Over at Circle of Blue WaterNews, we’re reporting today on another ingredient to consider in the context of the China-Tibet conflict. Keith Schneider and C.T. Pope write that the Tibetan Plateau’s vast reserves of glacial freshwater, which supply Asia’s most populous regions, are both at risk and are emerging as an issue in the increasingly tense political and cultural strife between China and Tibet.

“At least 500 million people in Asia and 250 million people in China are at risk from declining glacial flows on the Tibetan Plateau,” Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, told me last week. “This is one of the great concerns — a staggering number of people will be affected in the near future. There aren’t too many researchers who have looked at this water situation and its far-reaching impacts.”

As we’ve heard many times, the UN estimates that two-thirds of the world’s population will live in areas of water stress within the next 20 years. By the numbers, much of that population is in buy Good Charlottle albumsAsia.

With more than a quarter of its land classified as desert, China has long sought Tibet’s water resources. Yet the IPCC and others warn that the Himalayan glaciers are receding faster than anywhere in the world and could vanish within three decades.

Said Geoff Dabelko, director of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., “Nearly two billion people are in some way dependent on water originating on the Tibetan Plateau. By definition, that makes it high politics and critically important in a politically strategic sense.”

Hear the full interview with Dr. Dabelko on Huffington Post, as well as excerpts from the latest Journal of International Affairs, which illuminates water’s role in transboundary cooperation and conflict resolution.

On the Tibetan Plateau, where a whim of nature created the highest points on Earth, many of the world’s major rivers are born. Each day their flows bring life to more than a billion people downstream in Asia, the planet’s most populous region.

As we watch the headlines in an age of shifting water supplies, we may see a future filled with conflict and war over water resources, flows and quality.

Prayer flags and khatags, Tibetan ceremonial silk scarves, fly over the wide Yarlung Tsangpo River in central Tibet’s U-Tsang region. It is the highest major river in the world. Photo: Alison Domzalski

For example, we report today at Circle of Blue’s WaterNews the water-strategic importance of the Tibetan Plateau. It doesn’t take much to imagine the stress and potential for conflict downstream, particularly with China’s propensity for hydrological engineering.

However, flip the perspective 180 degrees and we may have seeds for some of the greatest collaborations and cooperative opportunities in history. This according to an essay by Karin Bencala and Dr. Geoffrey Dabelko published Tuesday in the Journal of International Affairs.

In the Middle East, for example, “Water and sanitation investments are pitched as providing peace dividends,” according to the essay, Water Wars: Obscuring Opportunities. Dabelko directs the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Environmental Change and Security Program; Bencala is program assistant.

True, the planet’s water challenges are great, the situation grim. As Circle of Blue reported last year, drought and poor water management are spurring immigration to the United States from Mexican agrarian communities. Similarly, Inner Mongolian herders face desertification and relocation, and as glaciers retreat, Peruvian pastoralists are forced to move to the city with few urban survival skills. The health statistics are even more numbing: nearly 2 million children die each year from water-related diseases.

Write Bencala and Dabelko:

“Scholars from a variety of disciplines would likely argue the world is entering a level of water stress it has never previously experienced, driven by population growth, increased consumption of goods and resources and climate change. But it is less the absolute scarcity of water and more the rate of change in water availability that should raise concerns about future transboundary water conflict. Water stress alone is unlikely to lead to an international conflict, as all conflicts have multiple origins. Instead, most disputes occur when a unilateral action is taken, such as building a dam or diverting water, and when there is not sufficient institutional support or flexibility for conflict resolution or mitigation. Abrupt climate change or the sudden creation of new countries without developed patterns of water relations could also similarly occur at a rapid rate to which institutions cannot adapt.”

…

“While increased scarcity could lead to conflict, this scarcity also provides opportunities to shape a cooperative future. If addressed early on, issues of water scarcity and water use can bring parties together to jointly manage resources for purposes as diverse as water quality and hydroelectricity.”

In parallel, Bencala and Dabelko point out, water supplies and meteorological patterns can be indicators for potential conflict, and offer opportunities to generate proactive peacemaking.

According to analysis conducted in 2005 by Marc Levy, Charles Vorosmarty and Nils Petter Gleditsch: “…at the global scale, there is a highly significant relationship between rainfall deviations and the likelihood of outbreak of a high-intensity internal war. When rainfall is significantly below normal, the likelihood of conflict outbreak is significantly elevated.”

Dr. Vorosmarty and I co-presented the session on water at the Aspen Environment Forum in March. During our session, he noted with irony that as we face these great challenges, we are in many cases allowing our global water monitoring capabilities to decline. This becomes particularly notable as comprehensive monitoring and research could offer indicators — a kind of early warning system — for proactive response to potential hot spots, and turn them into peacemaking opportunities.

It’s precisely water’s unpredictablity — combined with the speed of political and environmental change, and the prevalence of bombastic commentary — that encourage quick judgments and poor investments, explain Bencala and Dabelko.

“Growing water scarcity and climate change-derived unpredictability may motivate countries to fight over water. Yet the world community would be wise to resist the dramatic headlines of water wars. Conditions are dire, but this disproportionate focus on states fighting over water gets in the way of understanding the complexities of conflict over water. It also obscures the positive opportunities presented by cooperation over water. Academic inquiries, policies and program designs that ignore these differentiations misdiagnose causes of conflicts, skew risk assessments and prescribe inappropriate means to address the problems.”

Is there hope? Bencala and Dabelko propose that we take proactive, collaborative approaches that avoid the pitfalls of bad policy and the 24-7 news cycle, which so often ignore long-term, slow-to-develop solutions.

