Educational Program: Why We Need to Be Paying More Attention to Water
Water is essential to every community, ecosystem, and economy around the globe. It is fundamental to all life on earth. Yet water insecurity has become one of the greatest crises on the planet—and one that is largely overlooked. The United Nations cites data that says more than 2 billion people live in water-stressed countries, and around 4 billion people experience severe water scarcity at least one month a year. Around 2 billion people around the world do not have access to clean and safe drinking water, and approximately 3.6 billion people—46 percent of the world's population—lack adequate sanitation services, according to data from the UN's 2023 World Water Development Report.
So what can be done to address this global challenge? How can private companies, governments, NGOs and other stakeholders act cohesively to preserve and restore watersheds in the face of increasing demand, and aging infrastructure and the impacts of climate change? What innovative technologies and approaches can make, and are already, making a difference?
To learn more about this topic, the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in the United States (AFPC-USA) heard from David Grant, Director of Global Water Stewardship at PepsiCo, Will Sarni, Founder and General Partner of Water Foundry Ventures, and Kari Vigerstol, Director of Water Security Science and Innovation for The Nature Conservancy.
The educational program took place on Wednesday, September 6 and was moderated by Oheneba Ama Nti Osei, business journalist and Managing Editor at PYMNTS. This program was developed within the scope of AFPC-USA’s partnership with PepsiCo. The AFPC-USA is solely responsible for the content of this educational program. Below, readers will find a summary of some of the most important takeaways from the presentation.
ON THE STATE OF WATER IN THE WORLD TODAY
David Grant
Grant notes that while “we consider ourselves a blue planet,” only three percent of the water around the world is freshwater; more than two-thirds of that “is locked up in icebergs and otherwise unavailable.” This means that we are “essentially working with a tiny fraction of water that is fresh and available to us and that water is under a lot of strain at the moment.” He cites an analysis from the World Resources Institute (WRI) which states that roughly 25 percent of the global population “lives in areas where they experience water stress on an annual basis.” He adds: “If you expand that scope to people who experience stress at least once a year, that's around 50% of the global population.”
This issue costs the world about $470 billion a year, according to the most recent estimates. Water demand has risen “sixfold since about the 1960s,” he says, “and continues to get driven in the developing world.” A lack of investment has led to “failing infrastructure,” contributing to “a massive amount of water loss in the system” to the tune of approximately 36 billion cubic meters.
He observes that water is also “significantly undervalued,” which hurts conservation efforts and creates “a lack of investment” because water is cheap and the return is low. Additionally, regulatory frameworks and water policy are sorely lacking and climate change is only “exacerbating” the problem.
Vigerstol adds that water scarcity and water quality are interlinked; moreover, the health of freshwater ecosystems, which are “much more impacted than terrestrial or marine ecosystems” is paramount because they play an important role in supporting clean, reliable water. She goes on to cite a recent exposé in the New York Times which shows that unchecked overuse of groundwater is draining and damaging aquifers nationwide. Groundwater has not been managed properly, partially because “we don’t see it” and there’s an expectation that it “will always be there” even though that isn’t true.
She adds that there have been marked improvements in water quality in the developed world, recognizing the efforts to address point source pollution. However, efforts to address non-point source pollution, which has had detrimental impacts on “freshwater waterways, near-shore marine areas, fisheries, and other parts of the ecosystem.”
There has been “good progress” in the realm of water and sanitation but there are still 2 billion people who lack access to clean water and a half billion people who lack access to adequate sanitation. “The challenges around quantity and quality impact the access to clean water, they impact freshwater ecosystems and our ecosystems also impact all of those other aspects,” she says. “Our ecosystems in our watersheds have a huge impact on the health of our waterways and the ability to naturally filter and store and provide clean, reliable water for people and for nature.”
ON GLOBAL CHALLENGES IN ADDRESSING WATER SCARCITY TODAY
Will Sarni
“I absolutely believe that humanity's relationship with water is broken and it was broken before we had a clue what climate change was all about,” says Sarni, who calls climate change a “threat multiplier.” The “perceived abundance of water” has not helped matters and there is “a disconnect between demand and supply.” The fact that water is not valued is problematic for both the public and private sectors. Public policy and transparency need to be “aligned in the right way” in order for humanity to “have a sustainable and secure relationship with water.”
