Rich and poor. Do you know that in the year 2000, there were 111 billionaires in the world . There are now over 2500 billionaires in the world. 15 years, what does that tell you about policies of the 1 for the 1 and by the 1 right . So i would argue that the way we grow food for a Global Market is a way of like putting a huge pipe into our Water Systems and sucking the water up and taking it away. Remember when you grow food, when you use water to grow food you are consuming that water. That water does not get returned to the watershed. So what do we need . I call for a new water ethic. And a new water as they would say that water is not just a resource. As i said for our pleasure and profit inconvenience, but it is the essential element that gives us life. And it is to be respected and revered, and we need to come up with a new relationship with water. We also and if i were queen of the world and could make every leader in the world do as i say and save the worlds water, all policy, and this have to happen at all levels, municipal state federal, international, all policy has to ask the question whats the impact on water. Our energy, using fossil fuels is not only bad for a or. Everybody knows that. Its terrible for water. Fracking uses, destroyers abuses huge amounts of water. Growing corn for ethanol, it takes 1700 gallons of water to make one gallon of corn ethanol. So yes okay maybe thats a better use for your car but the water footprint its leaving is not worth the. I would argue that ethanol is worse than fossil fuels because of the way its treating water. We mustnt set up this air versus water kind of reality. What would it look like if we asked the question about the impact on water of Food Production . Well, ill tell you what it would look like. We would have to stop using chemicals. We wouldnt have any more, you know, toledo green water if we stop putting, having those factory farms, if we stop putting all those pesticides and narcotics of every kind into animal feed and so on. If we went back to the way we know how to grow food more vocal, more sustainable, family farms, organic and food for local consumption we could cut the water consumption of the world and half. So what would be the question is then is always, what is the impact on water of these trade policies . What if we took into account okay, ill trade maybe isnt the same. Say ive got a white shirt coming from this country and a white shirt coming from this country and they both took the exact same amount of water to produce, but the water, but the water in this country is almost gone and so that sure is coming at the price of the local peoples water rights. In this country they still have water so its not quite the since we dont ask that question. We never asked the question in these trade agreements are we protecting our Natural Resources . Are we protecting our people . We also have to declare water to be a public trust. Public trust is a very old concept in the United States very deeply entrenched particularly in the northeastern states, less so in the southwestern states where they have more of a first to come here, got the rights to water shortage thing. Public trustbased this is the water is a comments. It belongs to all of us and governments must protect in the name of the people for all and for future generations. That doesnt mean that you can do whatever you want but its not a comments that you can say well, i can abuse it because it doesnt belong to anybody. We are going to have to protect his comments and were going to have to say, what are our priorities for having people having access to this water . Because you just cant have it for anything anybody wants it for. Ill give you an example of vermont. I worked on this legislation, the state of vermont has beautiful water, lots of groundwater. But a few years ago that whole bunch of bottled Water Companies coming in and setting up plants and drinking the local water source until it was gone. They were really concerned so they brought in legislation that their groundwater is a public trust. They actually said to protected we are going to give priority, water for peoples daily needs Water Protection of the ecosystem and water for local Food Production, not for agribusiness to make money selling our water and our food far away. So they had that hierarchy of axis and they were just able to use their Public Trust Doctrine because there was a Nuclear Facility that was leaking treaty them into the local treaty them in in the local company, the Power Company said yes thats our water, with water rights. The state was able to say no. The fact that we have made it a public trust trumps your private right to do dont tritium into water so were taking back. So exciting, its a very exciting concept that we need to go back to an item working a lot with a group of people around the great lakes. We want to get the great lakes to be declared a commons a public trust and to protected by a region so that we stop seeing it as your piece of it and this piece, but we see it as a whole watershed. We need common laws, protections, comment enforcement. You get enforcement totally different on different parts of the lakes. We need together to say no more shipping of this extreme energy. We cannot put this water out that this kind of risk and its a kind of new way of thinking thinking terms of watershed governance, which be doing in europe. Since 2000 all other watersheds must be covered by committees and legislators from all other countries that surround these water sources. So its not my water, im only going to try to get this amount. Its going to be our water collectively. At a global level im calling for what im now naming a martial plan for water. You will know some of you that the Marshall Plan was the major plan led by the United States to rebuild europe after the second world war. Europe was in tatters and everything from rescuing orphaned children to rebuilding schools and hospitals to putting an economy back together. It was an absolute incredible