“To move in a positive direction, politicians, advocates and the media need to stop predicting water wars and instead begin to call for water cooperation. International policy will follow, affecting how money is spent on the ground. As (U.N. Secretary General) Ban Ki-moon counseled at (the World Economic Forum in) Davos, “We need to adapt to this reality just as we do to climate change. There is still enough water for all of us, but only so long as we keep it clean, use it wisely, and share it fairly.”

That’s the rub. Politicians, advocates and the media — and most of us — are driven by crises, not slow fuses. China and Tibet may be in the hot seat, and most don’t predict an easy resolution to tension and strife anytime soon. Yet water management decisions on the Tibetan Plateau will affect billions of people for generations. China and Tibet are are not alone: any number of regions, from Israel to Mexico to the United States to Peru to Sub-Saharan Africa, are struggling with water scarcity. In each case, perhaps those dark clouds can bring a gentle rain and nurture the seeds of peace.

ASPEN - Are we in an endgame struggle for survival or do we face the greatest opportunities in the history of civilization?

Both.

Granted, the messages remain grim, perhaps even darker than I had expected here under the blue skies at the Aspen Environment Forum. But of all the gatherings I’ve attended this year, I’ve never felt such a tipping point of camaraderie and conviction that unify business, environmentalists, investors and the public.

Perhaps it’s just the crisp air and the informal, collegial atmosphere nurtured by the Aspen Institute’s tradition of convening diverse groups to tackle complicated, timely issues. Maybe it’s the powerful imagery we’ve seen presented by National Geographic photographers such as Jim Richardson who gave us an appreciation for soil, Paul Nicklen who took us to the melting poles, Jim Balog who shared the majesty of ice and Nick Nichols who tortures himself to make the most captivating wildlife pictures in the most remote parts of the world.

But unlike some conferences, there isn’t an air of back-room negotiations or tag-teams of special interests working the coffee bar. Surely, some participants and speakers wear their convictions and contentions on their sleeves, and some are resolute skeptics or doomsayers. But as Amy Coen told me last night, “This just feels different.” She’s president of Population Action International and is here to speak on the human footprint and climate issues related to population. “We all need to learn to listen better and this is a good place to do that.”

Just before the forum, organizers asked me to be one of six speakers to help open the forum with a “big idea.” But how could I give these big thinkers an even bigger idea?

I turned to the biggest thinkers I could find.

First, I went to our 7-year-old daughter for inspiration. Just before I left home to come to Aspen, we listened to Jack and the Beanstalk together. It’s all about magic beans. But in water, climate and energy we know there are no magic beans, no matter how hard we try to find them. Solving these issues requires commitment, innovation and mass collaboration.

Second, I found Pulitzer-winning biologist E.O. Wilson at breakfast Thursday morning and he enthusiastically described his latest book, a venture into fact-inspired fiction that’s a present day version of Orwell’s Animal Farm. “Anthill,” which he just completed and sent to his agent, is a story about an ant colony’s struggle for survival in the expansive world of a picnic area. Story is the realm in which we can explore new worlds and shape powerful drama, he said.

“We’ve done the science,” Professor Wilson added. “The human mind is based on scenarios, so now it’s time to tell the stories.”

Throughout the evolution of human culture - and Professor Wilson knows a lot about evolution - we’ve shared our stories, our histories. So that’s the other part of my Big Idea: We need to tell better stories.

Better stories, no magic beans. Simple, yes? As old as history and fairy tales.

The “Big Idea.”

The forum wraps up today with a panoply of sessions, ranging from “Living with Coal,” which is sure to generate vigorous discussion, to “Journalism and Coverage of the Environment.”

The forum certainly has sparked discussion and debate that will carry on long after we go back to our offices, whether in the headquarters of a major corporation wrestling with the “now what” of sustainability or a research camp upon the Greenland ice. Unfortunately, no one will leave the forum with a magic bean to fix the world’s woes. But we leave inspired by our colleagues and their passions to creating a better world. We all agree that at every tick of the clock there are the expansive, personal stories of drama, tragedy, hope and inspiration unfolding in our own backyards and around the world.

How we tell those stories - and how we respond - will define whether we’re writing our prologue or final chapter.

I’ll post a wrap up of our water session shortly - meanwhile, watch video selections from the forum here

Related links

Water: Aspen Environment Forum - Circle of Blue
PlumTV - interview
PlumTV - Aspen Environment Forum conversation
Grist - Big Ideas at the Aspen Environment Forum

On March 22 we observed another World Water Day, and this week we marked the fifth anniversary of the military conflict in Iraq. Water and war are bound together by more than the coincidence of time — they are related by blood. Drought and Deluge are the weary parents of Desperation, Destruction and Despair.

Five years ago Mikhail Gorbachev, the former leader of the Soviet Union, put his heart forward on the podium as he addressed the media at the World Water Forum in Kyoto, Japan. Impassioned, he pleaded for the world to awaken from apathetic stupor and respond to one of the world’s greatest unfolding tragedies. The simple lack of safe drinking water, he said, condemned thousands of children to die each day — a needless, inexcusable tragedy. The drama of this appeal, coming from a man whose iron nation had rusted from within, spoke to the classic theme of the rise and fall of man. Only this man was determined to get up again and carry future generations on his shoulders.