ON THE STRATEGIES THAT CAN BE DEVISED TO ENGAGE PUBLIC BODIES IN PROMOTING GOOD WATER CONSERVATION
Grant observes that governments “typically take a long time to get things going” and are “typically resource-constrained.” He brings up PepsiCo’s partnership with the Nature Conservancy in Cape Town, South Africa, where both organizations are working with local government to establish a fund to conserve the local watershed, noting that the private sector was able to provide funding much more quickly. With early engagement, the private sector can bring in necessary resources, “catalyze these projects,” and then and then collaborate with the government to best utilize public resources and personnel. Vigerstol says the Nature Conservancy has “worked with private sector partners to get programs going when we've got a sort of innovative idea or we need funding and support and collaboration to get a program off the ground,” a process that has “worked in dozens of places around the world.” This includes the Greater Cape Town Water Fund, which was jumpstarted by support from the private sector. She concurs with Grant that the private sector is known to move faster than the public sector and is often able to provide initial investments while efforts to partner with local and national governments on long-term investments in watersheds happen on a longer timeline.
Because the end goal is to “embed” these sustainable watershed management programs, partnering with different government sectors and local communities is critical to their success. Vigerstol points out that governments can move “at a very slow pace and may not be willing to take some of the risks that you might want to take for innovation.” Engaging with them means talking about “different kinds of technologies that can help us do a better job of creating transparency and get a better understanding and manage the uncertainties that are presenting themselves in terms of water management due to lots of changes around the world, including climate change.” But ultimately, governments need to “commit to better policies and commit to this better water management in different areas.”
ON THE PRIVATE SECTOR’S APPROACH TO WATER STEWARDSHIP
The private sector historically viewed water as a “management” and “compliance” issue, says Sarni, but that has changed over time as corporations have gained a greater understanding of the role they play in solving water-related problems. “Water stewardship is primarily a risk management strategy for the most part, ensuring social license to operate, ensuring brand value in the scheme of things,” he says. “What I find interesting right now is that companies are thinking beyond traditional water stewardship, and they're thinking about their role beyond just the water footprint.”
The private sector has an “enormous positive impact” once it “gets things moving,” he says. What’s most exciting is with respect to innovation “not just in technology, but in partnerships with funding and financing.”
Grant says a good water stewardship strategy takes a value chain approach, from sourcing to production. It’s a “holistic approach” that is locally contextualized. “Water has to be approached at each watershed because the stakeholders are different and then the issues are going to be different.”
On PepsiCo’s own strategy, Grant has this to say: “Water is becoming really important in terms of how we position ourselves and ‘right size ourselves’ for the future in a very water uncertain world alongside deep collaboration with local stakeholders in terms of how we develop joint solutions going forward. That's really what informed our overall PepsiCo net positive strategy. It's really developing a strategy that not only looks to achieve water sustainability for the business, but also for local ecosystems that we rely on not only for water, but for agriculture and also those local communities. And that's developed into our key approaches, which are around water use efficiency for operations, replenishing local watersheds, supporting water governance and providing access to local communities”
PepsiCo has “differentiated between high water risk and non high water risk facilities in its water strategy,” he adds, with their focus being key watersheds at-risk. It has 36 collective partnerships globally, taking a strong approach to water governance and water access. The company’s goal is to impact 100 million people with safe water access by 2030. The company also has regenerative agriculture goals to “measurably improve the watershed health” of its key growing regions.
Kari Vigerstol
ON THE INNOVATIVE APPROACHES AND TECHNOLOGIES THAT HELP US USE WATER MORE EFFICIENTLY
Sarni emphasizes the importance of digital technology that can and does give stakeholders the ability to ascertain water quality and quantity in real time using satellite data and remote sensors in the built environment. Digital technologies are “transforming” companies like PepsiCo and the rest of the private sector (to say nothing of the public sector).
“We have the technology now to deploy technologies both in the industrial sector and in the private sector and homes in particular that will reuse water,” he says. “That ties into the intersection with climate change, which gives us infrastructure that is more sustainable and more resilient than costly centralized systems.” Corporations don’t necessarily have to spend funds on infrastructure because they “can get the value of both water supply and water treatment as a SaaS model.”
According to Vigerstol, digital technology like remote sensing and AI analysis “is critical for us to be able to quickly adapt to the changes that are happening in terms of our water systems, things that we haven't seen before.” They also promote transparency around water.
ON HOW AI IS DRIVING CHANGE WHEN IT COMES TO PRESERVING WATER
Sarni says AI “gives stakeholders the ability to understand what might happen going forward,” which is critical as a predictive tool to understand scenarios and plan accordingly from both an infrastructure and agricultural perspective. He notes that there is an “aging workforce” in the utility sector whose knowledge can be paired with AI solutions “to deliver safe drinking water for industrial applications and so on.” Grant adds to this, mentioning that PepsiCo has used AI to manage water usage and identify leaks, so no water is wasted.
