WLI 2025 Final Project: Securing Tomorrow’s Water: Tackling Freshwater Scarcity Through Innovation

Each year the final project is a major part of the Water Leadership Institute. The WLI 2025 cohorts wrote articles on turning challenges into strengths through resilient leadership.

Freshwater is the heart of thriving communities, economies, and ecosystems. However, across the globe we face a sobering reality: our supply of clean, accessible freshwater is steadily declining. The question we must ask ourselves is not if this will affect us, but rather when. Driven by population growth, aging infrastructure, unsustainable water use, and climate variability, the decline of fresh water presents a defining challenge for all.

While freshwater scarcity is a global crisis, it is also a moment of opportunity—one that demands bold leadership and collaborative innovation across all levels including utilities, public agencies, private industry, and local communities. As illustrated in Figure 1 below, between 2016 and 2023 many countries faced their minimum freshwater storage. Drought conditions are intensified throughout the world due to extreme storm events as more water vapor is retained in the atmosphere rather than recharging groundwater aquifers. With the combination of extreme storm events and global warming, the world faces serious water obstacles in the upcoming future.^[1]

Figure 1: Satellite data showing the water storage hit a 22-year minimum (where the land was driest at each location)

A System Under Strain

From the Nile River basin in northeastern Africa to southern California, communities are grappling with competing demands, extreme weather events, and degraded water quality. New data from World Resource Institute’s (WRI’s) Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas shows that 25 countries — housing one-quarter of the global population — face extremely high water stress each year, regularly using up almost their entire water supply, as shown in Figure 2.^[2]

Figure 2: Water stress by country.

By 2050, WRI predicts that an additional 1 billion people are expected to live with extremely high water stress, the ratio of water demand to renewable water supply. Even regions once considered water-rich are now rethinking their assumptions on fresh water availability as drought, nutrient pollution, and urban sprawl stretch supply and infrastructure to their limits. If the prevalence of the global warming effect continues, its strain on the water cycle increases, which puts an additive effect on the flooding and extreme weather events in the world. Additionally, the increase in freshwater demand has substantially increased over the century as illustrated in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Percent increase over the century for water use in the world as per the World Research Institute^[3]

The Innovation Imperative

In the face of this complexity, innovation cannot be an afterthought—it must be a core strategy. But true innovation doesn’t emerge in isolation. It requires intentional collaboration across counties, agencies, and industry sectors. From innovative solutions such as real-time water monitoring systems to smart water metering, localized water management, and nature-based stormwater infrastructure, solutions are already being piloted by forward-thinking utilities. These efforts point to the value of experimentation and shared risk.

Take for example, southern California, which is home to roughly 60% of the state’s estimated 39 million people, with high demands from agriculture and a history of periodic droughts. Leaders from the city of Los Angeles are blazing a new trail in hopes they can introduce the future of recycled water on the west coast with direct potable reuse. The Pure Water Los Angeles program aims to increase and optimize the city’s local water supply and support the Green New Deal goal of 70% local water through increased production of recycled water both directly and indirectly.

Nile Basin Challenges

The Nile basin is a complex, transboundary river in the Northeastern part of Africa that provides a source of fresh potable water to 11 countries that border it. Despite being known as the longest river, its discharge quantity is not nearly as comparable to that of the major ones like Amazon or the Yangtze. The population amongst the 11 countries is expected to double by 2050^[4], which would exponentially increase the existing water stress. Due to the already geopolitical stress that this river imposes, local trust and agreement is necessary to manage this valuable commodity. One management practice is that all Nile basin countries have a fair allocation based on good science and robust data and not on stringent treaties.

In the absence of basin-wide consensus, local adaptation strategies are helping communities build resilience:

• Greywater recycling and reclaimed wastewater irrigation support urban and peri-urban agriculture.
• Rainwater harvesting, rooftop storage, and community-based water reuse systems reduce dependency on the Nile.
• Efforts in soil moisture conservation, drip irrigation, and watershed restoration are being piloted across various regions.
• Sustainable use and management of the ground water system for the three shared aquifers in the Basin

Leading Through Uncertainty

Leadership in today’s water sector is no longer about top-down control or simply meeting regulatory mandates. It’s about facilitating alignment among stakeholders with divergent interests and values. Effective leaders build coalitions that include community advocates, industry sectors, economic developers, and utilities that come together to address this world crisis. Leaders translate complex data into actionable narratives and perhaps most importantly, they create cultures where adaptive thinking is encouraged Leadership in today’s water sector is no longer about top-down control or simply meeting regulatory mandates. It’s about facilitating alignment among stakeholders with divergent interests and values. Effective leaders build coalitions that include community advocates, industry sectors, economic developers, and utilities that come together to address this world crisis. Leaders translate complex data into actionable narratives and perhaps most importantly, they create cultures where adaptive thinking is encouragedd a systems-thinking approach grounded in four key principles:

• Collaboration over Competition - Water knows no boundaries. Our governance and planning frameworks must reflect this interconnected reality.
• Innovation through Integration - Pairing traditional engineering with emerging technologies and indigenous ecological knowledge fosters durable, context-specific solutions.
• Equity as a Cornerstone - Sustainable water management must center the needs of marginalized communities who are often disproportionately impacted by scarcity.
• Leadership at All Levels - From community members and treatment plant operators to elected officials and state/federal regulators, every level of leadership matters and must be empowered to act.

Looking Ahead

As climate pressures intensify and freshwater availability becomes more complex, the question isn’t whether we can innovate, it’s whether we can do so fast enough, together. The water sector has a long history of resilience, ingenuity, and public service. The decline in freshwater availability is a difficult challenge—but it also offers a profound opportunity to redefine what it means to lead in the 21st-century water landscape. By leaning into collaboration and championing inclusive leadership, we can turn today’s crisis into tomorrow’s catalyst for transformation.

References

1. https://science.nasa.gov/earth/nasa-satellites-reveal-abrupt-drop-in-global-freshwater-levels/NASA: Abrupt Drop in Global Freshwater Levels
2. https://www.wri.org/insights/highest-water-stressed-countriesWRI: Highest Water-Stressed Countries
3. https://www.wri.org/insights/domestic-water-use-grew-600-over-past-50-yearsWRI: Domestic Water Use Grew 600% Over Past 50 Years
4. M. Deribe et al. 2024

Authors: Sunny Aggarwal, Laura Boyd, Jegnaw Essatu, Carson Knutson, Alexis Kontorousis, Hunter Nelson, and Farshid Shoushtarian