I had a chance to interview Mr. Gorbachev at the forum, and I felt optimistic that his message was at last going to get some attention. The press corps seemed tuned in to a good story. But as he talked to me, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, that the video monitors in the halls were being tuned away from forum coverage and into CNN. The Iraq war had begun, and the flames of conflict drew all eyes away from the ticking time bomb of water. Mr. Gorbachev was whisked away to do commentary on the war, his attempt to save the world’s resources evaporating behind him.

I cannot know what was on his mind just then. I wonder, if like me, he suffered a deep pang of irony. We drop our gaze from water when violence burns us. And yet, if we are to conquer war, we must court water.

Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on the Millennium Development Goals, was a guest on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show this past Thursday. She asked him about water, which, she said, many have called the gold of the 21st century.

“If you look at where the violence in the world is right now” Professor Sachs said, “in the worst cases — places like Darfur, Sudan, like Somalia, like the Middle East, like Pakistan, Afganistan — these are all water-stressed regions. We call them Islamic fundamentalist regions. We should call them water-stressed regions. We should understand that these are places that are hungry, where livelihoods have been put in grave danger, where old, traditional ways of living such as pastoralist communities are under life and death threat. And we then blame religion or we blame militarism or we blame terrorism without understanding those are symptoms of a much deeper challenge, and water is at the center of it…And we’re already, in my opinion, seeing the resulting violence that can come from it. We send the army in response — we solve nothing. We spend tens or hundreds of billions of dollars. We need to send engineers, not the army. And it’s until we understand that the fundamental problems need to be addressed — not the symptoms — we’re going to continue to get it wrong, waste lives, waste our money and not find solutions.”

I think the engineers should have company. As Peter Gleick, founder of the Pacific Institute and a central advisor to our own journalism project, Circle of Blue, asserts, we have the technology. What we’re missing is the political will.

Political will comes from engaged citizens, and engaged citizens require information, motivation and inspiration. That’s where journalists come in, and we have real heroes when it comes to covering the world’s conflicts. The Iraq war, for example, has become the most dangerous war for reporters in history, according to Andrew Marshall, former Iraq Bureau Chief at Reuters.

“Covering the news in hostile places is a worthwhile thing,” Marshall says. “It can bring about change, it can inform the world. And it is worth us risking our lives.”

Marshall’s commentary introduces the new multimedia presentation, “Bearing Witness,” produced by Reuters and MediaStorm, the Emmy-winning online production company in New York. In “Bearing Witness,” we see, hear and feel the intensity of the conflict and horror of war. A father clutching his young, dead son, soldiers leaping from a burning military vehicle, mothers in gut-wrenching despair for their lost families.

Words alone can’t put the war and its reverberations into perspective. But MediaStorm and Reuters have pulled together, in one package, one of the most comprehensive, iconic multimedia and photojournalism presentations about the Iraq war. Its timeline is richly illustrated with captivating imagery that creates a visceral historical context. This is the kind of coverage that has brought scrutiny to the premise and practices of modern war.

This is the kind of coverage we need to focus on water and our other great challenges. And not just on the drama of tragedy, but also on the promise of opportunity. We have to bear witness and give water the global stage that eluded Mr. Gorbachev at that ill-fated forum. We have to connect water issues to our world affairs and, more crucially, our daily existence. If I might take a turn from Mr. Marshall, I am convinced that covering water extensively and deeply is a also worthwhile thing. It can bring about change. And it is worth us investing our lives.

I believe it can be done, starting with the courage and talent of journalists, and extending into the arts, sciences, education, culture and all the ways we as a society speak amongst ourselves. We can look farther and deeper into the roots of violence and show how very often water lies there. We can make the subtleties and complexities of a fundamental subject compelling, personal and comprehensible. We have the technology. We as communicators must summon the will.

The world water crisis is tapping on the world’s front door. Drought and Deluge’s children are already at home in so many places. Let us remember Mr. Gorbachev’s plea, and turn our conflicts into collaborations. And let us turn our attention to the young citizens of the world. Their future is ours to write.

See Related:
Water and Conflict Chronology

Last week at Circle of Blue we launched WaterNews, a daily update from the front lines of the world’s water crisis. This coverage is expanding to include additional comprehensive journalistic and scientific reports of this complicated, yet crucial story that’s touching everyone.

Margaret Catley-Carlson is chairperson of Global Water Partnership, a working partnership among formed in 1996 by the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. From the U.N. Global Compact to what you can do, Catley-Carlson talks all things water at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Margaret Catley-Carlson: I have a very interesting position in that I either sit on the board or chair six or seven organizations that work in the science and policy of water. I’m not an expert of any kind. I’m not an oligist of any kind. I’m not a hydroligist, an agronomist, a geologist, but I have the great privilege of listening to them day after day, week after week and finding out about the world of water.

J. Carl Ganter - Circle of Blue: Here at Davos, water has become a major priority. Can you characterize that: Why is has it become a priority and what’s coming out of the discussions?

Margaret Catley-Carlson:First of all, I’d characterize it by saying, Great! Last year at Davos, there were sort of one and a half water sessions. Before that it’s been very difficult to get it on the schedule at all. So some good people certainly in the corporate sector, but some good people also in the Davos secretariat have worked very hard to say, ‘Look there is an increasing concern about water.’ When businessmen are canvassed on what they see as the risk factors ahead, water has been moving up. You can make lots of puns and say the water line is rising. There was a canvas done of Fortune 500 companies and something like 70 percent of the executives canvassed said that a major water disruption would make huge difference to their company. Of course if you characterize this as floods, hurricanes, etc., it would make a major difference to all of us. But they were talking about the universe of water risk in terms of quality, quantity, the kind of things that really are changing around the world. So what’s great about this meeting is that the business community as a community and as businesses are saying, Let’s talk about this. I’m very glad when they talk about bringing drinking water to people that don’t have it. That’s the other side of the house. They’re now talking about the self-interest of well-managed water. And I think that that’s quite a big step forward.

