Designing Water’s Future
People, creativity, and technology uniting to shift the world’s dangerous course. Now.
Our blue planet is thirsty.
We have never been more aware of the catastrophic consequences of the world’s accelerating water crises. And we have never felt so overwhelmed, disconnected, even helpless.
Our mission is to urgently build a shared compass and map that informs and aligns action across finance, policy, media, innovation, and the public.
Designing Water’s Future reveals and empowers new methods for cooperation, course correction, participation, investment and scaled impact.
Designing Water’s Future: A new operating system for fresh water
Intensifying water scarcity and mounting water stress — amplified by climate change — are triggering supply chain disruptions, crop failure, energy brownouts, and conflicts that are driving human migration while challenging geopolitical and economic stability across the globe.
Tragically, fragmented policies, insufficient financing and collaboration, and a lack of trusted and timely information are hindering coordinated and effective responses.
We urgently need a new approach, a new operating system for water.
That’s why Circle of Blue — the award-winning U.S.-based nonprofit organization with a 15-year track record reporting on and convening around local-to-global water issues — is teaming up with a wide ecosystem of partners and collaborators to create the world’s first crisis- and solutions-centered “situation room” for fresh water.
Responding to the world’s water crises requires unprecedented coordination, intelligence gathering, data analysis, storytelling, creativity, and convening power. There are no easy solutions.
The “Designing Water’s Future” initiative will develop an innovative operating system that aligns original trusted frontline reporting, communications, and ground-truthing with data analytics, systems design, and collaborative convening to inform and motivate more efficient, nimble, and rapid solutions to the world’s most pressing water challenges.
Circle of Blue is the central coordinating body for “Designing Water’s Future,” with technical and structural support from Dalberg Catalyst, APCO Worldwide, ACTUAL, Arup and others, including collaboration with World Economic Forum programs and initiatives. Based in the U.S. Great Lakes and working from more than 30 countries on six continents, Circle of Blue’s team members and advisors have informed policy and shaped agendas, achieved breakthroughs in data management and engagement, addressed Congress, and served as mentees for the next generation of systems leaders.
Designing Water’s Future delivers on three key pillars:
Situational awareness:
AI-empowered systems mapping of stakeholders, networks, funders, investors
Context and Ground Truthing:
On-the-ground, original reporting by award-winning journalists and photographers for real-world context, relevance, transparency, and accountability
Engagement & co-convening for solutions
High-level, intelligence- and solutions-focused convenings, plus wide expert, media, public, youth, and stakeholder engagement
Built upon nearly 20 years of award-winning impact in China, India, the U.S. and around the world, Circle of Blue, with its extensive global partners, has created “Designing Water’s Future,” the world’s first crisis- and solutions-centered response system for fresh water that delivers original, trusted front-line journalism and ground-truthing combined with data, systems design, and convening toward solutions.
New breakthroughs in AI allow us to augment trusted journalism with virtual libraries of intelligence and solutions from verified sources, including systems and influence mapping, which generate further strategic and dynamic outputs.
The “operating system” is built on the impact model for which Circle of Blue received the Rockefeller Foundation Centennial Innovation Award for informing policy and billions of dollars of investment.
Collaborations are in place with some of the world’s most connected data, media and thought leadership organizations.
Designing Water’s Future is engineered to create the enabling environment where better, faster, contextualized decisions motivate and inform business, finance, NGOs and agencies, and reveals new opportunities for cooperation, course correction, participation, investment and scaled impact.
Designing Water’s Future, Davos with CITI
Designing Water’s Future, Switzerland. Villars Institute – Villars Summit
Meeting the Moment
The urgency and complexity of the rapidly intensifying global water crises demand a new, nimble, and systemic approach. Designing Water’s Future strengthens trust, improves coordination, and facilitates local-to-global actions through:
- Trustworthy, contextualized information
- Providing verified insights, contextualized intelligence, and frontline journalism to generate greater awareness about critical water, food, and climate hotspots around the world.
- Cross-sectoral coordination
- Elevating and augmenting knowledge sharing, capital deployment, and technology innovation across geographies, organizations, and individuals.
- Empowered local-to-global decision-making
- Amplifying and connecting local communities and actors for context-specific decision-making and scalable solutions.
Designing Water’s Future, New York: With APCO Worldwide
Designing Water’s Future, Davos World Economic Forum Affiliate Session with ETH Zurich
Designing Water’s Future, Abu Dhabi XPANSE Summit
Agility and Tenacity
Systems-level change with bold ideas, coordinated actions
Designing Water’s Future is created by Circle of Blue with design support from Dalberg Catalyst, which co-creates and accelerates systems solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems. Catalyst is a nonprofit systems change incubator born of Dalberg Group.
“Designing Water’s Future” is a public-private collaborative community created by Circle of Blue.
Designing Water’s Future collaborates on content generation and distribution, knowledge management, systems leadership, and event convening with organizations including World Economic Forum UpLink and Intelligence Maps, Wilson Center, Global Commons Alliance, Villars Institute, ACTUAL, Pacific Institute, Stimson Center, Water Desk, Great Lakes News Collaborative, Brookings/Rockefeller 17 Rooms, and Stockholm International Water Institute, among others.