"Out of Balance with Water" - Transcript of Dialogue by President Tharman Shanmugaratnam at the World Economic Forum 2024, Davos, Switzerland

Joyeeta Gupta: Good afternoon, everyone here in the room, as well as those of you who are watching us live. Welcome to the World Economic Forum's session on “Out of Balance with Water”. As the poet says, “water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.” Water in the air, water in the soil, water in the groundwater, water in the rivers, there's so much water. And yet a lot of this water is unusable. And increasingly, this water cycle on which we have been relying on for so long, is becoming unpredictable. And we do not know when and where we can get access to this water for how long and whether there will be too much water as a consequence of, for example, climate change.

Most of our climate change impacts are felt through water. And today we find that if you define safe and just boundaries for water, surface water, groundwater, the total water budget, we find that we are outside these budgets at the global level, but also at the local level. For example, we are taking out more water from the groundwater system than we are recharging in many parts of the world. But to live within those boundaries, we need to cut down our use of groundwater such that it is more or less in line with what has been recharged. And worst of all, in many parts of the world, we find that water has been over allocated through property rights, through permits, concessions, contracts, and many of these are indefinite over very long periods of time. And this is very, very difficult to then manage the water because it becomes a rigid system.

So the question for all of us is how we try to manage water. And the key topic that we will all be working on today is: are there levers that we can use to unlock and unleash the power of water to perhaps achieve the SDGs - the Sustainable Development Goals. And today, the world, the Global Commission on the Economics of Water is present here. And we'll be trying to prove some of the ideas that they're working on in preparation of the report that is to be coming out soon.

We have at this point, a very interesting speaker, Professor Mariana Mazzucato, who is co-chair of the Global Commission on the Economics water. And after she gives a very brief three-minute presentation of her perspectives, we will be listening to our distinguished panellists over here. Let me introduce the panellists up front.

We have President Tharman Shanmugaratnam from Singapore, and he is also co-chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water. I am a commissioner in that Commission. Next to him is Roshni Nadar Malhotra. She is chairperson of HCLTech in India, and is also known as a good, very famous philanthropist in India, educationist and I think also interested in the arts. So a very wide circle of interests. Next to her is Kirsten Schuijt, who is the Director General of WWF International. So she will probably speak from the perspective of nature and NGOs. And finally, we have Ulrik Gernow who is the Executive Vice President and COO of Grundfos, which is based in Denmark and is one of the largest, is the largest water pump producing companies in the world. To start off, let me give the floor to Professor Mariana Mazzucato.

Mariana Mazzucato: We need to admit that if we treat water seriously, we need urgent action. And the really interesting thing about water is that it's everywhere. Which also means that we need to take it extremely seriously across all the Sustainable Development Goals. Name one SDG where water is not relevant. One of our commissioners, Yvonne Sawyerr, who is the mayor of Freetown says that, for example, many women get raped when they go fetch water. So SDG 5 on gender parity is related to water. Of course, SDG 6 on WASH, of course, SDG 13 and 14, climate change, and life below oceans, but actually all of them. And it's also across all our sectors. Again, name one sector that's not reliant on water. So it's really an economy-wide problem and we shouldn't treat it as a sector. Otherwise it gets siloed into kind of boring, you know, subsidies and guarantees and different types of policies that see it just as one thing, as opposed to a problem that needs massive innovation across government and across all sectors.

And in fact I have all this paper here - it’s hard to hold with the microphone - but our first report, which was our March preliminary report, last March, actually ended with this massive opportunity - that water is a problem provides to the private sector, to the public sector, around storage systems, water delivery systems, agriculture use, recycling, and of course, energy use. But that doesn't happen on its own without actually changing how we do capitalism. Right. This is not about, as much as I love philanthropies, we need actually to do business differently. We need corporate governance to change, we need governments to change. Instead of fixing market failures, what does it actually mean to shape an economy to deliver for people and planet?