On the matter of expectations related to AI, Sarni says “there's enormous potential for AI and other digital technologies to give us the ability to be more transparent, to understand what the future might hold and start building and investing in infrastructure that is more sustainable and resilient.” However, people need to have the capacity and understanding of how to apply AI tools in a way that has a “positive impact.”
Grant describes AI’s potential as “massive” and says the private sector is ready to implement AI tools even though many are learning as they go.
ON INNOVATIONS THAT HAVE COME OUT OF THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION
Vigerstol says the Biden administration has provided “a roadmap for investment in nature-based solutions, which has never happened before.” She praises the commitment from the national government around that and provides guidance on addressing gaps in being able to scale up those investments in protecting, restoring or improving management of our natural ecosystems and agriculture. This progress has been made despite significant movement in the opposite direction, including the recent Supreme Court decision that narrowed the scope of the Clean Water Act, which regulates “wetlands and what counts as protected streams and headland waters.”
Sarni concurs, adding that it’s a “positive” that water is of such concern at the federal level and that the administration is making these investments in the first place. He hopes it serves as a catalyst for further investment, particularly in regard to “century-old infrastructure.” The U.S. has a very “ad hoc” water strategy and “we need to tie it back to the value of water to economic development, business growth, ecosystem health, and social wellbeing.”
ON THE DIFFERENCE IN POLICY BETWEEN THE U.S. AND EUROPE
According to Vigerstol, both the U.S. and Europe have done a “great job” addressing point source pollution. Europe and Australia are ahead of the U.S. because they’ve historically had to face water scarcity issues.
Sarni says Europe is ahead from a policy perspective but not from an innovation and technological perspective. “There are really great startups coming out of Europe, but if you look at the US ecosystem of investors and startup community, it's significant. So for me, if we can sort of level the playing field and cross-pollinate what different parts of the world do well, then we got a shot at solving water for everybody,” he says.
ON STEPS THAT CAN BE TAKEN TO MITIGATE WATER CONTAMINATION
Vigerstol says there are places around the world that lack regulation around point source pollution and these policies need to be not just passed but enforced. We do need to “seek out solutions” to address both point source and non-point source pollution, particularly in agriculture that drains pesticides and fertilizers into our waterways.
There are “nature-based solutions” that allow vegetation to “filter these pollutants as they come off the landscape” and improved agricultural practices that reduce the load of agriculture-related pollutants into our waterways. She says we know “how to address those challenges, but we really need to scale up those investments in those on the ground practices and in those nature-based solutions.” This will take deep engagement across sectors and with communities, and innovative financing programs, among other key enabling conditions.
Grant highlights PepsiCo’s regenerative agriculture strategy, which is a lot more “precise” and “forgiving” toward the natural environment. He also highlights the N-Drip irrigation system, which provides affordable drip irrigation. The water-saving technology is powered by gravity and uses less energy and requires less operating and maintenance demands—making it more accessible to all types of farmers and nearly all types of crops. At present, PepsiCo is “trying to understand how we can support other growers to adopt more water efficient technologies” and “enacting improvements there through things like water funds and partnerships to improve general water health.”
ON THEIR BIGGEST FEARS FOR THE NEXT DECADE
Grant believes humanity will “find a way” to address these issues but acknowledges that we need an “enabling environment from a government and policy point of view.” “If there's no policy cohesion, the type of regulation that can come up can be counterproductive,” he says. “And when you have that lack of cohesion across government departments, that's where things can go awry quite quickly.”
Vigerstol has fears about “what might happen if we don't put certain policies in place” because without it “we're going to be running into a number of conflicts in different places.” Water is local, so there will certainly be more local issues regarding water access in the future.
Sarni is concerned about “the lack of speed in the public sector in aligning reality with regulations that have been around for a hundred plus years.” It is incumbent on water professionals to “communicate in a way that is clear and concise and conveys the message on the value of water and what that means for all of us.”
MORE ON THE SPEAKERS
The experts on the panel offered a diverse range of perspectives.
Grant oversees PepsiCo’s water stewardship agenda and supports the company in delivering its global water strategy. That includes covering both internal water use efficiency and the programs implemented to support broader conservation of the watersheds from which PepsiCo sources its water.
Sarni is also the founder and CEO of water strategy consultancy, Water Foundry. and the founder and General Partner of Water Foundry Ventures Prior to Water Foundry, Sarni was a managing director at Deloitte Consulting, where he established and led the water strategy practice.
Vigerstol strategically strengthened and advanced the science behind the Nature Conservancy’s source water protection and water scarcity strategies. Over the last 19 years, Kari has brought her technical skills and partnership-building experience to dozens of watersheds around the world towards protecting water sources and improving water use and management.
