You’re listening to A Climate Change. This is Matt Matern, your host and I’ve got a great guest on today, Jay Famiglietti Heads The global institute for water security. He was a senior water scientist at NASA and JPL professor at UCI. And he also has a What about water podcast. But most importantly, Jay was on the Bill Maher show. So you know, he has real credibility, there’s no doubt he’s a he’s a national celebrity on water. So welcome to the show, Jay.

Thanks very much Matt’s pleasure to be here.

Well, Jay, I’m based in California, and you spend some time out here as well. So tell us a little bit about kind of the water crisis we’re facing. Here in California, it seems to be rising to yet ahead again. And your Bill Maher segment I was looking at was done in I think 2014. And we were at crisis point at that point in time. Are we in a worse crisis now than we were in? In 2014?

Yeah, I think I think we are. So you know, we go through these cycles in California, that western US have sort of, you know, some wet periods, and then some long dry periods and wet periods and some long dry periods. But but the thing that’s happening now is those those dry periods are getting longer and longer. So I don’t even call it drought anymore.

Some people call it a ratification, meaning getting drier. I call it chronic water scarcity. You know, the challenge that we have is that in California, is that we try to do too much with the water that we have. And the too much is trying to grow food for the nation, you know, food for North America, mostly using water from from California, think about that.

So that we are really draining our this important reserve of the groundwater, the groundwater is the water that’s stored underneath the ground and in aquifers are rock and soil layers that can store water. So you know, it’s a big challenge. And we’re trying to come to grips with it. And, you know, we’re seeing it play out in real time.

Well, what do you think about the actions that say the governor in California has taken in recent months and years to to address this process? I mean, there have been a lot of criticism saying that he hasn’t done enough, farmers are still growing almonds and other crops that take a ton of water. And we haven’t really addressed the main cause of our water shortage, which is, as you said, agriculture, which is taking what 90% of the water in California is at 90%.

You know, it varies with time of the year, and it varies around the world. But it’s, you know, 80 is a good a good solid figure. First, I think we should be clear that we all love to eat, and we need to eat and we need to produce food for a growing population. And that takes a lot of water. So that means that we need to sustain the limited resources that we have in the case of California, and now we’re seeing this in Arizona as well. We’re not getting the snow and the rain that we used to get.

So we’re having this increasing reliance on on groundwater. This is a problem because the groundwater is not being replenished, we use way more than it’s been replenished on an annual basis. So with respect to the governor, which with respect to any governor, or any country, if you’re not addressing the food, water Nexus, the water use for food, you’re missing the biggest part of the problem.

I think we’ve shown in LA when I was there, cities can be sustainable, everybody can cut back, they let the lawns die and you know, don’t don’t waste water or around the house conserve. But when it comes to food. That’s the lion’s share of the water. And so that needs to be really reined in whether that means doing things more efficiently.

Switching from sprinkler irrigation to drip irrigation or deep drip irrigation. We need to address the issue of the crops that are grown in, say the Imperial Irrigation District. I’m thinking about alfalfa, use a tremendous amount of water and then shipped off to other countries. I think we need to really address whether this is something we can sustain in the United States moving forward.

Well, how do we do that? Do we just say raise the price of water for farmers and say, Hey, if you’re growing certain crops that your water rates are just going to be higher if you know you can have the free market but you can Ain’t, you know, we’re not going to subsidize you growing almonds or alfalfa at rates that are below what is really a market rate for the water, which is really much higher than they’re getting this water at way below market rates. So let the market you know, let them bear the market cost the water which I don’t think they are bearing is that, is that a fair?

No, I agree with you, I agree with you 100%. A lot of groundwater is when it comes to groundwater, it’s often essentially free, if you own the property, you can take the well and and pump as much as you want, even if that means you’re drawing in water from beneath your neighbor’s property. So, you know I think…

Let me just stop you right there for a second because it’s a principle I believe in, in oil well drilling is that if you are sucking the oil from your neighbor’s property, I think you owe them some compensation. But in the water world, you’re saying that there’s no compensation, you get your syrup, you can if you own the property, you can drill the well, and you can start up your own Bottling Company, and you can pump 24/7.

Now, that said, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act is coming online in California. So that could be one control, we’re just briefly the state has been carved up into a number of groundwater sustainability agencies, each agency has or will be submitting a groundwater sustainability plan. And then it’s within and there’s somewhere between, I don’t know, 150 200 of these agencies.