JCG: You’ve mentioned that water is local, local, local. How does “local” come into play.

Margaret Catley-Carlson: When I make speeches, I always start out by saying “I’m going to turn you all into water experts. I want you to repeat three times after me: Water is local, Water is local, Water is local. And then the next thing I do is say now, draw two circles in your mind. One of them is the management and the care of the lakes, the rivers, the groundwater, the water that runs into the oceans and does damage or otherwise to coral reefs. The water in the soil, the water melting in the glaciers, that’s water resource management. And that is, if you wish, the big circle. That is how well are we taking care of the resources that sustain us. That’s the circle from which we get the food that we eat, that’s the circle that we get the electricity that we get through hydro. Water transport, tourism, all the rest of it. Now there’s another circle and that’s called drinking water and sanitation. The lingo people call it the “taps and toilets” part of water. The two of them are linked. If you’ve got bad sanitation, you’re going to get bad water quality as well. But the two circle are quite different. So when you ask the question, How do we ever pull these things together? a lot of the public interest is in the drinking water, taps and toilets business. That’s what hits the headlines. That’s where you get the big debate about privatization. This is where, mostly where water as a human right argument or debate is. But I am trying to pull attention to the two circles because the enveloping circle, the big circle, is where you have to look to how you understand the totality of water. In the small circle, it’s basically a question as to whether water, poverty, delivering water to everybody, is a priority, including financial. In the big circle, the people that call the shots might well be the minister of mines, a big company that is building a big transport company. What affects water quality and quantity is very unlikely to be under the rubric of water. It’s going to be those that affect erosion, water quality, stability, all sorts of other factors.

JCG: Looking toward the future, what’s next? What comes out of Davos?

Margaret Catley-Carlson: Ideal world scenario: Now that Davos has raised some consciousness, now that a number of members of the business community are saying, ‘Hey, water affects me, I’ve got an enlightened self interest in doing something about this,’ the first thing that the call to action — which was a really good paper available on the web produced here … if you want to know about water in a six-page capsule it will tell you all the facts, even all the cocktail snippets you need to know about water. It recommends three things: The first one is that the business leaders sign something called the “Call to Action.” This isn’t even a Davos document, it’s a U.N. document coming from something called the Global Compact, which is a group of business persons that support within the U.N., some of the goals of the United Nations, including achieving the Millennium Development Goals, which try to get more water and sanitation and a better world to a lot of people that don’t have it now. So sign the Global Compact first.

What does the Global Compact ask? That you do three things. First of all, you find out about your water footprint with a view of getting as close to water neutrality as possible.

The second one is you find out what the state of water management is in your river basin. In other words, back to the rivers, the lakes, the underground water. How these connect — where the threats are, what the quality is, what the quantity is. Now if you’re a multinational company with operations manufacturing in seven countries and sales in a hundred countries, your backyard has a lot of water basins in it. So this isn’t just for headquarters and this isn’t just one manufacturing site. So in other words, it’s becoming informed about what is creating the water quality and quantity situations in a large part of the world.

Third part: Get involved in this. At least to some extent so that the guys who are setting the rules, the regulations, whether they’re being observed or not. The policing of this, the observance of the protection of watersheds, the upstream downstream… you cut down the forest upstream it’s going to have a big impact downstream. So get involved, find out if there’s something you can do as part of corporate policy. Find out how you can actually help shape the water universe that you particularly live in, remembering that you may live in several. If you’re a company with interests in a number of countries. Back to a water footprint. What’s a water footprint? It’s the amount of water that you cause to be involved in production and distribution processes. What are you growing, what are you manufacturing? Lemon juice? Ok, you’ve got all of the orchards. Where are they planted? How much pesticide, fertilizer are they using? How much of the outflow of that goes into the water stream? How do you wash these things? How much water are you actually using there? Have you looked at both the water and energy implications of the transport that you’re using to get those lemons to distribution centers? Are you shipping concentrate or are you shipping lemons? Are you shipping this in the most economical sense, not just in terms of money, but in terms of water and energy? Follow the chain through — what’s the manufacturing and processing plant look like? Is is being done in the best way possible? Start looking at distribution. How does this material, how does the lemon juice actually leave the factory? How does it get to consumers? How is it packed? Are those throw-away containers? Or are these reusable containers, or ideal world, are these things that will biodegrade when the light hits them if they get thrown somewhere in a landfill. You can see now I could go into how are they arranged in the supermarket, etc. But you begin to see what the water footprint is. It’s really how does my product and how do my processes affect the water universe in which they live. I call this the water mirror sometimes. Hold up your water mirror, look behind you and you’ll see what the universe of water is, that within which you’re working and then look deeper into the water mirror and see what your own footprint is.

JCG: We need some major paradigm shifts as to how individuals look at water and act on water. What’s going to cause those shifts?

Margaret Catley-Carlson: I think occasions such as Davos are very useful. They bring home that this is not simply worrying that people in far away lands don’t have drinking water. And yes, please, keep worrying about that. It’s something as human beings we can worry a lot about. But it’s also saying, ‘Hey, this is adding to the list of things I’ve really got to worry about in order to be in business.’ And that is good.

