Cities and the Global Water Crisis | Sustainable Cities Collective Audio

Last week for World Water Day (March 22nd, 2011), I participated in an exclusive webinar about how global cities are dealing with the challenge of managing their most essential resource.

Listen to the audio at Sustainable Cities Collective (length 01:01:06)

    or download here  

Panelists included

Dr. Paul Bowen is the Director of Strategic Business Initiatives, Water Technology and a Member of the Global Water Stewardship team for The Coca-Cola Company. In that role, he oversees water use efficiency programs for global manufacturing, including work with plants on water minimization, water reuse, and water conservation. Paul is a member of the 2010-2011 Board of Trustees for the Water Environment Federation (WEF), and previously was an Assistant Professor for the School of Civil Engineering & Environmental Science at the University of Oklahoma.

Larry Levine is a senior attorney in NRDC's Water Program, and works on a variety of issues pertaining to water quality in the Northeastern U.S., as well as at the national policy level. He focuses especially on promoting the use of “green infrastructure” as a sustainable solution to polluted urban runoff and raw sewage overflows. Larry was previously a litigation fellow at NRDC and a clinical fellow in environmental law at the Georgetown University Law Center, and is a graduate of Yale Law School and Tulane University.

Scott Edward Anderson is the founder of VerdeStrategy, a consulting and advisory firm focused on the cleantech, energy, and environment sectors, and the popular blog TheGreenSkeptic.com, as well as a frequent commentator on FOX Business Network. He has held management positions for large institutions, such as The Nature Conservancy, the world's most successful global conservation organization, and Ashoka, a social venture capital organization with operations in 72 countries worldwide, and has consulted with dozens of businesses and social entrepreneurs around the globe.

Richard McGill Murphy moderates the Sustainable Business Forum. Richard is a journalist and media consultant with 15 years of experience covering business, technology and international affairs. He writes for Fortune and BusinessWeek and serves as managing partner of Walled City Media LLC, a media strategy firm. Previously, he has worked as a top editor at Fortune Small Business and CNNMoney.com, and earlier served as editorial and program director at the Committee to Protect Journalists. He holds a bachelor’s degree in literature from Harvard and a doctorate in social anthropology from Oxford University.

Some good insights about water, water investing, water supply issues, environmental concerns, weather events, and the potential impacts of climate change.

World Water Day: Urban Challenges and Opportunities

Half of the world's people now live in cities, according to the United Nations, and within two decades, nearly 60 percent of the population -- 5 billion people -- will be urban dwellers.

Developing countries feel the growth most directly, but even cities like Philadelphia are showing signs of population growth.

While cities are considered by many to be the most environmentally benign habitat for human beings, urban population growth brings challenges. Among those challenges are increasing stresses on water availability, access, and sanitation.

Cities are hard to sustain without reliable access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation. Yet even in the industrial world, urban water and waste service infrastructure is not up to the challenge.

Scarcity of usable water around the world is leading to further challenges and economic constraints, according to William Brennan of Summit Global Management, a San Diego-based investment firm that specializes in water.

"The continued industrialization of emerging markets, growing global agricultural demand, and rising energy inputs are unstoppable trends that are all converging at a historic rate, making the water demand curve further accelerate," Brennan wrote to me recently.

Yet, with such challenges also come opportunities, especially where recycling and reuse and treatment of water and wastes are concerned.

In the US, start-up companies like Liberty Hydrologic Systems, BlackGold Biofuels, Cardinal Resources, and ET Water are coming up with innovative solutions to deal with treatment, filtration, and waste; while large utilities such as AquaAmerica and American Water tackle the infrastructure for drinking water and wastewater services.

Internationally, organizations such as charity:water and the Global Water Challenge are addressing clean, safe drinking water, and sanitation issues in developing nations. (Here is a comprehensive list of water related organizations: H20.)

"Good urban water management is complex and requires not only water and wastewater infrastructure, but also pollution control and flood prevention," as the organizers of World Water Day point out. "It requires coordination across many sectors and between different local authorities and changes in governance that lead to more sustainable and equitable use of the urban water resources."

It also requires innovative solutions and new ways of thinking about how we use, reuse, conserve, and treat our water.

One day each year hardly seems adequate to raising the awareness of water issues around the world, but it's a start.  As our cities expand and stresses to water supplies increase, it will become clear as...well...water that we need to pay more attention to this most precious resource.


NOTE: Join me and Dr. Paul Bowen of Coca-Cola, Larry Levine of NRDC, and Richard Murphy of Fortune for a webinar today at 1PM ET as we discuss water challenges and opportunities: Cities and the Global Water Crisis.