And each plan has to be approved by the state and then it’s up to the agency to determine within within its boundaries and the boundaries of the city, the other the groundwater basin, it’s up to the agency to determine how it comes into that, that comes in line with its sustainability plan.

But that’s, you know, that’s the timeframe on that is super slow. It’s we’re talking about 20 years before, there’s we’re allowing 20 years for the groundwater sustainability agencies to come into come into sustainability.

But I agree there’s a lot that can be done on the financial side, water is undervalued. I think sometimes I think when we look at the Colorado River Basin, United States doesn’t have a great national water plan. We don’t and in times like this, you realize, okay, we need to actually have maybe we need it waters are someone cabinet level or, or some agency that, you know, that can can make some of these decisions that are so critical for the for the country right now.

Everything is sort of divided up by state, especially when it comes to groundwater, and or by river basin. And, you know, look where we are in the Colorado River Basin, it’s not working.

Well, which federal agencies have any sway over this? So who’s whose umbrella? Does this come under Department of Interior? Or?

Yeah, so you know, that’s also another problem with water. And this is not unique to the United States. This is true around the world water touches so many different things, that it’s sort of managed by perhaps too many different agencies.

So sure, Department of Interior, and the US Geological Survey. You know, NOAA and the weather service, should have a piece of it, you know, EPA on the water quality sites right away.

And then you’ve got state level, county level, city level management and data collection going on. So right away, you see that there’s always and these groundwater sustainability agencies that I just mentioned. So you’ve got a lot of different sir cooks in the kitchen, so to speak.

And I think that’s really worked against us. We need we need a vision and, and leadership. And so getting back to, you know, the Newsom administration, I think it’s really been a drop off since the Governor Brown administration, in terms of water leadership and vision.

Well, in terms of I mean, one thing comes to mind, it’s a bit of a national security issue. I mean, if you’re going to declare a state of emergency, it seems as though this could be something that would fall into that category. I mean, certainly, aren’t we in an emergency situation in the western United States right now?

Absolutely. We’re talking about energy security. We’re talking about food security. We’re talking about this crazy seesaw from from colossal drought to these incredible floods to two fires. I mean, it’s it’s barely apocalyptic. So yeah, it’s an emergency situation.

Well, shouldn’t President Biden be declaring an emergency and Using some emergency powers to, you know, do as you say, which is kind of you have somebody at a cabinet level, start calling the shots because this is a cataclysmic type event if we do not manage it more effectively.

Yeah, I agree. I’ve actually been thinking about writing an opinion piece along those lines, basically, the things that we’re talking about that all this stuff is coming together. It’s happening all over the world. I mean, it’s not unique to the United States. It’s not unique to the southwest.

Certainly, it’s happening in Europe right now. And this national level leadership is really, really important. And we don’t have it and we’re paying the price.

Well, some I just saw a piece on Germany and Germany, we normally think of being kind of green and lush, maybe a little Seattle ask, but they were talking about how the groundwater levels are sinking at a phenomenally fast rate in Germany of all places, which is fairly far north. And you’d think that they get a fair amount of rain, but it’s, it’s a tremendous emergency there.

Yeah, they are really suffering. I just flew over Germany, I was coming back for World Water Week in Stockholm. And things were incredibly brown on the ground. One thing I actually was pleased to see was that they let a golf course actually go brown.

So I felt good about that real progress. Well, you’re listening to climate change, and this is Matt Matern, your host I’ve got Jay Famiglietti, and we’ll be back in just one minute.

You’re listening to A Climate Change. This is Matt Matern, your host, and I’ve got Jay Famiglietti on the program. As I said earlier, Jay is the head of the Global Institute for water security professor at UCI and had also worked as senior water scientist at NASA and JPL. One of the things Jay were talking about at the break was getting industry engaged.

And I know one of the things that is kind of happening on the air front or the carbon emission front is sec type reporting regarding the emissions so that we can kind of track and trace and and there’s some kind of sense of the liabilities for these entities that are using or polluting at a certain level. How about the tracking of water usage? In the financials, so that so investors know, kind of what they’re getting into?

Yeah, so that’s exactly what I’m talking about. Matt, I like to say that water is the new carbon, not in terms of importance of climate change. Of course, carbon is critically important. But I mean, it’s next in the terms of accounting. And industry is going to be going to come under increasing pressure to do this transparent accounting of water use the same way that it has been with respect to carbon. And, look, I don’t think I think it’s critically important, again, because industry uses most of the water, it’s most of the food industry, it’s around 80%.

