Water is essential for life. And Anne Lausier and Shaleen Jain say a reevaluation and refocusing of the ways that water resources are managed are urgently needed. Equity should be a foundational tenet of management, they say, especially today when there are unprecedented pressures on Earth’s freshwater resources and ecosystems. Toward that goal, Lausier and read more Lausier, Jain develop framework to evaluate equitable stewardship of water resources