[URGENT ACTION REQUIRED]: Our critical role as Water Professionals in addressing climate impact

We all get those emails URGENT, ACTION REQUIRED, DUE YESTERDAY. Do you do something when you get one of these?

I hope you think about it. I hope you do something.

Consider this talk your URGENT ACTION REQUIRED email from our planet, the only one we have, urging you to pay attention and do something – right now.

Climate change is already impacting our lives. Just this summer in my home town in Canada we experienced the worst ever wildfires – burning 5% of Canada’s forests. People died, were evacuated, or were forced to stay indoors due to the world’s worst air quality.

2023 screams climate change. I bet where you live you’ve experienced drought or flood, higher food or energy prices, infrastructure failures—the list goes on.

All of these problems are manifested in alarming water quantity and quality issues:

  • By 2050, 30% of people on Earth will face water scarcity, doubling in just 27 years.
  • Extreme and prolonged droughts, made more frequent and severe by the climate crisis, are putting enormous pressure on our water infrastructure.
  • Water risk could wipe $5.6 trillion from GDP by 2050.

And to make matters worse:

Every year, water use has increased by about 1% over the last 40 years, driven by population growth and changing consumption patterns.

But we’ve all heard these stories before… So here comes the revelation…

  • Take a look around the room—we’re sitting together with the best water scarcity experts in the world.
  • If we don’t move fast enough to solve these issues, we’ll be blamed for climate impacts.
  • It’s going to be all OUR fault!

So what are we going to do about it?

I offer two pathways:

  1. The valuation of water
  2. Moving faster as an industry

The way the world values water is back to front. It frustrates me that companies like Snapchat, not even a top-tier software company, are valued higher than the biggest global water companies. We’re an essential service to human life, and they design online chat filters with mustaches or party hats!

Valuation is a complex problem and not in our direct control, but what is in our control is moving faster as an industry, and that starts with you and me.

Moving faster means building projects faster; think of the current number of new desalination and reuse projects versus the number we need to solve the forecasted problems by 2050.

A lack of speed comes down to our risk tolerance. Sometimes we need to be diligent, but risk adversity has become a habit—a habit of the industry and a habit of us personally.

It’s important that we embrace change as an urgent matter as Water Professionals.

Embracing new approaches to projects and new technologies is non-negotiable.

Lessons from Startup Life

11 years ago, I moved from working at a big bureaucratic water utility to a small startup, NanoH2O, and it taught me how to move with agility and speed.

Today, I want to share what I learned, to help us all think about how we can move faster:

  • “Move fast or die”: In a startup, you must move quickly because there is only so much money to keep you afloat.
  • “Good enough, not great too late”: A mantra from Eric Ries’s book, “The Lean Startup.”
  • “Don’t worry, be scrappy”: Early Apple employee Guy Kawasaki’s answer to the slowness of perfectionism.

These lessons played out in my experience founding Synauta. Our initial AI solution wasn’t perfect, but it moved the needle and allowed us to engage with customers. Over time, it grew into something that allowed us to do better as an industry.

Gradiant, which acquired Synauta, also used this philosophy. It grew from an MIT lab to a leader in water treatment through an innovative culture and fast decision-making. Recently, Gradiant spun out our digital and AI technology into “Turing” to focus on climate initiatives, aiming to reduce customers’ carbon footprints by 500M tonnes of CO2e.

What Can You Do?

An estimated $1.5 trillion per year is required to address global water infrastructure—nearly twice the size of the entire water market today. So we need to act now to make meaningful progress.

We absolutely must move with urgency toward climate adaptation in the water industry.

We need to think carefully to solve water and climate issues.

And the best way to do this starts with you.

What can you do? What more can you contribute?

Urgent action is required—let’s do something.