So what the commission is doing, and I promise I will finish in the next 30 seconds, no idea where the three minutes is, we talk about the need, first of all, for outcomes oriented policy, mission orientation, every industrial strategy around the world - innovation policy, finance policy, needs to put water at the centre, but really around bold water problems. And by the way, the global hydrological cycle is itself a mission, in terms of actually keeping it stable.

Second, we talked about the need for new types of public private partnerships. It's easy to talk about partnership, but we all know there's problematic partnerships even in our love lives, right? That's why people get divorced. So why do we think that just talking about partnering is a good thing? We need to design the partnerships to be symbiotic, mutualistic. We need new types of conditionalities, for example, tied to oil grants, loans, and so on, to make sure we actually get that private sector investment that's so needed.

Third, of course, we need finance, but we can't keep seeing finance as a bucket. And talking about financial gaps. How do we restructure finance, multi development banks, national development banks, which together by the way, have over $23 trillion? Most of that is actually in the national development banks. How can they become better aligned around water problems? And lastly, I talked about innovation, but how do we scale that? It can't just be cute little experiments here and there. How do we use, for example, demand-side policies that truly allow those innovations that come about to really diffuse and get fully deployed. And in terms of the finance, that has to be patient, long term and committed. And in terms of those demand side tools, the most obvious ones are things like procurement. Government as purchaser in every country, even small island states have procurement budgets. How can we use that lever that you talked about to really, you know, put water at the centre of an immense amount of collective intelligence to solve our transport or housing or energy problems with water at the centre? Thank you so much.

Joyeeta Gupta: Thank you, Mariana. That was really clear. And you laid out the importance of water across all the SDGs. And also you brought the gender issue very clearly to the fore, as well as the need for finance. And that brings me to you, President Tharman. How do you see the role of finance in the water sphere?

President Tharman Shanmugaratnam: First let’s just take a step back and carry on from what Mariana said. And in your opening remarks as well. I think it's very important for us to understand that water is not just the first victim of climate change, the first manifestation of climate change. It is also part of the cause of climate change. I think COP28 registered very neatly that water is a major consequence of climate change, the droughts, the floods, the wildfires, et cetera. What isn't sufficiently recognised in the broad public and even amongst policymakers is that what's happening in water is also a cause of climate change.

To put it very simply, the loss of moisture in the soil, the loss of moisture in the forests, is itself a major source now of climate change. And there's a very real risk that the natural ecosystems, the wetlands, the forests, and the other natural ecosystems, which used to be sumps, or major sources of sequestration of carbon are actually going to tip over and become sources of emission of carbon dioxide. So to solve climate, we have to solve water. That reverse causation is absolutely critical.

The good news is, we can actually do it. In fact, I would say solving water is the low hanging fruit in solving the broader climate crisis. We know the technologies and innovations that are required. We actually have the financial resources in the global markets system. What's required, as Mariana said, is changes in the way we govern water, together with biodiversity, and everything else that it takes to solve the climate crisis.

It's changes in governance and changes in the way we finance. But it can be solved because this is not like the open-ended question still in CCUS, open-ended questions in some of the more adventurous efforts to create safe nuclear energy, and so on so forth. All very exciting, but not yet proven, not yet proven to be safe and commercially scalable.

But for water, we have proven technologies that need to be scaled up, that need to be made affordable to the ordinary farmer in India or Africa, that need to be affordable for local municipalities everywhere in the developing world. And frankly, that also need to be implemented at scale in the most advanced countries, which themselves suffer from water crises. You only have to look at the Colorado River Basin, look at large parts of California, look at even the Scandinavian countries where there's massive leakage of water from municipal systems. I mean, more than 40 per cent of water is just lost through municipal systems. So we can solve this. The new technologies allow us to solve that far more efficiently at lower cost and it allows us to scale things up.

So I'll just stop there. Water is a consequence, as well as the cause of climate change. It is the low hanging fruit in our efforts to address climate change and we can achieve it within a reasonable period of time if we organise ourselves well, and if we finance this so that everyone benefits.

