World Water Day: Why collaboration is the key to solving the global water crisis

From the food we eat to the clothes we wear and the energy we use, water is embedded in society. Through its support for health, economies and communities, its value is estimated at $58 trillion.

Yet the world is facing a water crisis. Experts say the hydrological cycle is spinning out of balance as a result of the climate crisis, human activities and population growth, and it’s estimated that by 2030 global demand for water will exceed sustainable supply by 40%.

“It’s undermining everything we want to achieve,” says Henk Ovink, Executive Director and founding Commissioner of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water. “If we don’t get this right, the impacts on food security for all and on GDP are massive.

“Yet, water is a solution broker. It literally trickles down across every Sustainable Development Goal.”

Entrepreneurs all over the globe are working to help solve many different facets of this complex issue, across areas including health and equity, food, energy and climate.

But innovation alone is not enough. A key part of the challenge is connecting those creating water-focused solutions with corporates, experts, investors and policymakers to help them scale – a mission-oriented, holistic approach, as Ovink puts it.

He is involved with the Aquapreneur Innovation Initiative, a programme run by UpLink, the early-stage innovation ecosystem of the World Economic Forum, and technology company HCL Group, in partnership with the Forum’s Food and Water team. Now in its third year, the initiative designed to drive innovation in the freshwater sector has so far recognized 30 ‘aquapreneurs’ as UpLink Top Innovators – start-ups selected through UpLink’s Innovation Challenges to find high-impact solutions to pressing problems.

The aquapreneurs’ innovations range from solutions to revolutionize wastewater treatment and reuse, tackling water pollution across industries and cities, to technologies at the nexus of water, energy and food security.

One of these start-ups, Aquakit, builds greywater recycling systems for large residential and commercial buildings that cut their water use by 60%. Seabex and Kilimo, meanwhile, are empowering farmers with artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help improve water efficiency in agriculture. And UpLink Top Innovators SmartTerra, Pydro and Shayp are empowering utilities and building owners with AI-powered analytics to help tackle water leakage, a major global water challenge.

UpLink Top Innovators are invited to join its Innovation Ecosystem, a collaborative network that helps provide the visibility and resources start-ups need to scale their ventures and increase their impact.

Businesses such as Aquapreneur Innovation Initiative partner Grundfos, a leading water technology company, are a vital part of this programme, mentoring entrepreneurs working on similar issues to the company, introducing them to experts in their field, and providing advice on scaling their solutions and navigating the policy environment.

“We want to grow the water innovation ecosystem because the frustration for us is that the solutions are here,” says Virginia Newton-Lewis, Head of Programme, Water and Development, Grundfos Foundation. “It’s how we help scale those solutions and grow the market so more of them are being used."

Newton-Lewis says that public-private partnerships are an important aspect.

“If you’re developing the technology in isolation, you might end up with the wrong kind of solution for the wrong kind of problem,” she says. “We need to be working with public sector entities. We need to be working with cities. We need to be working with end users in a collaborative way to make sure that we get this great fit between solution and problem.”

For Tom Ferguson, Founder and Managing Partner at Burnt Island Ventures, an early-stage funder for the water sector, UpLink provides “an extraordinary network” through which start-ups can collaborate with people across the industry.

“If you can plug into the UpLink world, then it’s the node through which you’re going to be able to have access to really all of the stakeholders you are going to need,” he says.

Water crises look different in different places, and water security goes far beyond whether we have too much or too little of the physical resource – it goes to the heart of every aspect of our development and well-being. Sustaining health and livelihoods, growing economies and protecting ecosystems requires enough water of the right quality at the right time.

Whether it’s equipping utilities to better monitor resources or helping to make avocado farming more water-efficient, and much more in between, working together is key to addressing this challenge at both local and global scales.

UpLink is expanding its innovation ecosystem for water and is looking for corporates, experts, policymakers and investors to join. To find out more about the Aquapreneur Innovation Initiative, sign up on UpLink.