So we can’t move the needle on on water security without that, without that monitoring and measurement and accounting by, by industry, you mentioned, sec, is putting pressure on CDP, which is formerly called the climate Disclosure Project. But now, they just got my CDP making recommendations for building frameworks for the type of reporting that industry is going to have to do. And you also mentioned investors.

And so actually, my group at the Global Institute for border security just led a two year report with a nonprofit series CRTs, called the Global Assessment of private sector impacts on water is specifically written for investors. So investors can look by sector and say, you know, look at whatever the apparel sector, see what the risks are, see what the impacts are with respect to water.

And then they can go and talk to potential clients in different companies and say, Listen, we’re not going to invest, unless you improve, you know, get rid of this process that we know, injects too many microplastics into rivers, you get rid of this process that we know, you know, causes too much groundwater depletion. So that investor angle is incredibly important.

Well, definitely following the money and I think that getting social awareness at a higher level volt does help. And it’s it’s definitely kind of helped in the carbon emitting industries that I think they’re starting to track down where this where the actors are that are doing the highest amount of polluting and transferring assets away from from those, those companies.

And I think it’s helping on the supply chains kind of down in places that maybe in, say, Peru or something like that, where they might be experiencing similar problems to California, saying, hey, well, you should do a better job managing your your resources in areas outside the US.

I agree, I think that industry is going to come under increasing scrutiny, pressure to be looking up and down its supply chain, again, just like we’ve done with carbon. And greenhouse gas emissions, I think water is is you’re right behind them.

On on, on this global effort to share strive for not only reduced emissions, but you know, water, food, energy sustainability. So what are the what’s on the horizon with the SEC, is anybody pushing to get water into the reporting of publicly traded companies? Because, as has been said, you can’t manage what you don’t measure?

Right? So yeah, I think there is it’s kind of coming under the climate umbrella. So a lot of this, that’s fine. Because a lot of what we experience as climate change comes through water. And I’m talking about really specifically here, the changing extremes of flooding and drought.

And so I think that’s one of the ways that it’s it’s making its way into the SEC reporting is through companies having to plan for this increasing variability interruptions in in supply chains, disruptions to labor workforces, because of drought, flood related issues, like forest fires, and, and contamination of water.

So we saw a gargantuan apocalyptic type flood in Pakistan recently, and I had on the show, a couple of people from that area, as well as Dr. Wesley field, who’s a scientist teacher, up at Stanford, and she has a project to kind of the Arctic ice project, which was to preserve the Arctic ice.

And I don’t know if you have been familiar with her work, but she kind of like putting silicone on the ice to extend its life and increase its brightness to throw off more sunlight. What types of things do you think are going to be workable solutions to help deal with those types of problems?

So that’s a great one I hadn’t actually heard about, hadn’t heard about that. But you bring up this the the glacial melt and the ice melt problem. It’s, it’s huge. So we’ve got Greenland and Antarctica, the big ice caps. And we also have the glaciers that are on land, and they’re all melting away. Whatever we can do to track those, whether there’s, whether it’s technology, whatever we can do to slow the melting.

So this technology just mentioned, we’re sort of increasing their reflectivity, I think is great. You know, the biggest thing though, is raining in those greenhouse gases. There’s no question there’s, I, you know, I’m not fond of saying this, but I believe it is that we’re really going to have a difficult time ending the global water crisis. And so really, our our best option is to manage our way through it and to try to minimize the minimize the damage.

Right, to one, you know, commentator I’ve or maybe more has talked about, kind of the saving some of the water that we do get that runs off here in LA into the ocean when it does rain, and kind of channeling that water through rather than through the concrete curbs that we have and to channel it through a system where there’s more plants and things of that nature.

So that the the earth sucks in that water versus the billions of gallons of water gets poured out into the ocean every year from LA which you know, we can hardly afford to lose billions of gallons of water. What’s the what’s the likelihood what’s the is that a realistic solution? How can we effectuate that.

So I think that it will be very helpful in metropolitan regions like the Los Angeles region, it’s not going to help us with our global picture with agriculture, because it just uses so much water. But within cities, I think it’s really important. I mean, we made, you know, we did what we thought was the right thing at the time. And LA’s a great example of all the concrete by channels for flood control.