Joyeeta Gupta: Thank you. This brings me actually to the narrative that perhaps you would probably want to share with us, Roshni. Because President Tharman talked about technologies and innovations that need to be scaled up. And I understand that you are also engaged in scaling up. So you are probably hands on the ground. Perhaps you could tell us a little bit about what you're doing in this field and what we can learn from you.

Roshni Nadar Malhotra: Great, thank you. I think one of the things that you mentioned in your opening remarks was how to manage water. And just by picking off what President Tharman said, I think water is managing us all at the moment. And it's really how we respond is what is extremely critical at the moment. And I think, in this journey, each country, each neighbourhood, each village, every society all over the world is in a different lifecycle in their relationship to water. And I think this is where innovation plays a very large role.

So you know, we've made a commitment here at WEF, in partnership with UpLink, for 15 million in patient capital financing over the next five years. And each year, there will be ten aquaprenuers which we will find from all over the world. So in five years, we will have 50 aquaprenuers. And this is not philanthropy because these are actually business solution that need to go to scale. And like any other startup or any other entrepreneur, they need to be profitable. They need to have a marketplace, they need to have access to the right buyers. And it's been a tremendous journey. We started last year – 10 aquaprenuers, two from South America, two from North America, two from Africa, one from Europe. One or two from India and one from Southeast Asia. But that's more than 10. So I'm getting my numbers wrong. But it was a global challenge. And we had innovative solutions that came from all parts of the world.

For us as an organisation, HCL, which is based in India, and India, again, I think that when people think of India, they're also thinking of us in you know, silos of you know maybe where there's not good agricultural practice. We've got drought and we've got challenges with our farmers. There are also parts of India where they get more than their fair share of water and people are not able to manage that or even, you know, harvest that. I think, you know, we've got these 10 solutions that came last year. We gave off the 15 million; it was only about three million for the 10. But within 12 months, they have unlocked, the aquaprenuers, on their own, $55 million of additional funding for their businesses. Two, three of them have grown - I've just got the numbers because it was so mind boggling for me to see that, you know, 900 per cent increase in revenue, five times jump in customer engagement, expanded to other countries.

So I think that what it's enabling is the funding, and the financing is enabling to open up a marketplace for water, and water-based innovation and solution. And earlier today we launched and announced the second cohort of aquapreneurs. So now we've got 20. And we've got one of our young recipients here in the entry as well. But by the end of five years, we'll have 50 aquaprenuers from all over the world. And you know they're received, for lack of a better word, seed funding, which is here. But what WEF, or networks such as ours are able to offer them is market access, how to define your demand environment, which countries to go to, how to sell, creating an ecosystem. And so I'm excited, I think we just have to continue on this journey. There’s been a lot more funding for other aspects of climate change - carbon, ecoprenuers, but I think freshwater conservation, whether it's in the natural habitat or it's in our urban habitats, they're much more linked than they used to be before, as President Tharman said, and it's important to get some financing for solutions.

Joyeeta Gupta: That sounds so exciting - that such a small amount of money can then unleash so much potential from these young aquapreneurs. And that brings me to you, Kirsten. You've been evaluating the cost or value of wetlands. And you have come with a number, quite a large number, probably half of the world's global GDP. How do you see that in relation to your perception of keeping human central in the valuation of water and water ecosystems? Does that in any way clash with a business perspective? Or does it align well with it?

Kirsten Schuijt: No, thank you. I mean, so the number is 58 trillion. I have to say the number. There's a lot behind that number, right. And I think what's interesting about it is precisely because it shows that conserving nature, whether it's freshwater or forest, or oceans has an economic value, and matches very well with the business interests.

What's behind the 58 trillion is, on the one hand, there is a large direct economic value. You know, water is an input, it’s drinking water, it’s really important to food production, energy production, and so forth. But there's also huge indirect economic value because a lot of wetlands, for example, and other freshwater ecosystems play a key role in purifying water, storm production, floodwater control, and so there is a huge economics behind the conservation of wetlands and river basins. The problem is that we often don't really realise what that economic value is and how that actually impacts us as people. And so before I started, so I've been with WWF for about 20 years. But before I did that, I was actually doing work on the economic values of wetlands.

