Moderator: This session would be broadcast live on Aspen Public Radio. So if you can please turn off your public or your personal devices that would be great. Peter Gleick is Co-Founder and President of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California. Peter is internationally recognized water expert and in 2003 was awarded the prestigious MacArthur award, Fellowship award for his science and policy work on water issues around the world. Peter is the author of many scientific papers and books but most importantly probably Biennial Water Report, The World's Water. Please welcome Peter Gleick who will introduce Carl Ganter.
Peter Gleik: Well good afternoon everybody. Thank you for coming. This is the cooler place to be this afternoon inside, although it's not so cool I guess. I would like to introduce my friend and colleague Carl Ganter. Carl is a journalist and he is a writer and he has been a reporter and he is a very innovative guy when it comes to something I am not so innovative on and that is modern media. As my introduction said on the author of a book called The World's Water. Every two years it comes out in paper back and hard cover. We are lucky if we sell a few 1000 copies every year. And yet we find at the Pacific Institute which is the institute I direct in Oakland, California, that if we put one of our papers online we will get 20 or 30 thousand downloads in a few months. So it's a new world out there in terms of communications. And Carl understands this world and so Carl created if you will, conceptualize something called Circle of Blue, which is a project that the Pacific Institute has been very thankful to adopt towards something that we are very enthusiastic about, which is design to bring new tools to this question of water. New tools about thinking about water, about displaying data, about understanding solutions and getting solutions out into the real world. And we are as I say the Institute is proud to host the Circle of Blue. And what we are going to try and do today is two things. We are going to try and provide some real content on the state of the world's water. Not just the future of water but the present situation that we are in. What are the water challenges that face us? To give you some information about where we are and where we are going. But the second part is to offer some ideas about new media tools. Some of the new techniques that might be available to help educate the world about some of the challenges and some of the solutions about water and hopefully these described ways in which these new tools might be useful from moving forward to solutions in the 21st century. Now let me start by saying that water is connected to everything we care about. It's the axis of many of the things that we deal with. It's connected to climate; the hydrologic cycle is the climate cycle. It's connected to culture; it's connected to national and international security. There is a long history of conflict over water resources. It's of course connected to health, human health and eco-system health. It's connected to population and energy and gender issues which I will come back to. Education is a key component to challenges associated with water. Of course water and food are intimately connected. 80 percent of the water that humans use goes to grow food that humans consume. It's fundamentally connected to our economy. And here on earth even though NASA spends a great deal of resources devoted to finding water elsewhere around the solar system, on mars, I don't know if you went to the Cassini talk earlier this week. But they have discovered remarkable things about water on some of the moons of Saturn. Yet here on earth we have very serious, unresolved issues and problems associated with water. I would know even though we call it earth, we only call it earth because we happen to live on the dry parts. If we happen to live in the water we would call it the planet water. 70 percent of the surface area of the earth is not earth, its water. Let me start by describing with some images perhaps as a way to bring into your mind some of the challenges that face us, the issue of water. This is a photograph of a 4 year old girl from Ghana doing what all too many girls throughout the world spent much of their young lives doing and that is carrying water, often enormous distances and I don't know if this bucket, the bucket that she is holding on the top of her head holds four or five-six gallons of water. But if any of you have ever tried to carry four or five or six gallons of water any distance at all, water is very heavy. There are a billion people worldwide that do not have access in their homes to