drinking water your foundation is twenty five years old now would you like to talk about how it was founded sure director of something called the pacific institute in oakland the institute is a nonprofit independent research  policy group we look at the connections between environmental issues economic development and international security and policy much of what we do is freshwater related but but not everything we look pretty broadly at global and local environmental problems and we were founded twenty five years ago because there were very few places at the time and and still today that really take a comprehensive interdisciplinary look at these problems of the environment and economic development and policy we'd like to think that we look at science in the public interest how can we explore the connections between some of these major global problems and at the same time find what we are sustainable solutions so you author papers and when we do research we do some field work we offer papers more recently been we've been working on smartphone technology and how it can be useful for local communities  indonesia we do briefings and policy analysis we do testimony before congress and legislators we do talks for the public it's it's really an effort to do science in the public interest sure bottled water sort of a strange story sort of a strange thing we we at the institute of worked on water issues for a long time on the whole range of water issues from basic needs the failure to meet basic needs in developing countries the billion people without access to safe drinking water we work on conflict over water we work on the impacts of climate change on water and during the work that we've been doing it became increasingly apparent that more and more people even in a country like the united states which has a pretty remarkable tap water system were drinking bottled water and that led to my thinking about what is bottled water why do we drink bottled water what's the story behind marketing of bottled water  and that in turn led to this book bottled and sold the story behind our perception with bottled water and i look at the whole story really behind this strange case of bottled water why why do we drink it what are we thinking what what's behind the companies that are involved what are some of the strange advertising stories that have come up about bottled water is it really any better in quality and partly because of my work on that book i've become pretty sensitive  to bottled water now we live in i live in berkeley a place that has incredibly good drinking water from the tap at incredibly low cost there's no reason for anybody in the bay area to be drinking bottled water the perhaps in california to be drinking bottled water with with a few exceptions and so everywhere i go i'm both offered bottled water and find myself turning it down so a lot of that marketing was a fear campaign about tap water i think people drink bottled water because we're afraid of tap water and partly we've been made afraid of tap water because of advertising on the part of bottled water companies it's harder and harder to find public water it's hard to find a public drinking water fountain these days or one that works or one that's clean i think there's been a massive advertising campaign to convince us that if we drink this or that brand of bottled water will be healthier or sexier or more popular with the local you know with our local community or  whatever all of those reasons are reasons i think people drink bottled more and more bottled water these days i also in preparation for speaking of you was looking at your two thousand report which is a series of papers titled waste not wan not really focused on conservation and all of the major effects that were possible up to a third of our fresh water use could be in fact conserved this is a piece of a very important puzzle there's more and more conflict over water resources there's more and more scarcity of natural freshwater in part because populations are growing our economies are growing the demand for water grows water is badly distributed around the world we have water rich areas water poor areas the western united states is water scarce compared to much of the rest of the world and we are running up against the limits of natural supply in many places i would argue we take too much water out of our natural e systems and that leads to ecosystem collapse that leads to fisheries death it leads to conflict over water in the in the delta in california which is a serious political conflict and if there is no more supply if there is no more really renewable supply that we can tap into which is increasingly the case we argue then part of our challenge is going to be rethinking the way we use water to be rethinking the efficiency and productivity that we put water of the uses to which we put water to now and one of the things we've studied extensively at the institute and one of things we argue is that we can do a lot of the things that we already do we can grow food we can wash our clothes we can have water for drinking and for cooking we can we can have water for getting rid of our wastes but that almost all of the things that we do require less water than we spend to do them everything we do requires water but almost everything we do requires water for the less than we spend to do and that's the idea of the fission see that was the idea of this report waste not want not look at the urban efficiency potential in california how can we do the things we want to do in our cities with less water and we've done similar work in the agricultural sector how can we grow more food with less water the answer is there's enormous potential to reduce the wasteful use of water as much so in the agricultural sector as much in the agricultural sector it's seventy to eighty percent