I am an economist by background and I did that in the field in Kenya, Malawi, and just from a local community perspective, the immense amount of dependency of people on wetlands and on river basins is enormous. I mean, their entire livelihood is to depend on water. Now, if you look at corporates, it's pretty much the same thing, except that we take it for granted. These local communities have no choice, right? They have no choice but to take water and their food and their building materials for their houses from the local ecosystem. But I think a lot of us living in other parts of the world, we have a choice but I think we've taken it for granted. I mean, water pricing is a big topic. As you know, the price we pay for water is so incredibly low in many parts of the world. But I think it's about time that we realise as corporates that you know, taking water stewardship seriously because it's a very important part of our production system. Right, again, so much of water is necessary for food production, for energy production and so forth. The reality is that however, we're losing ecosystems at lightning speed, right? So every other year WWF brings out what we call the Living Planet Report.

In the last 70 years, we've lost about almost 70 per cent of species living in the wild, just generally, in every single ecosystem. For freshwater it's 83 per cent. So just since 1970, we have lost 83 per cent of species living in freshwater ecosystems. Species are indicators of the health of ecosystems, not much more than that. So it tells you how much we're losing and not just the quantity but also the quality of our freshwater ecosystems.

As a conservationist, of course that's painful. I care deeply about that. But as an economist, there's a whole other world out there that I think we need to look at, because this poses real risks, to corporates and to us in our livelihoods. And so I think this, the 58 trillion is all about that. It's realising that we all need to look seriously at the freshwater issue, with water scarcity. I fully agree with what you were just saying, I think the whole issue around climate change is going to be filled primarily through freshwater, whether too much of it or too little of it, depending on where you live. And so having this figure should be a wake-up call, I think for all of us to realise that we need to include the assessment of freshwater availability in our risk assessments as corporates, as part of water stewardship. And be prepared of what will come over the next years as climate change is going to be impacting us, wherever we sit.

Joyeeta Gupta: Thank you so much. So we have to value our ecosystems and our water systems. And actually, we get huge returns back if we invest in it. Coming to you, Ulrik, you are a pioneer in the field of water management in your own way. And you've been developing all kinds of technologies in your company. What is your vision about how we should develop water technologies, and unlock water economies?

Ulrik Gernow: Well, first of all, we need to acknowledge that we are out of balance, it says that we need to do something about it. You talked about climate, water interdependences, but I just think here in the scene of WEF, we also need to recognise that inequality or inequity in water means inequity in life. So it just goes beyond.

Water is beyond water. Two billion people don't have access to safe, clean water. And not having access to that means not having access to education, not having access to sort of health, staying in poverty and not getting out of poverty. So water is sort of, has the knock on effect and a multiplier effect that if we create conditions for water, we create conditions for many of other these SDGs that we actually fight to actually win. So therefore that's actually the true value of water. The value of water is not just what water can do or solve. But it's actually about the knock-on effect it has on all the other SDGs. Now, what are some of the deficit that we need to do something about?

First of all, we need to price value differently than we do today. You set it too low price, but also not fully understanding the value of it. Secondly, too many companies, too many governments don't really fundamentally understand the issue of water. What's the problem? How can it actually be addressed? I'm happy to see that more reports are coming out now, a preliminary report and a final report later. But we need to create better understanding of the issue.

And then thirdly, it was also said before - we need global coalitions, global standards for how we manage water, global measurements, but also global ambitions. Think about what Net Zero has done to our CO2 journey, because everyone has jumped onto that wagon. When we find the same measurement, terminology and agree upon it, everyone, and create a coalition around that, we will start rallying each other to actually get there.