There’s been a fair amount, not enough, of media coverage. I hope that we can continue working with media to say, How do you understand these two circles of concern about water. How do you cover these? What’s the non-sensational story? How do we make sure that we’re not talking about real collapses and disasters in ten years? These are actually happening in some places now. How do we make sure that these are not being universalized? How do we make sure that conditions are kept as good as they can be in a number of places?

I sat across from some business leaders yesterday saying, “Oh sure, we make our decisions about whether we’re going to locate plants very much based on water availability.”

I said, “Do you ever talk to the countries where you’ve decided _not_ to be about water?”

“No, no we wouldn’t do that, we talk to the ones where we’ve decided to be.”

So in a sense, it’s the growing awareness, I hope, of the countries that didn’t get the jobs, and didn’t get the employment, if they improve their water management, that they might improve their economic prospects, their development, their employment, better life for people.

JCG: What about the individual?

Margaret Catley-Carlson: People ask, ‘What should I be doing about water?’

You know all of those funny little things about turning off the tap, really being conscious that you really don’t need a 20-minute shower, washing your car occasionally and not all the time? This really counts. Why does this count? I’m Canadian — we have seven to 10 percent of the world’s resources. Canadians say, “Surely I don’t have to care about this, we’ve got all the water in the world.”

Well, you’ve got all the water in the world. But you’re not using that river, or that lake, which is all the water in the world. You’re using something which has been collected, it’s been piped, it’s been chemically adjusted to make sure that it’s pure. It has been transported. At each stage of this, there’s pumping, there’s energy expense, there’s expense to the community that could be used for other things. So every time you have a good long shower, you are sending carbon particles into the air just as thoroughly as that truck going down the road in front of you that you’re looking at and saying, “This is why we have global warming.”

Next time you have a 20-minute shower, you’re sending carbon particles into the air, too, because somebody had to pump that water to get there and that pump sent carbon particles into the air. So, yes, you can do quite a bit by your water use. It isn’t just about water, it’s about water, it’s about energy, it’s about a lot of things.

John Elkington, founder and chief entrepreneur of SustainAbility, the London-based think tank, and co-author, The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets that Change the World. Elkington puts water into the business context at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland

J. Carl Ganter - Circle of Blue: With last count nine sessions touching on water at Davos, water has taken the center stage. Can you frame what’s happened over the past several years to bring that level of corporate interest?

John Elkington: I think water has very much been on the agenda this year, but one of the problems that we face is that climate change is on the ascendant, and people are not always making the links to water as they perhaps should. I think that’s coming and over the next two to three years water will progressivly build into a really central component of the Davos agenda.

JCG: At Davos we’ve heard talk from the major bottles, the major corporate stakeholders. Why are they so interested now in water from a corporate sustainability perspective?

John Elkington: I think the major users of water have a number of different reasons for being interested, in some cases concerned. We’ve see in countries like India companies like Coca-Cola being whacked around the head because of water supply issues. We’ve seen companies like Intel coming up against major water access problems in New Mexico, Israel, elsewhere. These issues in terms of the supply agenda are becoming increasingly important for companies. At the same time, they equally recognize that as the water issues start to be actively engaged — not just by activists and non governmental organizations, but by governments, by communities, by business — there is a huge potential for being seen to be part of this new in a sense movement. But also as being a provider of some of the technological, logistical and financial solutions that will be needed.

JCG: You write about disruptive people in your new book, The Power of Unreasonable People. What’s causing this disruption now?

John Elkington: I think the water agenda is increasingly on people’s agendas for a range of different reasons. In addition to the access and supply issues there are quality issues that are building very rapidly. The spread of megacities and slums — that’s dramatizing the urgency of the water issue. We’ve just done a book called The Power of Unreasonable People and what we’re looking at there is entrepreneurs who describe themselves as social entrepreneurs, environmental entrepreneurs or whatever term they use who are basically trying to address areas of extreme — in many cases — market failure. Mohammed Yunis in Bangladesh would be perhaps the most notable example of these sorts of entrepreneurs. Here in Davos this week we’ve had somebody who’s just won the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship Award in the UK for the leading social entrepreneur in that country. His name is Reid Padget and his company is called Belu. And what they do is they create a range of bottled water products that are stocked by supermarkets, but all the profits go to water development projects in the developing world. Now that’s a relatively small scale solution to date, but the potential for application and leverage through the retailers and supermarkets and others is very substantial indeed. There’s a spectrum of initiatives here. I think some of the entrepreneurial ones, the smaller ones, are probably more likely to be truly disruptive. And I think we really need to disrupt the kind of ways we process and supply water, worldwide.

JCG: Coming back to Davos next year, or over the next several years, where do you think we’ll be with water? Is this going to take a long time to gel and implement, or something that’s going to pick up steam?

John Elkington: I think the way the Davos community responds to big issues is to pick them up and play with them for a while. But longer term, the ideal is that the new perspectives and priorities are shot through everything that happens here. So last year for example, climate change was a very big issue. It is this time too. But the real thinking and action is tending to happen in some of the parallel and side events. My hope would be over the next 18 months to a year water comes center stage at Davos. But within a very short period after that it’s shot through everything the World Economic Forum and its partners do.

JCG: What role does SustainAbility play in the water sector?

John Elkington: Our organization, SustainAbility, is 21 years old. We mainly work with business, quite a number of those companies are huge users of water. So increasingly that issue is surfacing for them. We work with Coca-Cola in India just as one example. I think for most of them it’s still relatively low down on the agenda. One of the other things I do is I’m on the council of ambassadors for the World Wildlife Fund for Nature. They have an emerging campaign around embedded water. But I think a range of initiatives are still needed to capture the minds, the hearts and minds of policy makers, business leaders, and the financial institutions as well. So I think there’s probably a three to five year challenge here.