endeavor. And we need a Marshall Plan for water. We need our leaders to come together and say, this is a crisis. When you read that california has one year left of water i dont know what people in california think when it be that but i think a lot of them are going to be moving here, i guess. We might see american refugees moving from one part of the country to the other. What do we think of when we read that . We have to take this very, very seriously. And the United Nations need to set up a separate process for water. Right now water is linked into an comes under the umbrella of climate change. If you go to the climate summit, and i could everyone of them come all the talk about our Greenhouse Gas emissions which are important to im not for a moment negating that but they dont talk about water as anything but a victim. So they dont have the stories about how if you rebuild water retentive landscapes if youve created a desert, if you bring in the technologies and the techniques that we know and if you put people to work rebuilding and refurbishing these watersheds, the rain comes back. Its absolutely miraculous. There are so many wonderful examples of what we have done this. The key components of this are absolutely at the heart of the would be watershed protection, conservation and restoration equipped to stop destroying our Water Systems. We have to repair those that have been hurt. National and International Projects to replenish water retentive landscapes, im working with a wonderful scientist named michael in slovakia. He had a lot of land that had been destroyed by bad farming practices, like old Bad International dumping and so when. He convinced many municipalities and their own federal government to allow a project where they put thousands of people to work rebuilding the kinds of small firms and dams water retention, water collection, rainwater collection and so on and they have greened an amazing amount of the land. Same entity. There are many projects where a wonderful man they call the rainmaker has brought back water to just a massive amount of land. A wonderful engineer in southern australia that convinced his government to let him gather all the rainwater, the storm water the sewage water put it all through massive legumes ever played with the kinds of plants they did bacteria and poison and theyve got so much water. The greened the desert. The birds have come back to the animals have come back. Its a miracle because we need to remember that nature will come back if we stop hurting nature. Nature loves us wants to come back to us as soon as again. We need food policies that promote local organics, sustainable agriculture. We have to move away from the form of agriculture that we are now engaged in and has been supported by policy in all of our countries. Weve exported it. Theres an area of land three times the size of Great Britain in africa alone where foreign interests, Foreign Investors foreign corporations, foreign governments have come in and bought the massive amounts of land and water, and theyre using it to grow crops that they sell out of the community. They are using all the same or well technology thats ruining the Ogallala Aquifer here. Theyre using their in pumping this water up, destroy water there. We have to learn people who have lived for millennia in communities in asia and africa and south america know how to live with the fluctuations of rain and then dry season, and they know how to conserve and they know how to farm dry land. We come in with our technology and we are ruining it. Energy sources that dont harm water have got to go. We are fighting the pipelines, you know the keystone xl pipeline which is still a very hot issue and is going to remain contentious through the next election. But we are fighting huge of the pipelines in canada because they want to move that vitamin the terrible tar sands stuff from the tar sands in alberta to export markets. Fracking is a really dangerous form of energy in terms of water. So we have to say we can do better, we ask the question energy whats impact on water. We will come up with different solutions. I also call for in my book the notion of using water as a source of peace rather than a source of conflict. And think about for a minute but if you stop and think in a world where the demand for water is going straight up and displays going straight down it doesnt take a genius to figure out that maybe this going to be conflict. Maybe there already has been. The deep germ of many of the conflicts in the world have at least partially to do with water, from syria to egypt to israelpalestine, many, many disputes in africa disputes in asia are around water or water is a part of it. And water is being used now around the world as a weapon of war. The government in syria has cut the water source is off to the people in aleppo which is where the original revolution took place. Just cut the water. So if you want to make war on people you just take away their water supply. Theres very Little People can do in the absence of access to water. So the question would be then well, if they can be a source of conflict, could water equally be a source of peace . Could we think about water as natures gift to humanity, to teach us how to live with each other . And maybe, you know my grandfather was taught to rate your grandfather and your father was taught to hate my father and vice versa and im supposed to meet you, except we both live on this river and its a dying. So maybe instead of expending our energy hating each other maybe we can come together and build something that saves this river. Maybe our kids will live in peace because we will come together and say this water source. So theres a whole discipline in universities now around water and nature as being forms of peacemaking, forms of negotiating a peaceful settlement coming around the concept of governance, watershed governance and watershed sharing. Instead of saying this is my portion and ill fight you for it. Its like what does the health of the