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These are questions of principle that affect the lives of billions. Is access to water a human rights or just in need? Is water at common good like air or a commodity like Coca-Cola? Who is being given the right or the power to turn the tap on or off… People, governments or the invisible hand of the market? Who sets the price for a poor district… The locally elected water board, or the CEO of Suez? We cannot leave these answers to chance.

One in every three human beings on this planet currently has no clean drinking water. Humanity has polluted, diverted and depleted our finite fresh water sources to such an extent that not only is unclean water is implicated in 80% of all disease worldwide (according to the World Health Organization) but because water plays such a crucial role in cooling and regulating atmospheric temperature, the depletion of the hydrological cycle is just as great a cause of climate change as greenhouse gas emissions. Yet no one’s talking about it. It’s time we look at this. This is what happens when we stop treating water with respect.

Many major civilizations have perished by their destructive water practices. The old kingdom empire of Egypt. The Mycenaean culture of the Bronze Age. The Mayan civilization. The Ming dynasty. All collapsed because they mismanage water supplies and caused drought. We are poised at the same fate.

So today we'll discuss how shifting our relationship to water can save billions of lives, reverse climate change, and put an end to most, if not all wars. Because not only is water life, water is also peace. Water is prosperity. We can learn from water in every way, including ecologically, politically and economically. And in fact we must. Because the stakes are life or death. But before we look at how to change, we must take an honest assessment of where we are and how we got here. This is not easy to hear. But don’t look away. The world and the water need you to care.