Up until a couple of hundred years ago, all of our settlement cities and towns
and villages were based on where can we get enough clean water?
And we are coming back to a point where that resource pressure becomes very real
for us day to day.
We are going to be increasing population levels, but this is going to go on to
increase it by two billion more people in the next 30 years.
If we continue at today's pace of fresh water usage, the gap between the supply of
fresh water and the demand of fresh water is projected to be as much as 40 percent.
There are wars. Darfur was largely a war about water
and water rights.
Another example which is huge is that of the Arab Sea.
The cotton industry in Central Asia was significantly supported with fresh water.
Fresh water was diverted from the rivers that feed into the Arab Sea into the
agricultural lands which grew cotton.
And as a result, the Arab Sea has pretty much dried up and the place is an
ecological disaster.
Let's look back 1997. The Yellow River, one of the major rivers
of China, went dry for nine months of the year.
Finding mechanisms in which this opportunity, the scarcity value of water,
becomes reflected in the decisions people make.
This, for me, is the fundamental challenge.
Great. And I see on my list that we have Andy
Wales. Andy, are you on the line? Sure.
I mean I think the papers have progressed well.
I guess my…were developed as part of the Water Resources Project that we've
debated…
We are beginning to discuss this nexus right now.
Yes, we need to talk about that in our country, in our city.
And our floor is open for any other kind of thoughts or perspectives on…
And this kind of food-water-energy nexus… Usually, no one has got the time and the
energy and the effort and the money to do it.
I think we are falling to a trap of talking about what people are talking about.
The Global Agenda Councils a really brain trust of the world's smartest thinkers
and experts from around the world from different regions, different stakeholder
groups. It's different than any other event
because it goes beyond just meetings and preset panels.
It really is about group conversations around issues and solutions.
The World Economic Forum is a rather unique organization committed to improving
the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic, and other
leaders of society to shape global, regional, and industry agendas.
Right now, we have 600 people represented and they'll convene in 72 different
councils and have conversations over three days essentially.
So the issues range from food security to climate change, systemic financial risk,
population growth.
The councils, they talk about thematic issues, they talk about natural resource
scarcity, and here, you have water as one of the key elements in that.
Water security is understanding how the water resources in a particular catchment
and a particular area underpin the economic, the social, and the
environmental well-being of that area.
And the allocation of blue water to farmers…
Who are the players, what are the major solutions, and how do we…
It's been particularly valuable that although many of us from the corporate
sector are relatively new to the water debate that many people in the Global
Agenda Council have been living the challenges of water policy for 20 or 30 years.
I'm here because I believe that the World Economic Forum offers me and the water
world a great opportunity to advance the cause of water.
The issues of geopolitics, the issues of political stability, the social harmony
all come from water. I am here because I believe passionately
in finding solutions to the issues in the water sector.
We have to remind people that the environment matters, and in this arena,
we would suggest it underpins the economy that everybody is trying to wrestle with
here. And so you got people who can say,
"Well, actually, we've tried this before and this is why it didn't work.
So if you are going to try it again, perhaps do this differently."
I mean I think I understand it. I think it's exactly right.
So what we've done today is we've had the first afternoon of the council meeting.
We've had a good debate around two things really.
First of all is how is the progress on water going in the different organizations
that we work with. What do governments think about it,
what do businesses think about it, what the NGOs like WWF think about it, and how can
we work together more. It's an opportunity to have that
conversation that you do not otherwise have.
Exactly. You couldn't have had that. There, exactly.
I enjoy the debate we have here. It's certainly not frustrating.
Actually, it's really exciting. It's only by having people like that
really test what we are talking about, test the metrics, test the concepts we've
developed that actually you find out how rigorous they are.
And in the real world, these are going to be tested so we need to have that debated.
Availability of clean water underpins being able to grow food.
The availability of water underpins the ability to be able to create energy.
Of course, the Food Security Council want to talk about it from the perspective of
how do we get people enough calories to live, particularly poor people.
The Energy Council want to talk about it from the perspective of how can we ensure
that there is enough energy in each market for people to improve their quality of
life? The aspect of cross-council interactions
is unique, which wouldn't happen in any other event crossing beyond one issue
and looking at more thematic, systemic issues.
You put water up here and then put energy here and you put agriculture over here.
Where is the stressor? Is it that more water is needed to grow
food over here, and if this one gets pulled a little bit more, what happens to
the water available for energy? What happens to the water available for
cities for drinking water?
The most important piece of work that the council has done is to amplify the concept
of the water-energy-food nexus, the relationship between these three critical
human development areas, if you will.
The world food security right now is under stress.
So the question is how can we really make sure the water is used effectively,
efficiently to produce enough food for the increased population?
It's that interplay between one council and the other on problems which are across
the boundaries of the council that is fascinating and very important.
Externalities are cost to society which are part of normal everyday business which
business does not pay for. So in that sense, we are internalizing
profits and externalizing costs.
Profits are taken in, costs are pushed out.
This can't go on forever.
$2.2 trillion was the total externalities of the top 3,000 corporations in the
world. That's not a viable solution for success
even for the corporation because at some point, we will lose the social license to
operate.
We have the leaders of various sectors of the society showing up at Davos.
And if we are able to create an agenda which is representative of the problems
that we pick up here, we've ensured that issues have come to people's attention.
Some of our events get significant media coverage.
So again, if these are issues that are important that need to be created
awareness for, we take these messages to the media.
It's been a journey over three years of helping CEOs and government ministers
and the heads of global financial institutions to understand the importance of water in
underpinning economic growth in particular.
Some of these companies are taking steps to say to the subcontractors in the supply
chain, "This is how much water we want used per unit, per potato, per tomato."
We as a company are also benefiting from hearing the diverse perspectives of other
members because I believe very strongly that solving this global crisis we face
will require collaborative innovation and involve the cooperation of many,
many parties.
Business must and will play its role and contribute to the solution in its own area
of responsibility.
That is a very positive step. But the problem is big,
right? And the problem is particularly big if we don't start to think about ways of
addressing it now. The business of water management
is technical, yes, but is also deeply institutional, political, and indeed,
emotional and religious. And the great challenge of water is how
do you bring these various perspectives together into something which can actually
work for people?