clean, safe, affordable water. And this image describes the life really of all too many people around the world. And there are two and a half billion people world wide that don't have access to adequate sanitation services. Again, something all of us in this room and the listeners we have with us today pretty much I think take for granted. It's a waste of lives, it's a waste of time, many of these young girls never get the education they ought to get because they spent hours everyday bringing even minimal quantities of often contaminated water to their families for use. Associated with the failure to meet basic human needs for water; the failure to have safe drinking water and adequate sanitation services or water related diseases. Here we have a very disturbing picture of a young child with cholera. Cholera is the classic water related disease. It's a disease that that causes billions of cases of diarrhea a year, probably one to two million deaths a year from preventable diseases, water related diseases from cholera. We know how to prevent cholera and water related diseases and yet we have failed as a society, as a planet to meet basic human needs for everyone. We know how to cure cholera, we cured cholera that was rampant in the United States in the 1800s in New Orleans and Washington and New York. And we did it by providing clean, safe drinking water for all. Another critical problem associated with water is that humans frankly take too much water out of the natural environment. This is a series of satellite photos over time of the Aral Sea in what was the Soviet Union, now shared by 6 independent nations. Can we cycle through it again? As you can see the Aral Sea has disappeared over time, as first the Soviet Union and then these independent nations took the water flowing into the Aral Sea out for primarily cotton production. Associated with this human use of water, 24 species of fish went extinct, found only in the Aral Sea. They are now extinct today. And in many ways it's indicative of problems that are happening around the world. The Colorado River Delta never receives water in an average year anymore because humans in the United States and Mexico take all of the water out of the Colorado for human use, that a Yellow River in China no longer reaches the sea in an average year. Humans and eco-systems compete for the same water and many of the environmental problems we have are in fact water related. Thank you. Many of you know that we are in a severe drought in the United States right now. These are images polled from TV over the last few weeks of the last month or so associated with drought. It has been a big story in the main stream media. And we turned out from the prospect of wind and heavy rain to the reality of punishing drought and big parts of this country right now, nearly half the states in the United States, 21 of them in all are suffering officially from severe drought conditions right now. That report tonight from NBC's Michelle Kosinski. Now that map is not as good as the maps that we actually have available to us in real time. This is a time series map of the procession of drought in the South East, you can see the severity of the drought, the darker red it is, the more severe. And a Time series Overtime up to this weeks drought monitor, and I would note that yesterday's New York Times had a front page story about drought. Drought is a big story, it affects production of food, it affects eco system, it affects livelihoods. And yet drought is a natural part of the climate system. We get droughts, we get wet periods, we get excessively wet periods as Katrina told us, even naturally. And yet another growing concerned associated with that is the issue climate change. If you have been here for a while you know that climate changes are real issue. As I said at the very beginning climate change is fundamentally tied to the hydrologic cycle as the earth warms up, we are going to see changes in water availability, water quality, we are going to see very significant losses, snow fall in this year in the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains and the Himalayas. Most of the glaciers on the planet are going to disappear in the coming decades, and those glaciers provide water supply for very large numbers of people, especially in southern Asia in major rivers that are fed by the Himalayan glaciers. Now water is a big issue. It touches on every thing that we care about, and in part to deal with the communication about the issue of water, to communicate these problems and what we do about them. We are going to talk a little bit about the idea, Circle of Blue and the project that Carl - his help start, Carl.