JCG: What drives your passion in the sustainability world? What grabs your heart?

John Elkington: What grabs me? I don’t have any choice in the matter. When I was about seven in the mid 1950s I lived in Northern Ireland. One night I went out into a field, in pitch dark, coming home from supper with a farm laborer. Why my parents let me out in those conditions, I have no idea. But I suddenly found myself surrounded by baby eels moving in a great elastic sheet across this field. They may have been going from a river or a pond. It was an astonishing moment of connection because I knew what these things were after a moment of complete surprise. I knew the sort of linkages out to and including the Sargasso Sea. At that moment something snapped in my brain, some switch went over so you could say that water’s been a part of how I see this challenge (of sustainability) from the very outset. These days I’m in it because I think a world of 9 to 10 billion people, which is what the demographers say we’re headed toward, simply isn’t sustainable on the current economic models, business models, technologies we use. We need a profound set of solutions in order to make the 21st century manageable, sustainable, livable. And again I think the Circle of Blue messaging, and the networking of media people is a profoundly important potential contribution to all of that.

“One of the problems that we face is that climate change is on the ascendant, and people are not always making the links to water as they perhaps should. I think that’s coming and over the next two to three years water will progressively build into a really central component of the Davos agenda.” — John Elkington, SustainAbility

DAVOS, Switzerland — Water, water everywhere, so let us stop to think. The recent World Economic Forum at Davos put the substance that defines life (and economic bottom lines) at center stage, with at least seven sessions focused on water’s varied challenges, business impacts, policy and future.

But despite the fact that human beings themselves are comprised mostly of water, we are, also, only too human. The major buzz at Davos was about the things that often grab and distract us from the “big picture” the forum seeks: a precipitous plunge on Wall Street and a $7 billion flaming financial scandal in France.

It’s too easy to take water for granted, so kudos to U.N. Secretary General Ban-ki Moon, who put the put the bull’s eye into the headlines. “Water,” he announced, “is one of the most daunting challenges faced by the world today.”

I’d like to propose an alteration to that wise pronouncement. It’s true, our relationship to water will define our future in this century. But the challenge is not water itself, but the way we perceive it and ourselves. We have the technology. Many of the solutions are within reach. The necessities of long-term planning (read: climate, efficiency, cleaning up what we have) are clearer than ever to the business community. At the WEF, for example, both Pepsi and Coca-Cola announced funding for new initiatives to bring safe drinking water to children in Africa and other stressed areas in the developing world.

What we lack is the ability to see with new eyes and the will to transform ourselves. We keep doing the same things, with results that achieve more of not enough. Despite the very real enthusiasm of the Davos leaders and the water community there, I feel a bit of deja vu. How far have we come on water?

In 2000, the UN rolled out its Millennium Development Goals in advance of the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. Laudable as they are, the goals barely reflect the sheer global will necessary to tackle the immense challenges of climate and water, not to mention poverty, biodiversity and other looming threats. Just before the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, at an organizational meeting at the Brazilian Embassy in Washington, Chris Flavin of WorldWatch told us, “These are not easy times for social/environmental issues. It’s easier to come up with a list of failures.” Nitin Desai, then Secretary General for the WSSD implored: “We’ve got to get up, get going and do something.”

It’s been a long six years since, and there have been failures — not in intent, but in mass momentum. 2003 brought us the International Year of Freshwater and, soon after, Water for Life Decade (which expires in 2015), and World Water Forums in Kyoto and Mexico City.

Thankfully, each of these have been steps forward, but not leaps. Maybe the world wasn’t ready to hear that it was running dry. Could that be changing?

The Water for the Poor Act passed in late 2005. Only two years later, we were learning that the developed world, in places such as Atlanta the Colorado plateau, is not immune to water challenges. And more and more leaders, like those gathered in the Congress Centre in Davos, are seeing the connections between water, economic security and their shareholders.

But, still, where’s the tipping point for water? The fulcrum where awareness meets action? When will taxpayers be willing to part with billions of dollars to clean up the U.S. Great Lakes, enact stiff conservation measures and increase foreign aid through water programs?

“We’ll need to do some serious myth-busting,” said Brian Collins, WEF participant. “The old myths for water no longer work.”

These are the myths we need to bust, he explains to me at a late-night cafe just down a snow-covered path from the highly secured hub of activity in Davos: “Water is free, it’s eternal, infinite, forever. Water always cleans itself. Water is where we throw everything away. Water is a gift from God that stays pure.”

Beyond the reasoned, but heavily laden rhetoric of the water experts, water needs a new narrative for the 21st century. A rich tapestry of commitment, awareness, engagement, collaboration all topped with a dose of harsh reality.

Did it find one in Davos?

“In a word, Yes. Yes. Yes,” said Margaret Catley-Carlson with enthusiasm. She’s chairperson of the Global Water Partnership, the collaborative organization formed by the World Bank, UNDP and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. The response may take a while to filter through and gain the mindshare, she believes, but we’re about to be hit by a tsunami of interest from the corporate sector.

“What’s great about this meeting,” Catley-Carlson said enthusiastically during a lunch break, “is that the business community is saying, ‘Let’s talk about this.’ I’m very glad when they talk about bringing drinking water to people that don’t have it. [But businesses] are now talking about the self-interest of well-managed water. And I think that that’s quite a big step forward.” (see video interview and transcript in another blog entry)

Seven forum sessions focused on water (schedule and summaries are also included in a separate entry) and the issue got off to a vigorous start with Ban Ki-moon’s emphatic description of water scarcity and management as humanity’s greatest challenge — equal to or greater than climate change.