worldwide agriculture is critically important it takes a lot of water to grow food but much of the water that's used in agriculture is used wastefully and efficiently i saw a documentary recently about farmers in central california are getting smaller the cherries are getting smaller and they complain about the fresh water that's getting diverted to the delta to some i don't i don't really understand how diverting fresh water to the delta offsets the water rise  and perhaps you do but you first see that it's a big issue so in california much of the water that we use in both northern and southern california comes from two major represent sacramento river which drains northern california and the san joaquin river which drains central california and those two rivers join together in the delta but they felt of which is we've dry all i've been through it if you live in california it's the heart of california is natural  ecosystems it's the water that flows out the into san francisco bay and out the golden gate originates in the sacramento and the san joaquin rivers and over the last hundred years we've diverted more and more of that water out of the delta for the aqueduct system for the cities of southern california and northern california for the farms in the central valley and the ecosystem of the delta has suffered the fisheries are dying the salmon are going extinct it's  center really of the conflict over water in california so we're trying now to restore some of those ecosystems in the delta we're trying to restore some of the natural flows to the delta but that requires rethinking the way we provide water for farmers and for the cities in southern california and it's really been a central part of the big fight over water here and how is jerry brown family as well jerry brown solution is to build more big infrastructure  he's proposing that we build something called originally i guess it was called the perforate canal now they're talking about a delta bypass perhaps a set of tunnels to move water more directly from the northern part of the sacramento river around the delta so that it bypasses the delta there are serious problems with taking water directly out of the delta it's not completely clear to me that the proposal to bypass the delta is going to really restore the ecosystems of the delta it partly depends on how big that thing we build is how much it costs who pays for it how it's operated how much water is diverted from northern california it gets back to the same old problem we've always had here which is how efficiently are we doing the things we want to do and who really has their hand on the spigot and can you elaborate on how that efficiency is achieved sure in our urban centers in our cities in our industry and residential use in commercial use we use water for a lot of different things we use water to make semiconductors you we use water at home to flush our toilets and wash our clothes and to cook and to clean and to water our lawton's in commercial buildings we use water in outdoor landscaping and we use it for commercial processes and all of those uses are inefficient so for example before one thousand nine hundred ninety the average toilet in california used six gallons every time we flushed it the most efficient the most efficient toilets today use one point three gallons every time we flush more or less i have a wonderful toilet in my home that's the best toilet i've ever had that uses one point one gallons every time we flush it that's an incredible improvement in efficiency it's doing the same thing with a lot less water my front loading washing machine uses less energy west water and less detergent to do a better job than the old top loading washing machines i've gotten rid of the lawn in my house i have a beautiful garden but its native plants its low water using plants it uses much less water than the typical lawn in california where much of our water is wasted i would argue those examples of things that we can do with less water in california an example of improving productivity and in and we think that we could use a third less water in the urban part of california and still do all the things we want that savings of energy and money and what should those things be mandated how we do that is a is a question of policy i think certain things should be mandated i think certain things should be left to the market i think certain things will happen if we simply educate people i'm a fan of multiple tools to solve these problems i don't think there's any one technology or any one policy that'll solve our water problems  we have at the national level appliance efficiency standards that mandate the efficiency of washing machines and toilets and shower heads and that's a that's a good thing i don't think we should mandate that people shouldn't have l but i think if people want to have lawns they should pay the real economic cost of having those laws they should pay much more for the water than they currently pay and then people will think differently about their will their gardens will think about their their options if their pocketbooks are affected the truth is we pay a lot less for water then we pay for our cellphones or our cable t v or our energy bill or all or almost any other of our public utilities and yet of all those things i would argue water is probably the most valuable to us and agriculturally how would you richey those efficiencies so for agriculture or we can irrigate more efficiently with drip irrigation rather than sprinklers or with sprinklers rather than old style flood irrigation and that by itself enormously reduces the amount of water that's used to grow the same kinds of crops we could also change the kinds of crops that we grow in california and we are doing bad we used to grow extensively field crops cotton alfalfa irrigated paster things that