J. Carl Ganter: Yes it was always a pleasure to advance the slides for Peter. That's my great talent. But thank you again for for being here on a on a warm after noon reminds us how important water is, well really Circle of Blue came from the idea that really simple - lot of early simple ideas, and the fact that we are in the 21st centaury now, and we are in an era of massive massive change and it also came from asking lot of dumb questions, for the past four years, I have been a member of the Woodrow Wilson International centre for scholars water working group, called navigating peace it's a mouth flow but we have been looking at the global fresh water crisis around the world, and ways that the US government can intersects and really provide assistance assistance opportunities. So really again it came from asking the dumb questions how do we make this issue relevant personal to broad audiences so that we have platform on which to act. That's also been a major theme through out the whole idea first of all like the other morning, the science and media section, how do we mobilize public opinion, how do we mobilize public support around science. Tom Freidman the other - last night actually talking about climate change in some very very strong terms, how we have to mobilize right now, but what's at the soul of mobilization and it's again very - very simple. You know we talk about hi-tech, we talk about story telling, we talk about media skills, well its actually as ancient as the, as verbal communication, and that is great story telling. And you know, of course we are at, this is the nice simple graphic year for those listening on the radio it's a - its just symbolizes change, and we need exceptional story telling today with these massive mega global issues and water is a is a major piece of the challenges we face on the planet today. But really we have three parts and this again came from asking lot of the the really simple questions that the journalists or that my six year daughter who are listening to quite a bit would ask, so then she say well then what, what else do we need, while we need story telling, w would also need the science and the data. Well there is lots and lots and lots of science and data and wonderful whole range of power points and graphics and excel spread sheets and what not all round the world on water data. But we need a platform; we need a way to put a face on that data to make it relevant, again in personable and actionable for audience's people who, the public who can learn more about their local river, all the way to the policy maker needs to know where the foundation president needs to know how vast to invest their dollars. But then also today, we have a world of where we can all together engage - engage socially. And we have a whole on-line world of mass collaboration all sorts of opportunities every thing from from poetry to to youtube - to my space. But then again I just have to mention the state of the media, the state of the media keeps coming up over and over again, that we are, of course we are under paid in our work but where also don't necessarily have the resources to cover these major issues to the depths that we really need to, many magazines assignments are given several days rather than several weeks these days. For example I just want to talk about in depth journalism and it wasn't here for just a second, anybody have an idea how much people magazine paid for this picture, just put things in perspective, anybody read that.. Just get a quick guess. Two million higher, one more three, seven, 10 - $10 million, People Magazine paid for this for this cover photograph for the Brangelina baby. That was obviously calculated ten million dollars because there is the, they believe their circulation will go up that much. But this is the challenge we face, we face world of quarter of Brangelina babies and that's our competition, when we are telling these stories. So what we really aim to do is to document the global the front lines of the global fresh water crisis across the matrix of issues using the worlds greatest talents, push those stories out there everything from the beauty of the water all way down to tragedy and the pollution and the harsh stories related to water make those personals for everybody from farmer in Aiwa to the intellectual who wants to drill a well in Africa, to the soccer mom, to the NGO worker in the field in Bangladesh doing with arsenic problems. So so that's our real goal is segment this market on under a the major issue of water. So to do this, we have done several several projects are underway now. Now lets just take a quick look in China and just touch touch briefly on what's happening in China and Peter, you can you can tell us a a little bit more on the headwaters of the Tibet and Tibetan plateau, headwaters of the Yang Tze.
Peter Gleik: You know a little bit of background as as most of you probably know that was a Google earth shot leading into this actual real photo at the head of the Yang tze river where the Himalayas dump water from the glaciers out on to the plains. The Yang Tze River is the largest river in China, one of the largest rivers in the world. Hugely important for the population of China for the economy of China, hugely threaten as those of who attended some of the the China environment session perhaps already know. And we are going to see over the next coming decade's diminishment in flow there is going to be less water in the Yang Tze River and the Chinese are already worried about contamination, about quantity, about allocation and now unfortunately about the issue of climate change. Now as a part of I should backup and say the circle blue project has been partly supported by the Ford foundation, by the Coca Cola Company for some of these assets, there are some other supporters that have permitted us to put into the field journalists writers multimedia people like Carl. Carl does more than advance slides much of these is Carl's brilliance I have to say but as part of the, one of the first projects circle blue data, we went to China. We took a look at different aspects of the water situation this is Chiang chin which is at the convergence of the jelling in the Yang tze river it's as its true what much of China, a very very rapidly growing urban center are growing far faster than their ability at the moment to maintain water supply infrastructure. This is at a time when - this photo was taken at a time when nine of the ten water intakes for the city were unable to use water from the river because of drought leading to very severe water shortages within the city. But it's an indication of what we see in cities around the world, rapidly growing urban centers, rapidly growing urban populations and inability to keep up with infrastructure.
J. Carl Ganter: I want to add briefly to that James Fallows' article in the Atlantic has a wonderful profile of China and the other morning he mentioned that if every new resident of Shanghai is part of this sort of massive human migration toward the urban areas in China, if every resident in Shanghai took a shower once a week, the city's water supply would be used up. So we have a massive migration and we have massive massive more demand of water, but on the flip side of that.