“The challenge of securing safe and plentiful water for all,” Ban said, “is one of the most daunting challenges faced by the world today.” This echoes a message he delivered with little fanfare in December at the Asia-Pacific Water Summit. His words may be the same, but the audience, comprised of global leaders and some of the most successful businesspeople in human history, carried more weight with the promise that it would trickle through the ranks.

Water’s urgent message in Davos was diluted somewhat by news of the U.S. economic decline and the breaking story of Societe General’s rogue trader who rattled the European financial industry. It may take a few more turns, but the rivers of awareness are touching many shores. Many credit the WEF with giving climate a significant boost of business cred when it was reached similar pinnacle status in 2007.

Even with the distractions (the panoply of water sessions received modest media attention), John Elkington, noted “dean of the corporate-responsibility movement,” remains optimistic that water received the long-term sling-shot effect from this year’s meeting. Elkington, founder of SustainAbility the London-based consultancy, said that Davos priorities inevitably become global business priorities. (see video interview and transcript in separate blog entry)

“I think the way the Davos community responds to big issues is to pick them up and play with them for a while,” Elkington said. “But longer term, the ideal is that the new perspectives and priorities are shot through everything that happens here. So last year for example, climate change was a very big issue. It is this time too. But the real thinking and action is tending to happen in some of the parallel and side events. My hope would be over the next 18 months to a year water comes center stage at Davos. But within a very short period after that it’s shot through everything the World Economic Forum and its partners do.”

Elkington echoed Ban-ki Moon’s assertion that water was a challenge equal to climate. “One of the problems that we face is that climate change is on the ascendant, and people are not always making the links to water as they perhaps should,” Elkington said. “I think that’s coming and over the next two to three years water will progressively build into a really central component of the Davos agenda.”

So did a few days in the Swiss Alps help craft the new myths for water?

They certainly upped the buzz-factor for words such as “water footprint” and “supply chain sustainability.” Obvious players such as Nestle, Coca-Cola and Pepsi painted a potentially grave picture for the future — and their shareholders — if they, their suppliers and their customers fail to recognize and respond to the water crisis. And they worked hard to demonstrate proactive, progressive response. Even not-so-obvious players from manufacturing, shipping and the service industry are starting to think about how water impacts their products and services. Said one senior executive of a major consulting firm: “This is the next big issue and my clients want to know how it will affect them.”

Klaus Schwab, the forum’s ubiquitous host and founder, helped put water on this gilded stage with a bottom-line, business focus. But he seemed to do it with humility, sincerity and hope. “The Davos Man and Woman,” he said in a press release, “are aware of all the challenges and, in a pragmatic way, they do what they can to mitigate the risks and address the challenges. They also see the opportunities in the world. But if we don’t address the challenges, even the greatest opportunities will not be enough to guarantee the future of humankind.”

I’ve come back to my draft of this blog several times, not sure whether to be optimistic or pessimistic. I’ve heard the words before, from the Powerpoint plenaries at world water forums to the halls of the U.N. during the Commission on Sustainable Development meeting series. But never before, I’m beginning to feel, have so many of the world’s corporate leaders made the connection that water is life, for them, their businesses and the rest of us on the blue planet.

Related headlines

Pepsi announces $8.5 million in grants to Columbia University’s Earth Institute and H2O Africa

Coca-Cola announces $1 million grant to Global Water Challenge for Ashoka Changemakers competition

Related: BrandWeek coverage

“Water has displaced climate change as Davos delegates’ chief worry outside the US economy, with no fewer than nine water-related events on the programme, compared with just one last year.” Financial Times

Global crises from escalating demand for fresh water and inadequate supply are as urgent as efforts to tackle climate change - yet are more vexing and complicated, the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2008 heard today. World Economic Forum press release

DAVOS — Check out Jerry Linenger’s appearance on YouTube, answering the Davos Question. More soon from the World Economic Forum.

Jerry spent five months on board the Russian space station Mir, surviving numerous life support systems failures and the worst fire to ever occur in space. But he says what really can concern an astronaut is the state of fresh water on the planet.

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The annual World Economic Forum kicks off Wednesday in Davos, and already there’s a buzz building about this year’s emerging focus on the global freshwater crisis. The Forum hosts seven sessions on water, from market mechanisms for pricing to the tragic health consequences of poor sanitation and dirty water. (Note: I’ll be reporting all week from Davos.)

In a prelude to the Forum, Klaus Schwab, its chairman, and Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, chairman of Nestle, today published a compelling op-ed argument for rapid response and a call for “an unprecedented, high-impact public-private coalition to find ways to manage our future water needs before the crisis hits.”

(See the full op-ed below.)

It will be interesting to monitor the outcomes. As my friend and colleague Peter Gleick notes, we can solve many of today’s water problems. “We know how,” he says. “It’s just not clear that we’re going to make the commitment.”

Will this be a week of commitments? Schwab and his colleagues seem determined to take the discussions to a higher level than before. Stay tuned.

Water sessions at the forum this year include:

Time is Running Out for Water
Nearly one-third of the world’s population is expected to be living in regions facing severe water scarcity by 2025. What should be done now to ensure that water scarcity does not become a source of international conflict and human misery?