So we thought that was the right thing to do, we’ll, you know, capture this flood water, we’ll send it will send it out of town. But what we didn’t realize was that we were getting rid of all these very natural processes by which groundwater can be recharged, whether it’s a long floodplains, whether it’s a long river, river channels, you know, I would love to see big sections of the LA River, you know, getting rid of that concrete and to allow for infiltration and recharge of the groundwater.

So I think where that can be done, it’s really important that the problem is it’s very expensive, someone has to buy that land. Some places some cities are thinking about dual use, they build a soccer field and a floodplain. And then when it’s, you know, when there’s a flood, you let the you let the water infiltrate into the ground. I think it’s achievable. I think it’s really an important component of Metropolitan Water Management.

Yeah, it’s obviously we need to put our money where our mouth is, and looking at the future. If we don’t do things like that, what what does the future hold for our city’s future?

It’s not good. If we don’t do that, look where we are California, in the time. So you know, we haven’t talked much about the satellite work that I do. But in the time that I had been looking at satellite data, particular satellite mission called the NASA grace, Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment mission, we’re talking about 20 years, in that entire time period, California has done nothing but lose water.

And a lot of that is because of the groundwater and the groundwater depletion for agriculture. So we don’t really have a choice. Right? We have to, we have to come up with solutions.

So do you see that happening, and we see La or the surrounding cities really getting on board and making those changes that are going to be necessary to kind of protect our water supplies?

Well, again, I think we’re doing a great job in our cities. I really, I really do. And I think cities are fundamentally sustainable. It gets back to this issue of just the huge amount of water that we use for agriculture. And, you know, what, what crops we choose to grow, where we send that how much water they use, are we doing it efficiently and where we send that water? And so that all has to be dialed back?

Well, I guess that’s that’s the tough thing is the political reality is it seems as though Governor Newsom seems unwilling to face down the Ag interests, and make the tough calls, but you’re listening to A Climate Change. This is Matt Matern your host, and I’ve got Jay Famiglietti on the program, and we’ll be right back in just one minute.

This is Matt Matern, your host of A Climate Change. I’ve got Jay Famiglietti on the program and Jay’s a host of a podcast What about water? And along with the having been a NASA scientist? Jay, can you tell us a little bit about the science that you’re doing with NASA and what type of work is being done with the satellite imaging that you’ve done over there for 20 years?

Sure, Matt, I’ve been working with a satellite mission called the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment or grace. And I’ve been working with it before it launched. So starting in about 1996, or 97, with one of my first graduate students met at rodella was now himself a scientist at NASA, and continues up to this day.

And Grace is unusual for a satellite mission and that it functions more like a scale than say, like a scale in the sky, say compared to I don’t know a camera or telescope or something like that. It says literally weighing the places that are gaining or losing water mass on a monthly basis over the whole world. So it allows us to see the trends right.

So not only can we see the monthly ups and downs, but since we’ve been looking at it for 20 years, we can see okay, what are the what are the long term trends? What are the places that are gaming, what are the places that are losing and the picture that comes out is really compelling. Would you like me to just pop it up right now?

Yeah. As please, that’d be great.

So I also want to say that I’m quite fortunate to have had my career sort of fall into this sweet spot, I will say that grace mission sort of fell into the sweet spot of my career was just when I was starting as an assistant professor, and you’re still going strong today, as I’m, and you’re headed towards the latter part of my career. So can you see this? You want me to explain it?

Yeah. Why don’t you explain it? Because a lot of our listeners are on the radio. So Okay. All right. So I am showing a map that is constructed from 20 years of NASA Grace data. And it’s a global map. So we’re looking at all the continents. And we basically see a color scale that goes from deep red, which is losing a lot of water, to sort of, you know, whitish to blue, and then deep blue, which is gaining a lot of water. And what we see, first of all, is a lot of red, which means that there are a lot of places that are losing a lot of water.

There’s the two main places that don’t actually not showing up on this map are the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheet. So they are calculated separately, they’re not actually in this map, but they are melting away and, and contributing an awful lot of water to sea level rise. But looking at the rest of the continents, we’re looking at a few main categories of reasons why we’re gaining or losing water, there’s a big one that’s related to climate change.

And, and as you see, like all through the middle of this map, there’s a there’s a lot of red, those are the midlatitude that dry, reaches up the world that are getting drier, just like is predicted by the IPCC models, we see if we look across the tropics, there’s a lot more blue. So like Ecuador, and across the upper Amazon across the Sahel and Africa and even parts of India, and Indonesia, and Malaysia. Lots of blue there.