Peter Gleik: Yeah so we need to build infrastructure. We have built it in the United States we have a wonderful municipal water supply and waste water treatment system. In China approximately 40 percent of all sewages treated at all urban sewage which means 60 percent is dumped raw into the rivers. I would note that that 40 percent doesn't receive a level of the treatment that it deserves either and so sewage is a problem, it's a constant problem. China's water problem is not just that they don't have a lot of water, but much of the water they do have is too heavily contaminated to use and yet here these is a photograph of an attempt to build sewage infrastructure, this is a sewage pipe obviously added after the housing infrastructure was built, its as huge as they come and yet it doesn't work, they built it and it no longer is functioning and this is a raw sewage outflow to dumping raw sewage into the river. So even when we build infrastructure it often doesn't work or it fails relatively quickly so the challenge is not just build infrastructure but make sure that we know how to maintain it and the resources are available to maintain it.
J. Carl Ganter: So now I want to take you to Mexico to the Teotihuacán Valley. And again friends take a look at Google earth, such fun tools we have today. So the Teotihuacán Valley - has any body been to Teotihuacán or heard the term Un Teotihuacán? Well used to be actually still true if you ask for Un Teotihuacán in Mexico City, you will get a bottle of mineral water - high quality mineral water. But the problem in Teotihuacán is we have a drought we have a drought issue, we have lowering aquifers. We have all sorts of challenges that are faced by this valley here in Teotihuacán. So we want to find out really go to the front lines and see what's happening, take a look at the crisis and also take a look at some of the solutions. So I joined a team of Brian Sergeant great photo journalist from Getty images, Joe Contreras who is News week's Latin America regional editor and senior correspondent and also we had Scott Whitefoot, he is a scholar of Mexico water and development issues and so we spent ten days there which is luxury today for most journalists in the field. And just I want to show you some of the things we found so this is what's called the yagway it's basically is an eye of water and they hand dig these rain fall catchments basins and they used to be primarily for live stock. But now more and more residents are using them as water supply for washing, even some that at least what we were there for drinking, they filter it through several layers of cotton and they are very sick I mean this is not a good way to get your grains. And then also we found major economic intersections here in in the Teotihuacán valley. These campesinos for the first time two years ago actually had to buy their drinking water because their wells went dry. Their fields are drier than normal so that its much more difficult for them to grow corn ironic that in Teotihuacán - is Teotihuacán is the place were corn was first domesticated. So their whole you see a whole cultural shift here and actually I want to point out to out side we will have samples of the report that we produced from Teotihuacán for every one with gorgeous photographs and Joe's reporting. But also like China, like the rest of the world the failure to deal with sanitation is a truly global problem. This year is a young boy that we came across who had built a little makeshift bridge across this sewage out flow. And it was you know of course it's troubling to see a child basically walking in in the raw sewage but it's also just several hundred yards from the - from the small towns municipal well. So here we have very porous ground, we have contamination issues we have all sorts of intersecting issues that Peter pointed out. That really started to put a face on it. I mean I know these people. This boy is in Mexico now also I want to introduce you to Francesca Valencias Rosas and Francesca we as we talk to her for quite a bit and she told us how difficult it hat was the farming issues and how caring water for home etcetera. But then we just let the camera roll and I asked her I said but what this water mean for you and your family? And this is one of those moments were you just set the camera roll and it's either - it's either how I look or it's either the real story but she actually became very emotional and just with the silence there, she took herself back and the fact is that her family is leaving and her children are leaving. They are going to Mexico City or they are going north to the US and they are not coming here for our for health care plans, they are coming here for a new for economic opportunity that they no longer have in their home town. I mean these families are so closely knit. It's very - it's a very difficult emotional separation. Now this was a Homer Simpson doh slap moment really for Joe Contreras and I want him to share his thoughts because we really hadn't thought of a migration. We thought about migration but these issues that are so in the news today, really the front lines of global fresh water crisis.
