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01 — the absurdity
You need water
to survive.
You will need it again in a few hours.
In most places, you need money to access it.
That's kind of a strange setup.
02 — the numbers
Around 2 billion people don't have reliable access to safe drinking water.
At the same time —
thingvaluenote
Global bottled water industry$300 billion+and growing every year
People without safe drinking water2 billionWHO, 2023
Cost to provide clean water to all~$114 billion / yrUN estimate
Global military spending$2.2 trillionper year, for context
So it's not really that we don't have enough. It's more about how it's distributed.
03 — proof of concept
And it's not like this is impossible.
Slovenia
Amended its constitution in 2016 to make access to drinking water a fundamental human right.
Singapore
Treats water as core national infrastructure. Plans 50 years ahead. Has not run out.
Iceland
Has some of the cleanest tap water in the world. It is free. Nobody thinks this is unusual.
São Paulo
After a severe water crisis in 2014, the city restructured its entire distribution model. It worked.
So parts of this already exist.
04 — the objections
People usually say —
"it's too expensive."
Not solving it is expensive too. We just call those costs by other names: emergency rooms, infrastructure collapse, humanitarian aid.
"who would pay for it?"
We're already paying. Just not very efficiently, and not to the people who need it.
"people would waste it."
The infrastructure required to prevent someone from drinking an extra glass of water would cost more than the water.
05 — the conclusion
The question isn't whether water is essential.
We all agree that it is.
It's that we haven't fully committed
to treating access to it that way.
— end of presentation