That’s the low latitudes as the wet areas getting wetter. We used to see that the high latitudes Canada, where I live in northern Eurasia, and especially Russia, until recently, that was fairly blue. So that was another weather that was getting wetter. Now we see that it’s red. And I think that is because we haven’t this, these are relatively new data.

And haven’t really done the research yet. But I think what we’re seeing up there at the high latitudes is things like snow melting, permafrost melting, ice melting, and this water, you know, disappearing from from the landscape. Superimposed on that broad pattern. We’ve got these darker red spots for too little water place, they’re losing a lot of water with dark blue spots.

For places that are they’re gaining a lot of water. That’s a little bit of the flooding and drought stuff that we’re you know, we know is getting stronger. So you can see, you know, the, the Okavango region in Africa, the Sahel region in Africa getting wetter, you see the Great Lakes regions getting wetter, you see southern India, the Indian monsoon is getting stronger.

So you see see some of those spots. But you see an awful lot of red. And that can be because of drought, for example, the Ukraine drought has been in these data for for a long, long time. You see the European drought. That’s that’s quite strong now. But you know, you see those deeper reds and a lot of those are related to the world’s major aquifer system.

So the Central Valley in California at the southern High Plains or the southern Ogallala Aquifer, the Arabian Peninsula, all the groundwater loss that’s happening in Syria, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and India border, northwestern India, groundwater depletion hotspot, Bangladesh, Tian Shan region, I could go on and on Beijing.

Let me just interject there for a second, Jay, because, as I recall, you did some work back around the time of the Syrian civil wars, and before it started and, and said to a lot of the policymakers, there’s a drought going on in Syria. And it looks like you know, there may be civil unrest because the there’s going to be food insecurity going on there.

And, and I look at say, like, the map here and shows all the American Southwest but also extending down into Mexico, all the way down in through Central America. You know, if we’re talking about that whole area, having food insecurity, that’s a that’s a lot of people that could be kind of, you know, at our borders very soon.

Yeah, saying, Yeah, well, I think they’re already there. Yeah, I think You know, I have talked to some experts in climate migration. And there is a lot of climate migration that’s coming from Central America. And in the opinion of some of the experts, it’s actually a lot of it has to do with water, and the lack of availability of water. And so you can see it on the on these maps.

I think that countries that don’t think about the United States, great, great example, and Canada, another great example, because people might pass through the United States and try to go to Canada. And so cities and countries that are not thinking about climate migration, so look at the Middle East, right, we already know, there’s been tremendous amount of migration that’s happened there, or out of or out of there is Syria, as you mentioned.

So countries that are not thinking about climate refugees, right, climate migrants, as part of their climate adaptation plans.

You know, it’s it’s, it’s really being short sighted, it’s right, we think so you can see from this map, yeah, we’re a global community. And we can’t expect that, you know, just what’s happening in somebody else’s backyard isn’t going to affect us.

That’s right. And as you can see from this map, it’s happening everywhere. So you know, it’s part of part of the discussion. It’s not just water, you’re right. It’s what are the implications part of the discussion of the implications of this map, and people from different fields will look at this map and see completely different things. People will see climate migration, people will see conflict, I look at it, I see challenges with food and water availability, because you know, I’m a hydrologist. So there’s a lot that’s really embedded in here.

Right. So what’s, what do you see is kind of the next level as to what we can do about these problems. And on both on a local scale, and here in California, as well as nationally, because we have national water problems. California. Yeah, we state problems.

Sure. Well, so I think, several things, I think we need to have broader discussions that involve, you know, I’m often it feels like I’m in a silo, but I’m glad to talk to media, people like yourself to help, you know, understand and get the message out. But I think we more transdisciplinary engagement. And by that, I mean, the only different fields, but I mean, different types of different sectors working together, public sector, private sector, nonprofits, academics, I think that’s critical, that we understand what’s going on and work together, because we can’t we can’t do it alone.

You know, again, I think California historically has been in really good shape, in terms of its its pathway to water sustainability, I think this agriculture thing that’s going on right now with Governor Newsom has to be has to be fixed. Because, again, there’s no, you know, there’s no water security without without dealing with the agricultural side of it.

And let me just enter gesture, per se, is there any kind of action that you see legislatively, or by the executive branch in California? That’s effectively addressing kind of the, the agricultural water problem?