Peter Gleik: It's struck me as we round up our reporting here that no matter how many Berlin style walls are erected along the US and Mexican border there is nothing that is going to stop that influx of people entering the United States in search of work until the Mexican countryside develops new and more innovative methods to cop with it's own water shortage issues and improving the productivity and efficiency of it's agricultural sector.
J. Carl Ganter: So again, so here we have a major issue that's unfolding right on our borders that has water as a major component. Now think about think about the migration, the major migration issues we have right now we have China we also have Bangladesh in rising - rising water levels due to climate change. We are going to have massive economic and environmental migration based it really on peoples seeking water and other resources. Now people always ask me, okay, so what happened in Mexico? How did that work? What did you do with with reporting? This was pilot. We wanted to see, what can we find? And so, what we did with Ford Foundation support is in parallel to the World Water Forum in Mexico City. This was the gathering of 20,000 of the world's leading water experts sharing, you know, sharing data and great information. Now we wanted to see what kind of impact we could make. So we held a we invited all of the creative folks to a party in Mexico City in parallel to the World Water Forum. And we had the leading architect in Mexico who is now very, very much interested in lead in building to lead the standards and others. We had the soap opera stars. We had the people who can carry this message to broad audiences more than power points behalf probably great power points, but more than power points behind podiums in a conference center. And so, the media the local Mexico media loved this. At the closing of the World Water Forum main session, people who are reading La Jornada, El Universal and El Financiado, and they were reading about the Tehuacán Valley and looking at Brent Sturton's photographs and Joe Contreras clothes from that field and every single journalists said, I wish we had the resources to cover this to the depth that you have. So, any way so that's what happened in Mexico. Now, I also wanted to add one more quick story. Brent Sturton, our photographer, you have seen a couple of pictures. I talked to him this morning. He has just literally landed from Peru. And I want to point out to that Brent Sturton is Brent is the one who took the Brangelina picture. So so our photographer went from the Tehuacán Valley to South Africa, to Namibia, to photograph the Brangelina picture. So we love those ironies. But so there is a huge talent pool out there that's anxious to do in depth stories, that's what that's what I am saying. But also we had a chance to chat with Brent and his his fresh observations from Peru. So I'll show you show those with you, its its done by i-chat literally just about 45 minutes or an hour ago.
Video: When I was in Peru, one image that did strike was that; I was in a at a point of high altitude of about three and half hours outside of Cusco, the second largest city in in Peru. And what I saw there was that there were diminished groups of rural posternors that, you know, we were looking at an area where they were they used to be far more people living at this altitude and then existing of the water resources that these glaciers just have provided. Now, as a result of diminished resources in that area, a little ground water table, a harsher way of life as a result of diminished water resources, you see far more of these people moving to the cites. Now if you bear in mind that this is the first year when we see population groups exceeding first time in history we see more people living in the cities than we see living in rural areas. Okay. And if you consider that the most of those people who are moving to cities are ill qualified to be there, that they are you know, educated, they are qualified that the job market kind of absorb in and that they are forming larger and larger homeless populations within their cities. And that drives crime, that drives suffering, it drives it drives a whole bunch of humanitarian concerns. And in Peru, this for me definitely has been it has been reinforced by the you know the loss of a conditional resources in terms of glacier retreat and contamination of glacier water base and ore industry and other industries in the Amazon basin.
J. Carl Ganter: So that was Brent literally just a few minutes ago. Well, it would have been nice to do a live a real satellite feed with him. But that was that was great opportunity. We just wanted to show some of his pictures from, again the frontlines and he is seeing that the connections between glacier melts, urban migration; even all the way to crime in the cities, major, major issues. So moving ahead to science, I want to show you take a look at again you know, back to our friends at Google Earth. Let's let's transport ourselves, beam us Scotty, to right, to hopefully to Aspen to the auditorium. So we are here now and I think I think you have a parking ticket, yeah.