But we are quite ambitious. We don't wait for that. Everyone can started, every company can get started. I just want to share a few things that I believe every company could do. First of all, start looking at your own water print, your own water footprint. What's the border impact of your operations? How do you actually draw upon water? How do you recycle water? Then secondly, go beyond that. Look at the water handprint. How do you actually act in the ecosystem? What impact do you have through water? The water withdrawals through the whole ecosystem? Are you placed in any sort of water stressed areas and actually take that into consideration? Then understand your baseline, build some ambitions around it and don't expect to have a sustainability strategy that doesn't include water. I think everyone can do something about it and actually get started on the journey.

Joyeeta Gupta: That sounds so encouraging, so positive, and it's so much in line with the kind of work that we're trying to do over here. Roshni talked about giving seed grants to young aquapreneurs, to enable them to develop and scale up ideas. President Tharman, why is it not happening that more people are given such seed grants? How do we unlock this? Is it possible?

President Tharman Shanmugaratnam: I think why it's not happening is because first, as Paul just mentioned, most people don't understand that what's happening in water is not just about local extremities, large flood, prolonged drought and so on. But there's a shift in global conditions, what you call a tilt in the global cycle, it's very hard for most people to understand that. So governments treat this as just a bad happening, a chance happening, and just hope it doesn't happen again. Maybe widen the drains so that you won’t get such bad floods. So there isn't very much understanding to begin with, or what it takes beyond the micro local solutions. I think this understanding can be spread. And that's one of our principal aims.

And very importantly, it's now about scaling up not just one or two big innovations but scaling up categories of innovations and allowing for some competition and flourishing of different experiments and different specific technologies. So for instance, if we talk about the massive amounts of water that’s simply wasted. So industrial wastewater, the vast majority of it is simply dispensed with, right? And often you're dispensing polluted water or extremely hot water into the waterways.

If that's the challenge, and we know that solutions exist, what's required on the part of the public sector is to define that challenge, explain how we're going to incentivize and regulate the solutions, and call for bids. And I know for sure that there's a whole range of technologies now that are competing at the frontier of that market, which have increased the efficiency of reuse to now well beyond 90 per cent. Through improved membrane technologies, new materials, new methods of operating membrane technologies as well. Fascinating.

And we've got to essentially, when it comes to these new areas, our role has to be to drive down the costs of these new solutions, by moving faster than the market would on its own move. Moving faster than the market would on its own move. That's what happened in solar. That's what's going to happen here as well.

So the task of the public sector is to co-invest, mitigate risk and also to set standards and regulations. So that we can basically shift down the cost abatement curve. In other words, make what looks like hard to abate sectors become easier to abate, by achieving scale and providing some public incentive for private investment. That's what we need to do. We need to take a system wide approach. It doesn't mean everything becoming centralised, going only for a global solution and then imposing that same global solution everywhere. It means recognising that there's a global problem, recognise the six to eight key areas where we can do something about, and then call for competition, call for bidders. And the public sector will have to be there to regulate, set standards and very often mitigate risks, because these are very often technologies which are not yet cost effective, but they will be, with investment at scale.

Joyeeta Gupta: Roshni, everybody here is talking about increasing the price of water, so that people recognise it. In a country like India where so many people are really poor and can't afford it, how do you see that operationalised? Do you think it's possible?

Roshni Nadar Malhotra: I think India lives in many centuries. So I think where there are big cities where you have a robust middle class, which is getting more and more affluent, they have a very different relationship with water. And I think, to some of the points that you have raised - the taking it more for granted. And you know if you were to price it, I think the first question, higher prices, why are you telling me so much. So I think there's a very different relationship that they have. Whereas there are parts of India where water is not so readily available. And you know, I'm still not sure that they value it. They just know that they need it survive. I think it's because they're trying to meet ends meet every day and they have probably seen it deteriorate over time. So you know, they have a very different relationship with what's happening in the natural ecosystem, their agricultural ecosystem, what's happening in wetlands, their groundwater. And then you've got parts of India where there's so much water, and that has different repercussions because even then they're not able to use it for economic benefit and growth. I mean I don't think that there is a clear answer.

Joyeeta Gupta: I guess what you're saying is maybe you have to price it based on the kinds of communities also, who can benefit from it. So if people can't afford it, maybe it has to be subsidised.

