🗣️ "18 Months Left to Close the Gap"

Host: Antoine Walter
Guest: Mina Guli | CEO & Co-Founder | Thirst Foundation
Category: 🗣️ Opinion

Podcast’s Essential Bites:

[7:43] “I built Thirst as a not-for-profit focused on solving the world's water crisis. And we do that by creating large, inspirational out-of-the-box campaigns, and specifically campaigns that are focused on building ecosystems of stakeholders that we can mobilize to cure what we call water blindness, or this whole concept of just being ignorant about the nature and extent of the water crisis, to working together to put water at the top of the global agenda, and to drive really bold, groundbreaking action on water.”

[8:58] “Even worse than just running across seven deserts on seven continents in seven weeks, […] a year later, I ran 40 marathons in 40 days, down six of the world's great rivers. And then just over a year after that, I set out to run 100 marathons in 100 days all over the world, again, obviously to raise awareness about water.”

[10:14] “It's taken me on this incredible journey. […] I want to use my feet to go to places that have suffered, that are at the frontlines of the water crisis. I want to meet people and hear their stories. And I want to create a platform that allows them to lift up their voices, and share their own stories to the world. Because I think for too long, we've had business leaders, investors, corporates that exist in cities and countries where water flows freely from a tab. They're completely divorced from what's going on in other parts of the world, from what's going on at the bottom of their supply chains. And it's time for us to connect the dots.”

[12:16] “We are all living in the water crisis. […] By 2030, there's going to be a 40% gap between the demand for water and the supply of water available. Right now 3 billion people don't have access to adequate hand washing facilities in the middle of a pandemic, which is disgraceful. Deforestation gets front page news, but our wetlands are disappearing, […] four times faster than a rainforest. These are horrifying statistics. But […] we're numb to these problems.”

[13:53] “Just one outfit took more water to make than all the water you've drunk in your whole lifetime. That's staggering. But what's even more staggering, is that […] we all do have more than one outfit in our closet. And when you think about that, multiplied by the billions of people across the world, and you realize that we all want more, need more energy, food, clothing. And you start to realize this is not just a minor problem. This is a major issue that's getting worse every single day. And without water, the whole thing will start to crumble and fall apart around us.”

[15.45] “For too long, we've all looked at water and said, water is everything, but we treat it as if it's nothing. We use it, we abuse it, we pollute it, we use too much of it.”

[24:25] “Rather than thinking about the problem, let's talk about the solutions. […] And I think we need to do three things. I think we need to mobilize a call for action worldwide. We need to step up and we need the voice of thousands of people across the entire world unified saying we want action on water. […] Second, we need to put water onto the global agenda. Enough that water is cast aside in favor of other things which might be more popular, might be easier to understand or might be easier to take action on. No. Water is the one of the biggest risks facing our communities and societies and our economies. It must be on the agenda. It must be on the agenda in boardrooms, in political environments, in parliament's, in congress across the world. […] And then third, we need to chart a clear path forward for action. That means we need to unify around saying, maybe we can't come up with the one thing that we want companies and businesses and investors to do, maybe there isn't one thing, maybe there are multiple things. But surely, we can agree on [a couple of] things that we can get companies to do […] [to] forward on water.”

[26:19] “I think we're at a really unique moment in time, which is that we have an opportunity to move from water is a major problem to saying how can we be part of the solution. And that unique moment is an opportunity in 2023, when the United Nations hosts their big conference on water, the first in almost 50 years.”

[37:43] “I think it's easy to look at a pricing mechanism and say a price is equal to value and that dictates value. But […] water has a value so much greater than the pricing. This is the year of valuing water.”

Rating: 💧💧💧💧💧

🎙️ Full Episode: Apple | Spotify
🕰️ 1 hr 1 min | 🗓️ 11/16/2021
✅ Time saved: 58 min

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