- I'm Matt Damon, co-founder of Water.org and WaterEquity
and this is Action Plan.
- I'm not a scientist,
but my lay understanding of the science
is that the situation is growing more and more urgent.
- When you take action, your life gets a meaning.
When you get meaning in life, you become happy.
- When people connect, they care.
- When you're feeling well and doing well
you have no choice but to be well to the planet.
- We are up to the task of managing this crisis.
- And it's a mountain we can climb if we climb it together.
- If we don't do what science demands,
we pass a tipping point and it's out of our control.
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- The mission of Water.org is to deliver safe water
and sanitation to everybody on planet Earth in our lifetime.
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The last year was challenging,
but one thing that came out
through everybody's understanding of COVID-19
was the importance of clean water.
It's really the first level of PPE.
If you can't wash your hands and keep them clean,
then obviously you can't fight this virus.
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I think the issue of water access is important on Earth Day
and every other day.
It's unconscionable that in this world
we have people living and dying
because they lack access to clean water.
I mean, imagine if we cured cancer
and in 100 years people were still dying of it.
You'd say that's unthinkable.
But that is the situation with clean water.
We solved this for ourselves in the West a long time ago.
A clean drink of water is only as far
as the nearest faucet for us.
The water in our toilets is cleaner
than the water that many people have access to.
So there are solutions in place
and solutions that are right at our fingertips.
It's about engagement. It's about involvements.
And that's what I'm optimistic about.
We really can solve this in our lifetime.
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I went on a trip about 15 years ago
and was just studying issues of extreme poverty.
And I couldn't believe how massive water was.
It really undergirded everything
and nobody was talking about it
and it was so foreign to me as a Westerner.
You know, it seemed incredible to me
that this was killing millions and millions of children
and how kind of unthinkable that was,
and yet, nobody was really talking about it.
So that really got me interested in it.
And as I learned more and more about it,
I became more and more fascinated with it.
It's exceedingly complex,
but there are these real solutions that are really exciting
because of their potential reach.
And so, it feels like it's something
that's endlessly fascinating to engage with,
but also something which you can really, really move
the needle and change people's lives for the better.
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Well, the climate crisis and the water crisis are related
in the sense that the poorest people on the planet
are the ones most adversely by the climate crisis.
And those are the people that we're reaching
with these solutions at Water.org.
So they were always gonna overwhelmingly feel those things
more than anybody.
And that's really our kind of target group
for these interventions.
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Well, the importance to access to clean water
can't really be understated
because it's not just your drinking water
and your bathing and washing, et cetera, et cetera.
It's the impact that it has.
There are hundreds of millions of girls around the world
who are not in school because they're out collecting water.
There are a million people who are dying every year
because they lack access to clean water.
So, it's really incalculable when you get into the reach
that this issue has and the impact it can have.
If you can bring somebody safe water, clean water,
it's an absolute game changer for them.
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The first conversation I had about this
with somebody whose life was directly affected by it
was with this little girl.
She was 14, I think,
and I waited for her to come home from her school
and we went on a water collection together.
I was talking to her and she was really, she was lovely.
And as I was kind of pushing her by like,
"Wait, are you gonna stay in this village?"
We were in rural Zambia and she was going,
"No, no, no, no.
"When I grew up, I'm gonna go to the big city
"and I'm gonna be a nurse and I'm gonna live in Lusaka."
And she reminded me of the way Ben Affleck and I talked
when we were kids.
Like, "We're gonna go to the big city."
When we were teenagers, we're like,
"We're going to New York. We're gonna be actors."
That great feeling of being that age
and having this world of possibility
kind of right in front of you.
And it wasn't until I left that I realized
if somebody hadn't had the foresight to sink a borewell
a mile from that kid's house,
she would have spent her entire day collecting water.
She would have not been in school.
She would not have had these dreams and ambitions,
and she would not have had this beautiful life
to look forward to.
And so, it's in those indirect ways
in which lives are absolutely ruined,
even if you get away from the needless suffering and death
and kind of the diseases that are so easily cured
with clean water.
You know, we're not losing our children to diarrhea, right?
It's a day away from school, maybe,
you know, for us in the West.
But that's a reality for people in the developing world.
All of this potential that's being lost
for people who don't have access.
And if you give somebody access,
it gives them access to their own dreams
and their own potential,
and they can go live a wonderful life
and contribute to the world
and living a life, you know, a life of fulfillment.
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Well, what we found is there are hundreds and hundreds
of millions of people who just lacked access
to affordable financing,
and actually they can solve their own problem.
If we just give the markets a little nudge toward them,
they can actually take out and pay off a small loan
and solve the problem for themselves forever.
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I think the most rewarding part of the work is the fact
that we've reached 33 million people at this point
because of this insight that we had about finance.
And when you just meet one of the people
whose life has changed by this intervention,
it's incredibly gratifying.
And so, to think about that across, you know,
33 million different lives positively affected in this way
is really wonderful.
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I think like with anything, you know, as you grow older
and learn about things
and the complexities of certain issues,
it kind of, it lights a fire under you
and kind of gets you wanting to take action.
And that was kind of the case for me in that issue.
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Something that I do every day
that I think we all can do pretty easily,
especially nowadays, is recycle.
That's a very small thing and with a very big impact.
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One word to describe the current state of the planet.
I think a fair word would be fragile,
and I think that that doesn't necessarily
have negative connotations.
I think that might have positive connotations.
It's all about what we do now
and it's about our own engagement.
Fragile can mean we all just care a little more
and we pay attention and we fix what's wrong
and we really go to a new and wonderful place.
So I'd say it's an optimistic fragile.
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I'd say to any young person experiencing anxiety
around climate, that's a very normal feeling,
and knowledge is power.
And the best thing you can do
is start reading everything you can,
learning what you can, talk to your friends about it
because your engagement is really what's gonna help here.
You know, I think it's clear to us
that we can't just ignore it, right?
It's not gonna get better if we ignore it.
So, understanding that it's okay to feel anxious,
but now we have work to do
and it's a mountain we can climb if we climb it together.
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Oh man, if I could bring back one extinct animal,
I would have to save a Dodo bird.
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How can we not have a Dodo bird? (laughs)
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What am I hopeful about for the planet?
I'm an optimist.
I'm a perennial optimist,
so I do have a lot of hope for the planet.
Though I think in terms of the water crisis,
there are so many solutions that are in place, right?
So for me, it's more about it's like getting out
and letting everybody know, look, we have this figured out.
We know how to do it.
And the benefits of doing it are just absolutely massive.
The upside is almost incalculable.
It's just a matter of getting on the same page
and doing the work.
We can do it.
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You can absolutely go to Water.org and make a donation.
We've kind of turbo-charged this work in the last decade.
We reached our first million people in 2012,
and now we're at 33 million people
and we're reaching well over a million in a quarter.
So the issue is not the people
because the poorest people on Earth have shown
they will take these loans and pay them back.
The issue is how fast we can get these loans out,
and we can really scale the more support that we have.
So your support is critical.
A very easy way to help is to go
to Water.org and make a donation.
And we've got a great track record of doing quite a bit
with whatever it is you give us.
So from the very start to now 33 million people,
over a million people per quarter now.
So we can get people faster the more support that we have.
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