President Tharman Shanmugaratnam: I was just going to chip in. A large part of the problem is actually you're getting perversely negative pricing. Or put another way, you're getting subsidies for the wrong things. So for instance, one of the reasons why so much groundwater is being extracted in agriculture, in many countries, is because energy is subsidised and the diesel is subsidised. So people, in fact, it's often free in some farms, they're basically incentivized to just pump more and more groundwater. And now it's unsustainable.

Now, if you could price the energy, it gives you a source of revenue, that then enables you to subsidise the right type of farming. So we've got to do both removing the bad subsidies and introducing the good subsidies. And in order to afford it, you do need some pricing. Pricing that will appear fair to the smallholder farmer.

Joyeeta Gupta: Right. And the challenge there of course is many of these farmers who own the land also own the water. So there’s no actual purchase or sale happening over there. So that's something also we have to think about in the future. But I was really talking about the people who buy water for drinking and sanitation. And that becomes very expensive for the poor. I can give the example of my mother, she pays a standard amount, which is very limited, but the people on the street pay much more if they have to go to the toilet. So it's a very ironic system that a middle class person pays less in some ways than the poor people when they want to access water.

But to come to your question, I mean, Ulrik raised the point that actually water is a multiplier, because it multiplies in terms of access to education, access to health, and then access to job and maybe access to development. And you were talking about the ecosystems. So do you think you're underestimated in your value of ecosystems? His narrative about the impact of water on humans?

Kirsten Schuijt: No, I think it was a great comment. I don't know in that sense, the exact calculations. My guess is that it is probably an underestimation, which is kind of cool as well, because this is a very low, I mean, 58 trillion sounds like a lot. But if you think that it could actually be even more, because I think you're right, I mean, water is life right? So in that sense, I think the multiplier effect is endless when you think about it.

So it's not like there's a lot we can say about other ecosystems that are usually important for life. But I think freshwater is the basis for all life on earth. So valuing that and seeing that as the basis of our social, economic wellbeing, wherever you live, I think is hugely important.

My guess is, I mean, having worked on this for such a long time is there is an increasing realisation. And it's not because we're throwing around these numbers. But simply because we're dealing with the reality of this more and more each and every day, in all the places where we live. I mean, I come from the Netherlands and we have fought for thousands of years. Mainly, it's been about just getting rid of freshwater all the time, because we're battling freshwater for flooding. Now, all of a sudden, for the past, let's say, five, six years, well you live in the Netherlands too, and all of a sudden, we're faced with drought. And so now we have to come up with a system in the Netherlands where on the one hand, you are faced with flooding, we want to get rid of it. And other times you want to keep the freshwater. And so what that means is a completely different look at the way the Netherlands is organised. Because freshwater is everywhere, right? So yes, I think the 58 trillion is probably a very conservative value. I don't think the value itself is going to change things, but I think it's going to be a reality check for many of us, wherever we live.

Joyeeta Gupta: So you come from the Netherlands and the Netherlands has always claimed that it's one of the leaders in the world in terms of water governance. And now we find that the Netherlands is not yet prepared to deal with half the impacts of climate change. So it's surprising for such a developed country not to have that.

In your presentation, Ulrik, you were talking about the fact that there is a lot of ignorance. And the question now that comes to mind is, why is it that politicians don't see water as important?

Ulrik Gernow: It’s a difficult and it’s a complex issue to address. We talked about that. But I want to give an example of my home country, Denmark. We worked on water like Holland. But there are over 50 hundreds of years of water regulation and continuous improvement, from the policy has been a demand to the society. And therefore in that ongoing collaboration between private and government and utilities, the bar has just been raised. And today we operate Denmark with four to five per cent non-revenue water; we still think we can do better. But it's come by that continuous sort of sharpening the sword on what can be done. And when I say put a value on water, it's not like I'm looking for a global price setting on water.