The True Value of Water
Water demand has more than tripled over the last half century, but its management appears immune to traditional market mechanisms. What is the most effective way to allocate water between industry,

Who is Managing Your Supply of Water
40% of Fortune 1,000 companies agree that the impact of a water shortage would be severe, but only 17% admit to being prepared for such a crisis. How should firms approach their future operations to ensure that they are not affected by water degradation, scarcity, storms or flooding?

Water - Are We Being Bio-Foolish

Securing a Watertight Future
Rapid urbanization, industrialization, changing diets and climate change are aggravating the effects of our unsustainable water use. For many businesses, significant disruptions are already caused by water insecurity. What innovative strategies can help us manage the need for water more effectively?

Death, Disease and Dirty Water
There is a well-established link between dirty water and disease. The effects of climate change and natural resource degradation on local ecosystems are further shaping the patterns of waterborne infectious disease. What is the emerging scientific consensus on the challenges ahead? What technologies and innovations can business provide to help support public health programmes?

Welcom
There will be a special Welcom session for participants to share their talents and creativity in solving the crisis, with a focus on the roles of journalism, design and communications. More on this later. (Disclosure: I’ve been involved in visioning and organizing this session.)

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A World United on Water
Klaus Schwab and Peter Brabeck-Letmathe | January 21, 2008

THE world is on the verge of a water crisis. As the global economy and the world’s population continue to expand, we are becoming a much thirstier planet. It is important to realise just how much water we need to make the various aspects of our economy work.

Every litre of petrol requires up to 2.5litres of water to produce it. On average, crops grown for their bio-energy need at least 1000 litres of water to make one litre of biofuel. It takes about 2700 litres of water to make one cotton T-shirt, up to 4000litres of water to produce 1kg of wheat and up to 16,000 litres to produce 1kg of beef.

The statistics are equally surprising for hundreds of other products that we all take for granted, such as milk, juice, coffee, fruit, pizza, detergents, carpets, paint, electrical appliances, cosmetics and so on. On average, wealthier people consume upwards of 3000 litres of water every day. Even to produce the much more basic things our economy needs, such as cement, steel, chemicals, mining or power generation, requires tonnes of water.

We have seen how a combination of crop switch for biofuels and drought can have an inflationary impact on food. Water is the bigger problem behind this issue. It has the potential for a much more profound impact on consumers and voters. In the breadbasket areas of the world, which help feed our fast-growing urban populations, we are heading for painful trade-offs or even conflict.

Along the Colorado, the Indus, the Murray Darling, the Mekong, the Nile or within the North China Plain, for example, do we use the scarce water for food, for fuel, for people and cities, or for industrial growth? How much of the upstream river can we really dam? How do we figure out ways for every actor in the economy to get the water they need to meet their human, economic and cultural aspirations? And can we ensure that the environment is not wrecked but can flourish in the process?

These are tough questions. And unlike carbon reduction, there is no alternative, no substitute to promote. Nor is there a global solution to negotiate. Turning off your tap in Vancouver or Berlin will not ease the drought in Rajasthan or Australia.

Water is local. Water basins will become the flashpoints. These are the large areas that drain into the world’s major rivers and eventually into the sea. They contain millions of people, farmland, forests, cities, industry and coastline, and often straddle multiple political boundaries. The sector that will get the most attention will be the water used by agriculture for food and textile production: 70 per cent of all our freshwater withdrawals are in this sector. Savings made here can help elsewhere in the water basin.

The International Water Management Institute had 500 scientists examine the water we use for agriculture.

Their report took five years to complete. It found that we will not have enough water to supply global demand for food during the next few decades unless urgent and substantial reforms in water and agriculture are undertaken.

Climate change will create this situation more quickly and make it worse. The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report says that if global average temperature rises by 3C, hundreds of millions of people will be exposed to increased water stress. It provides the wake-up call we all need to start acting on water.

We can see this crisis unfolding during the next few years. A perfect storm is approaching. And all this sits on top of today’s morally indefensible situation where 20 per cent of the world’s population is without access to improved water supply.

But it is not a catastrophe yet. It lies within our collective grasp to find the solutions. Business can improve its water efficiency, and in many cases it has raised the bar. There are many success stories. But it will take everyone in the water basin working together to change the overall game.

This is what makes the challenge complicated. We are ahead of the curve for now. Addressed smartly, innovatively and with new forms of collaboration between government, business and industry, we believe the coming crisis can be averted.

It is against this backdrop that we will come together at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting to raise the economic and political profile of water: to raise awareness among our business colleagues, our politicians and society at large about adapting to this urgent challenge. How can we start moving to ensure we organise a water-secure world for everyone, including businesses, by 2020?

Our aim is to catalyse at this year’s Davos meeting in Switzerland an unprecedented, high-impact public-private coalition to find ways to manage our future water needs before the crisis hits.

Klaus Schwab is founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum. Peter Brabeck-Letmathe is chairman and chief executive of Nestle.

Let me indulge in some timely self promotion for my colleagues at Circle of Blue, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars China Environment Forum and the Pacific Institute. The Circle of Blue team, which I direct, publishes today its compelling multimedia report, “Reign of Sand,” about the water crisis in Inner Mongolia, China. The multimedia package comes as China’s spring dust storms approach. Scientists say the severity and frequency of the dust storms reflect worsening conditions, including: dryer climate, stronger winds, water shortages, over-grazing, population growth, and a clash between nomadic herders and the government over range and farmland management.

We’ve said before in this space that it will take powerful narratives and an informed public to respond to these unfolding crises. Take a look and be sure to click to suggest your story ideas, where we should send a team of reporters and why.