watershed event . Whatever that is lets conform to it. Lets make that happen. One of my favorite examples is a Group Called Friends of the earth middle east who came together years ago and theyve got people from, members from all the warring factions gaza israel, syria, lebanon, all of them, and they came together to say were not going to talk religion or politics. Were going to talk about how to save the Water Systems in our community. Its been so successful that theres actually some parts of the world of the wall put up and take it in where people got to know each other and realized how much more in common they have with one another than they might have thought. We also have to promote human laws that mirror and reflect the laws of nature. Theres a whole movement that im involved in, a number of early thoughtful and interesting people on creating called the rights of nature. That is the notion that nature has rights beyond its used to us. Yes, its a public trust which means will have, access. We all have equal rights to these, assets, hot water has rights separately, even if water didnt serve us. Water serves other species. Water serves itself. Nature has its own rights and weve got to stop thinking of ourselves at the top of his chain of command as if were so important. And how that would be . Well we actually have examples here in north america and around the world where local ordinances are being declared that the local water or the local but land or the local forest has kind of the status of the human being, right . It has fundamental rights and people are coming around the concept of protecting those rights. Somebody said to be, you mean you cant go fishing, because fish have right . I said no of course you could go fishing but you cant fish species to extinction. That would be the way the law would work. Yes, you can take water from the watershed but you cant take so much water from the watershed that you destroy the watershed. You have to leave the integrity of the species or the integrity of the ecosystem intact. Thats a sea change for us for we humans, at the more rich we get and the more powerful we did, the more industrialized and the more urbanized and the more consumers take we get, the more we think that nature is there to service. Nature has got to nature has a really, really rude wakeup call for us. Finally, and then im going to stop so we can chat with each other, ma finally we have to make real this fight, this concept of water as a human right. Nancy talked about the struggle at the United Nations. I was invited in 20082009 to be an advisor to the president of the u. N. General a silly. Thats not a ban kimoons secretarygeneral. General assembly which is all the countries together, every year elect a president. And that yes a man named father miguel, from the liberation theologian from nicaragua, wonderful man. He read a book my first book on water called liquid golden you said before you see the president , would you come to new york and meet with me . Because i want to make water a human right. And i said do i have time to go to new york and meet with the new okay, yes maybe. Like now . Can i get on a plane now . Tide list men. We worked with a lovely man named pablo was ambassador at the time from bolivia which is a little and locked country which of the locked into a water war. That water war where people were killed because the world bank had said you have, you have to take a private Water Company if you want help from us. So they brought in this private company and it tripled the price of water and they said we own the rain and were going to charge you for the water that you catch from the sky. And they sent inspectors around to me, these are the poorest people on earth. 85 indigenous, a very, very traditional culture. This is their water from the sky theyre being told they had to pay for it so there was a revolution. The army was brought out. People were killed but it was a real water war. So when the new president , evo morales, wonderful man came in to assign this pablo to the u. N. And father miguel and pablo and i work worked together, built a small team there, and pablo put the resolution to the u. N. General assembly in june of 2010. And it was a very brave thing to do and it basically said that water and sanitation are fundamental human rights equivalent to all of human rights. Water was not included in the 1948 human rights declaration because nobody at the time ever could imagine what it would be a problem, right . That for the last number of years its been pretty clear that not only is water a huge the lack of water a huge threat but its the greatest threat particularly to children. And when public out of an agenda simply, he had formidable enemies. Your country was opposed at the time. Has changed its my but at the time. My coach was supposed. Great britain was opposed. All these Water Companies were opposed. We didnt think were going to win. He got up to present to the General Assembly and he said theres a new study that says in the global south every 3. 5 seconds a child dies of waterborne disease. Then he went like this. He held Three Fingers up like this and then half a finger. Everybody realized a child just died. A child just died. You could hear people briefing. It was just absolutely amazing. And then the voting started and at the u. N. When they vote they sit in the seats and the press and electronic button, and it comes up on a great big board at the front. I was standing at the back up in the balcony Holding Hands with a couple of my staff say, we are going to loose but its okay. We never thought we would win system. We will be back in five years. We will win and. I was reprinted because i was sure were going to lose. They are in tears. They vote. I was wrong. 120 countries voted in favor. Not one country, including the u. S. And canada, voted against even though they were opposed. They at stand. 41 countries abstained. The place erupted in cheers but it was an absolutely fabulous moment. And in my opinion in that moment