But it's a business. Water is a business. It's many other things, but it's also a business. And if there is a fair price of water, it will incentivize investment in water, it will incentivize actually, innovating in water, innovating a new solution, putting new solutions in place, encouraging startups to actually come into this, because there is actually not only providing great for the environment, nature, health, clean water, but there's actually good return on investment of actually doing the work. And that's why I'm actually looking to raising the bar on understanding the value of water and putting a value to it. It also means that there's a value to every water you take in or, if you don't clean your water, it has some value too if you just leave it out, because you need to take something else in. So I think putting a higher value on water will see a higher motivation for being much more thoughtful about managing your water demand, but also increasing deployment of some of those great water reuse technologies that as you said already exist. They just need to be deployed more, and putting more value to water will actually help that.

Joyeeta Gupta: Thank you. When you are having a good discussion, time runs. With 30 seconds each, to give one good message to the Global Commission on the Economics of Water that's finalising its report. So perhaps Tharman.

President Tharman Shanmugaratnam: We can solve this. We can solve this with shifts in governance. Some shifts in legal arrangements. So for instance, Joyeeta, you mentioned the issue of people who own the land and therefore own the water under the land. That shouldn't necessarily be the case. And by the way, in Singapore, there's no private owner of the water under the land. The state owns all the water under the land. The state owns the rainfall and it's used for the public good. So it just requires shifts in governance that critically involve looking at the public good, pricing water to recognise its manyfold values for the entire ecosystem on which we depend, and being fair to people so that you subsidise where subsidies are really required.

Roshni Nadar Malhotra: So I'm going to go back to what I said in the beginning, I think we're today sitting in a world where whichever part of the world is, water is managing you, not the other way around. And there's some great innovations and solutions out there waiting to be scaled. They need more funding, they need more patient capital and they need more marketplaces where the global solution can also be localised.

Kirsten Schuijt: I would just say that I think the world is waking up. And for that part of the world that's not waking up, I think they will be forced to wake up soon. I was going to say exactly the same. Well, we need to scale and speed. I mean, we've been talking about this for such a long time. And the urgency is getting higher and higher. And I think again, lots of people are coming on board. Let's move faster and at a bigger scale than we have been doing over the past years.

Ulrik Gernow: Value it. Start seeing that the cost of no action is just too costly. And I think maybe just start here to the audience, your own lives, all the business leaders that are here at WEF. Have you recognised your dependency on water? I think we can all do something about it. Sustainability strategy for any company that doesn't contain water - simply not good enough. So get started. Business leaders, set some ambitions, commit to it, change the mindset. And then we need a global coalition to build global standards and measurement and ambitions for where we want to take water in the same way as we've done at the climate side.

Joyeeta Gupta: Thank you. So let me try to summarise what has been said so far. We've been told by our panellists that water has an immense value because of the ecosystems it supports. And the ecosystems provide us services. So that's why it's very important to protect the water. We've been told by our panellists that water is a multiplier of development. And that access to water is access to education, health et cetera. Mariana also added that if you have access to water and sanitation services, you may not get raped on the way to get your water services. So water is very valuable.

We've been told that we need to find finance. But there is money everywhere. The question is how do we scale up this. Tharman has told us that it is a low hanging fruit. Water is really easy to solve, because we have the technologies, we have the knowledge, we have the opportunities, we just have to get all the actors together and change the dynamics so that the governance system changes.

And we were told by Roshni that if you provide small grants, starter grants to new entrepreneurs, new aquaprenuers like you, we can actually mobilise change, and that can be scaled up. The question is, why is it not happening? And that is a challenge for the Global Commission on the Economics of Water. And that's what we will work on. And we will take your advice to try to mobilise global coalitions on this issue, and we look forward to the support of the World Economic Forum in actually pushing this further. And hopefully some help in ground truthing will take an ecosystem storyline, but also what can be possible in developing countries. With that, I think we will bring this session to an end. Thank you for coming. And I hope you and the people online, you didn't have an opportunity to ask any questions. But should you have questions, please write to us at the Global Commission on the Economics of Water. Thank you.