Program highlights high costs of inaction.

By J. Carl Ganter, Circle of Blue – February 5, 2025

DAVOS — After ebbs and flows on the agenda over nearly two decades, freshwater crises and solutions took a top spot in the program during the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, January 20-24.

“We face a vicious cycle,” Tharman Shanmugaratnam, president of Singapore, told us during the GAEA Awards held in the Forum’s expansive Congress Centre, while scientist Johan Rockström painted a picture of a “broken water cycle” that dangerously imperils food production, biodiversity, and all of Rockström’s nine planetary boundaries.

“The world faces a growing water disaster. For the first time in human history, the hydrological cycle is out of balance,” according to the Global Commission on the Economics of Water to which Tharman and Rockström are contributors.

Freshwater challenges — and the “positive tipping points” necessary to respond to intensifying floods, droughts and pollution — were featured on the star-studded stage, which included a performance by cellist Yo-Yo Ma against a backdrop video of swirling azure water drops and waves. Rockström called for a “mission control center to bring the planet back into a safe operating space.”

While climate change remains divisive, “water is a low-hanging fruit politically,” Tharman said. He cited the high social, economic, and environmental costs of inaction.

The Forum and affiliates hosted some 15 sessions this year that related to water and its “nexus” connections between food, energy, geopolitical stability, climate change, and AI. The global convening organization is addressing water challenges through a new, multi-year initiative, Water Futures.

Even with prominent calls for action and water’s higher profile, organizers and those who have worked long in the water space watched political disruptions and the bright, shining star of AI drain attention from water and its role in triggering those very global instabilities.