take a lot of water but don't produce a lot of revenue for farmers and in the last couple of decades we've been moving from those kinds of water intensive crops to nuts and fruits that take less water that can be irrigated with a fishing drip irrigation and that produce much more revenue for farmers in california farm income has grown enormously in the last two decades and farm water use has leveled off that's an example of increased productivity farmers are doing much more with the water that they're already using but the potential to do more is still enormous so let's talk about distribution about the billion people on the planet without access to fresh water and how does the pacific institute address the so this is one of the biggest water problems we face there or a billion people worldwide that don't have access to safe water and sanitation that's something that you and i take completely for granted we turn on the tap and safe water comes out at an incredibly low cost but that's not true for a significant fraction of the world's population there are two and a half  billion people worldwide that don't have access to adequate sanitation services that's a water crisis that's a serious problem and i think that needs to be addressed with much more urgency than the world community has really been addressing it so far and how can we go about doing that well it's not a question of inventing new technology we know how to meet basic human needs for water it's not really in my opinion a question of economics it doesn't require a whole lot of water of money to meet those water needs but the truth is if we divert even a fraction of the amount of water we spend on bottled water we could meet basic human needs for water easily and there are economic costs of failing to meet those needs through ill health through the hours that young women primarily in africa have to spend walking many kilometers to collect water for their families that prevents them from going to school or from participating in the economic activities of their community so we need to we need to build basic water systems we need to work with local communities of a local level to figure out what their needs are and their expertise is and to satisfy their needs sometimes it's just a question of opening up new markets and and bringing innovative approaches to communities that really want to help solve their water and water problems is the technology there it's not a question of new technology the technology exists maybe it's a question of matching appropriate technology with appropriate need in the old days we would think or everybody's got to do what we have to do what we've already done we have to build centralized water treatment systems and centralized distribution plants i don't think that's appropriate technology that might be appropriate for certain parts of the world but there are small scale solutions as well community scale water systems and matching the scale of the solution to the scale of the problem rather than inventing some new so overboard technology i think can go a long way to solving these problems when you see market solutions would you ever advocate making water a commodity like oil or something that people have to pay for ok so this is a big debate in the water community we've done a lot of work on the human right to water i was one of the first advocates for human rights a war and the un has now declared that water is a human right for basic human needs and for sanitation and that's a wonderful thing current conflict is the water is also an economic good i pay for my water services and i ought to pay for my water services maybe the water should be free but the piping the high quality treatment that i get the removal of wastes from my house those are services that i ought to pay for and i are paying the full cost of those services because if i don't it's the ecosystems that tend to suffer so balancing the human right to water and the economic costs and value of water is part of the challenge i would argue that poor communities in africa pay for water already through ill health or through as i've already said the fact that poor the girls have to walk miles and don't get to go to school because have to bring water to their communities so balancing that human right to water and the economic value of water is a is a challenge for us but i don't believe that private companies should own water and i got your bumper that's the privatization debate that i think it bolivia there was an effort by the world bank and some private water companies to privatized the water system there and the local community objected and they objected with public protests that were ignored and then there were riots and people were killed and it was a good example of how strongly people feel about public control of water resources and i think there's an ability to meet public needs for water with public systems most of the water systems in the us are public water systems because the private companies in the eighteen hundreds completely failed to provide water for four local communities and that's that's part of the debate that we're having in the water so the pacific institute also focuses on globalization issues beyond water we do mostly focused on water mostly exploring the way that we can meet basic human needs for water we can get corporations to be more responsible about water we actually have a program that's working very extensively trying to develop standards for corporate reporting on water for corporate response social responsibility around water corporations use a lot of water they can be a force for good or they can be a force for bad and i don't think corporations are going to go away and if there's a way to make them more responsible that can be a very powerful force but the pressures about globalization on environmental issues broadly