Well, I think the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act could do that. Okay. But the jury is out because of the long timescale. You know, it’s, it’ll be a long time. It’s kind of an experiment. And it’ll be a long time before we know if it’s working. And so if there were a change that, you know, I would make if I were empowered, it didn’t get shot, I would change that timeline from, you know, 20 year implementation to a 10 year implementation.

Right, the full implementation trying to bring your aquifer into sustainability, it’s to that 20 year timeline helped get it passed. Because it was, you know, there’s a lot of comfort in the slope, adaptation. And that’s important, but my fear is, and we’re seeing it now, me before sigma, Sustainable Groundwater Management Act is getting fully implemented, every more and more wells drilled, and we’re getting actually faster groundwater depletion than we were getting before. So my fear is there’ll be nothing left to sustain.

Yeah, that’s, that is certainly something we need to be concerned about. And quite frankly, I don’t think that many Californians really understand the ominous SNESs of this problem and and how tragic it will be if we don’t manage it and manage it effectively. So you know, appreciate your great work on that front.

You’re listening to A Climate Change, and this is Matt Matern, your hos,t and I’ve got Jay Famiglietti. Jay and I will be right back in just one minute.

You’re listening to A Climate Change. This is Matt Matt and your host and I’ve got Jay Famiglietti on the program today, Jay, a NASA scientist, UCI professor and host of the What about water podcast? So, you know, you should all tune in and take a listen to Jays podcast What about water?

But Jay, last segment here I wanted to focus on solutions, what can we do as listeners to this program? Citizens average voters, holders of stocks, whatever it is, what are the things that we can do going forward to? To improve the situation?

Yeah, that’s a great question, Matt. I think, first of all, the biggest thing is to is to be aware, understand the situation understand where you get your water from in California, what how much is coming from snowmelt in the mountains and, and through rivers and and in reservoirs? How much is coming from groundwater? You know, what sort of facilities does your city or town have?

Is there sewage recycling, is there a desalination really understand that, because if you understand what the sources are of your water, and then you see, for example, there’s no snow up in the mountains, then you it’s much easier to accept that there’s a need for for conservation. So that awareness, I think, is really important. Of course, there’s always the things that we can do in the home. And if you’re in Southern California, or the western part of the US and you’re watering your grass, you should probably stop.

Because about 50% of home water use in the in places to irrigate like the Western US, or western North America is grass. So think about native landscaping, then if you can afford it, of course, the more efficient appliances, anything you can do to save energy is going to save water because it takes a lot of energy to heat treat, and transport water. So those are all those are all individual things, dietary changes, the bigger the animal, hey, you know, I love my I love my hamburgers, but I try to keep them under under control.

I like to think of it like the bigger the animal, the more intensive, you know, the bigger the water footprint. So like cow requires more water than chicken, right? Or, you know, cows take the most, you know, they’re like pigs and then chickens, switch to a plant based diet. So there’s lots of things that can can help save water there. It’s really, really important that we start demanding that our elected officials have and share with us their platform on water sustainability is such a huge part of what happens, especially in these water stressed regions that we’ve been talking about today. It should be front and center.

And it’s not at the you know, the the the topics, the hot button issues are often dictated by politics. This is one that we should be demanding, right? What are you going to do about water? What are you going to do for our state? Whether you’re talking about a mayor in a city or a governor, or a senator, let’s let’s understand what’s happening.

And yeah, on the investor side, I think it’s critical. This is a lever that has not been it’s been well utilized in the co2 in the efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but has not been well utilized.

There’s only beginning to be utilized on the water side. So let’s get investors mobilized to require industry to do that transparent water counting to better value, water, and the impacts of industry on water, including contamination and the disruption of the ecosystem services, but also the risk to industry from climate change. These are all things that need to be valued, and investors need to be talking with companies about about what their plans are.

Jay, you said that you were working on a project regarding something on that front and then a report kind of what’s the status of that and what work did you do to kind of move that forward?

So you know, that work grew out of and I just got back from the same meeting. You know, a few years ago, I went to the World Water Week in Stockholm in 2019. And, and World Water Week. It’s not a scientific meeting, but it’s a it’s really a meeting where a lot of nonprofits and NGOs come together and after a few years of going to that meeting I recognize that there were not a lot of scientists there, that the NGOs and the nonprofits really needed good science because they are often the ones that industry looks to for information on water risk.

