultural landscapes to better capture and operationalize interactions between ecosystem services provided to agriculture, and those provided from agriculture. We discuss how such a perspective influences definitions of production ecosystem services and emphasize the need for greater focus on resilience and regulating services. We argue for better applications of resilience-based approaches and call for refocusing ecosystem service research on human well-being outcomes articulated in the social targets of the SDGs, in addition to the more traditional biophysical and conservation based outcomes.