on water on energy on climate change are some of the greatest challenges in the twenty first century it seems that water relates to energy and very intimate when you use almost like electricity and magnetism they throw together they do go together we use a tremendous amount of water to produce the energy that we use for power plant cooling for for mining for even washing solar panels and the same time we use a tremendous amount of energy to produce to collect and produce and treat and distribute the water that we use it turns out a lot of the energy we use in our homes is energy that goes to heating water that we use to making hot water figuring out that energy water nexus figuring out how to produce more energy with less water and to produce more water with less energy is a new challenge we haven't really thought about those things together before we thought about them separately but we ought to think about them separate we'll think about them together the example i gave a couple minutes ago about washing machines my for my front loading washing machine if uses less energy and it uses less water it's a good example of a technology that that if properly implemented can help us they have both of those resources and it's something that everybody can do it's something that everybody can do there is another piece to this puzzle and that is water and energy are both connected to climate change and climate change is a real problem i'm a  hydrologist by training and a lot of the work that we've done at the institute looks at the impacts of climate change on water resources and there's no doubt that first of all the climate is changing and there's no doubt that humans are responsible and there's no doubt that water resources will be very significantly affected by climate change changes in temperature increases in temperature means more demand for water they're going to be changes in precipitation patterns there can be changes in the frequency and intensity of of floods and dro and that's tied to the energy system as well energy is the way we use energy is responsible for the emissions of greenhouse gases so energy water and climate are all really around the time and that's why you have to look at these problems together looking at them in isolation doesn't solve them yes i remember reading that pakistan and india i think is pakistan and some of the most fertile fields in the world but the headwaters of india feed them and the in the future could be you know these are both nuclear powers you know it could be very unfortunate dispute over that water yes that's right what one of the first problems of the pacific institute ever addressed was environmental security looking at conflicts over resource issues  one of the most important resource issues that is directly tied to conflict is freshwater there's a long history of conflict over water resources going back five thousand years and we actually maintain a chronology of water conflicts that website that we  keep up called world water dot org called the water conflict chronology and india and pakistan have a long history of conflict and tension over the indus river kashmir is a contended resource area between india and pakistan and there is a water component to that dispute we better figure out how to manage our water resources peacefully rather than in conflict or those conflicts are going to get worse so what papers are you working on right now well we're doing still a lot of work on water and energy we do a lot of work on water efficiency and productivity and we've just released a new book on a twenty first century u s water policy making recommendations to the federal government for how at the federal level we could manage our water more carefully and more effectively and more sustainably and we're doing work in indonesia to help local communities develop s m s this systems for their phones for their cellphones to report on water problems to local utilities and to community activist groups so that they can be more effective at making sure that their water resources are safe and reliable we're doing work on climate change and adaptation in india we're working on a smartphone app that lets people find the nearest public drinking water fountain or map and drinking water fountain to an open source database so that we can cut the use of bottled water if you don't know where you can get free drinking water then it's easier to think oh i have to go buy a bottle of water but if you know where the nearest drinking water fountain is maybe you can avoid that purchase and so we're developing a smartphone app to do that and they're getting harder to find they're getting harder to find but there is a little bit of a renaissance in drinking water fountains  the water companies have realised that people are beginning to carry refillable bottles and they're making drinking water fountains that can be refilled there's a one a new one at the at the united terminal at the san francisco airport you see them more and more and i'm hopeful that always take donations we're always looking for financial support for the things that we do but we're also looking for smart people to work with we're looking for innovative groups to work with collaboration is an important part of what we do we're working with this group in indonesia we're working in india with local community groups and in africa with groups and we're working domestically with groups our publications are available for free on our website people who are interested in these issues or encourage the common and take a look at the kinds of things that we've done and i would encourage individuals to get involved in their local water store if they can get involved with their local water utilities they can run for water board they can vote on water issues or write letters or or work with n g o s working domestically or