So I had a conversation with Monica Fryman, who at that time was with Sirius. And we talked about how I could support their work. And in what what emerged was that we would do a literature a monstrous literature review of industry impacts on water, and by monstrous it took us two years. And we started with 3 million papers. I’m not kidding.

And but we used some data science to get it down to, you know, cluster all the different topics and understand the different industries and get it down to several 100 papers that we could actually read. So we distilled that down into a report. It’s called a global assessment of private sector impacts on water, and it’s on our use ask website water.eu says that CA, it’s on the series website, CRA s.org. And the purpose of that report is to arm investors so that they can have meaningful discussions with industry, about their relationship with water.

Tell us again, just because you said it so quickly, and I want to make sure their listeners get it. This Global Report, what’s the name of it again? And their website addresses again, go look at it.

Sure. It’s the global assessment of private sector impacts on water. And there are two places that you can get it you can get it at our at University of Saskatchewan website. So that’s water.usa.ask.ca. Or at the series website, crds.org.

Okay, that sounds like a good report and something that people should be more aware of, because we we would be well served to know what the industries are that are using the most water and, and how they could limit it. And there, there certainly are technological means by which industry could reduce their water usage, right.

Yep. And I think also, Matt, I think we’re gonna see a lot more on the consumer expectation side. So, you know, for give you an example, so I was in LA visiting, visiting our son in LA and walked into Whole Foods, and saw a box of cereal.

And on the front of the box, was how this cereal was produced using water smart grains, and like water efficient, you know, healthy soils. And I bought that box, I took a picture of it. This is awesome. I’m buying the cereal. Thankfully, it was good cereal.

Okay, well, that’s good to hear on many different fronts. So yeah, that’s, that’s something that we should be looking for as consumers is products that are grown in a sustainable fashion. And to that end, what what kind of legislation could be used to kind of tell growers in California and also in the whole western United States, hey, grow with drip irrigation? Or something along those lines?

Yeah. Well, I think they’re, from what I see, you know, it’s very expensive. And so there have to be, it’s expensive to to, to change over that infrastructure. And there’s also a lot of resistance. So like, Take, for example, the Imperial Irrigation District in the basically in South southeastern California, all the fields are leveled basically, from the high point of the irrigation district to the low point and are leveled in an angle.

So that water comes in at the, you know, at the highest level fields and runs through the canals and runs off the fields and back into the canals and then on to the next field and so on. So, like, changing that over is going to be very expensive. However, I think that we have no choice.

I think our government has no choice but to offer the incentives for farmers to do that switch, whether it’s, you know, low interest loans, you know, I you know, I’m not a financial guy, but I know that it’s really really expensive. And we should not expect the farmers to bear the burden, because they are growing food for for our nation and for other nations.

I walk into the grocery store in Saskatoon and and I go to the produce section and the you know, the lettuce is from Salinas and the berries are from Watsonville. I mean, this is California, you know, California water being shipped up here to Canada.

Well, certainly, we should we should value those Farmers and they do great work, I guess we should maybe incentivize them to a irrigate more effectively as well as maybe focus on crops that are less water intensive to raise a bit of the cost of the water so that it’s, they’re paying more of the real market cost to society.

Yeah, I agree. But you know, we should be aware that that will, that will manifest itself in increased food prices. But, you know, this is the world that we this is the world that we live in. And of course, as we run out of water, food prices are going to get are going to get higher. So it’s better that we control that rather than let it skyrocket when there’s no water.

Right. I mean, it’s a long term, you know, solution, I guess. I mean, I I’m willing to bear the cost of higher almond higher cost for almond butter and almonds. You know, as much as I like almonds, I think it is something that people can get navigate around. I mean, in terms of there are substitutes to buying other products that are less water intensive and still got calories.

So I’m not saying jack up every piece of price across the waterfront. But anyway, Jay, it’s been great having you on the program. You’ve been listening to A Climate Change. This is Matt Matt and your host and we’ve had Jay Famiglietti on the program. And thank you so much, Jay, and appreciate your your time.

My pleasure, Matt. Thanks very much.

Well, follow Jay on his podcast “What About Water” and also come back next week. We’ll be having other great guests on the program.

As you may know, your host Matt Matern of unite and heal America is also the founder of Matern Law Group, their team of experienced employment consumer and environmental attorneys are dedicated to leveling the playing field by giving everyone access to the highest quality legal representation contact 844 MLG for you, that’s 844 MLG for you or 84465449688446544968.