What can be done to address global water challenges?

What options are available today and in the future?
What challenges will these options address?
How do we achieve sustainable success?

After decades of research and projects focused on alleviating freshwater problems across the planet, the global community has reached an unprecedented level of understanding of the intricacies of the global water challenge and has developed an extensive tool box for addressing these issues. Indeed, many of the solutions to the web of interrelated problems will come from a combination of policy and technological approaches. Taken alone, neither policy breakthroughs nor technological innovations can solve regional and global water-scarcity issues, but together they offer a potentially powerful synergy. These synergistic solutions can be applied to three broadly defined strategies:

1. augment supply;
2. reduce demand; and
3. improve management.

In all three of these strategies, one single observation reigns true—there is no silver bullet, no one-size-fits-all solution.

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Augment Supply

Reduce Demand

Improve Management