Brave Blue World: Racing to Solve Our Water Crisis

There is no

close substitute for water.

It's the

most precious resource we have.

We are

not treating it as a crisis

when we should be

treating it as a crisis.

Imagine if tomorrow,

we cured cancer,

and in a hundred years,

there were still a million

kids dying of cancer.

It would be unthinkable,

but that's the situation we

find ourselves in with water.

The government has failed

in telling the

population the truth

about the situation

that we are facing.

About

7.7 billion people

have inherited the Earth.

Almost two billion of us

are struggling to survive

without clean drinking water.

The water crisis

isn't imminent.

It isn't looming.

It's here... now.

The UN estimated that by 2025,

1.8 billion people will be

living in water stress regions.

People are not gonna be

starving and dying instantly.

They're gonna be moving.

They won't have the resources

to live where they're at.

Contrary

to popular thought,

this crisis isn't just a

developing world problem.

It is already beginning to

impact everyone everywhere.

Our changing climate

is less forgiving,

keeping more water for itself.

Pollution is corrupting

our supplies.

Infrastructures

are failing faster

than they can be repaired.

And everyday, there are

more people in the world

all thirsting for water.

More often than not,

a water crisis isn't

an act of nature.

It's an act of humankind.

By not planning,

by not using the

right technologies,

and by not acting soon enough,

we set ourselves up to fail.

It's a

truly daunting crisis,

but what if the solutions

were already at hand?

Right now all around the globe,

an army of visionaries

and innovators

is working to reimagine

and reinvent water systems

to generate, supply,

and clean the water

we all depend on

for our very lives.

The water challenges

facing the world

really fall into

three categories.

First is the scarcity of water.

Second is building

resilient infrastructure

against climate change.

And third is doing all that

in a way that's

affordable for society.

The problem with

this crisis is

the water that's drinkable

is gonna start disappearing

and the water

that's not drinkable

is gonna start

appearing everywhere.

There are solutions.

It's just a matter of bringing

them to bear on the problem

and we can fix it.

We are running

against the clock

in terms of solving

these issues.

In a sense, it breaks my heart

that we have the

solutions, right?

And then we can't get

them out fast enough.

The demand for water to

sustain not only the population

but the lifestyle that we have

has grown just tremendously,

but we're still

trying to do things

the way we've done

them in the past.

Back around the

turn of the century,

really everybody was responsible

for their own sewage.

They were responsible

for their own water.

They drilled a well, dug a well,

or they got water

out of a creek.

And then they used a pit latrine

or a sewage lagoon

behind the house.

Of course, there were public

health issues with that.

People were getting sick,

and so the governments

around the world

kinda stepped in and said

that this is an intrinsic

government function.

We need to provide

for the safety

and welfare of the community,

and money's really no object.

So they ended up

with these incredibly

expensive sewer systems

where there's a pipe

to everybody's house.

There's a water pipe

to everybody's house,

there's a sewer pipe

to everybody's house.

Incredibly complex

networks of systems

that get old and all

have to be replaced.

And huge expense

associated with it,

but it provided a

safe environment.

It dealt with the public health

issues associated with that.

Attempting to

engineer our way our of trouble

is deepening the problem.

As we throw more

and more resources

at outmoded infrastructure,

the challenge is to let go of

an older inefficient system

and start to open our minds

to new ways of managing water.

Nothing focuses the

mind like a crisis.

So when Flint, Michigan

faced a shocking crisis

of lead contamination

in its drinking water,

activists not only

demanded change,

but actively sought creative

solutions to the problem.

One such creatively

focused mind

belongs to rapper, actor,

and entrepreneur Jaden Smith.

My motivation around water

started when I was

about 11 years old.

And it came from me learning

about the environment

from my teachers in school.

It got to the point

where I really wanted

to make an active change

and I wanted to do something

that could make a

difference in the world.

I always wanted to

go above and beyond

and just go across the world