Going to Extremes: Heat, Water Scarcity and Food
What About Water? with Jay Famiglietti
Release Date: 06/15/2022
Go With the Flow: Erica Gies on Embracing Water's Natural Path
What About Water? with Jay Famiglietti
What happens when we change our relationship to water? Can we stop trying to control water and just go with the flow? Erica Gies, environmental journalist, National Geographic Explorer, and author of Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge sits down with host Jay Famiglietti to discuss how the engineered control of water sometimes does more harm than good. We also hear from Nicholas Pinter about 'Design with Nature' and how communities are managing retreats from the floodplains.
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Sewage Spillover in 'Mexico's Toilet Bowl': The Endhó Dam Crisis
What About Water? with Jay Famiglietti
The Endhó Dam north of Mexico City has been called “the largest septic tank in the world” and “Mexico’s toilet bowl”. Once designed to solve water problems in the region, it now receives wastewater from local industry and Mexico City. Arizona State University doctoral students Raquel Neri, in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, and Diego Pantaleón, in the School of Social Transformation, join host Jay Famiglietti to discuss the devastating impact the contaminated water is having on local communities and water sources in Hidalgo, Mexico....
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John Fleck on the Inconvenient Science of the Colorado River
What About Water? with Jay Famiglietti
What happens when science gets in the way of ambition, politics, and progress? With a look back at the historical figures and forces that led to the overallocation of the Colorado River, and the consequences that continue to play out today, John Fleck joins Jay Famiglietti on What About Water? Fleck is a Water Policy Researcher at the Utton Center, University of New Mexico and co-author with Eric Kuhn of Science Be Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado River. We conclude the episode with a perspective on how we can use the latest science and technoligy to both map...
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Tapped Out: The Dire State of America’s Groundwater
What About Water? with Jay Famiglietti
Humans are burning through our fossil fuels, and we're burning through our groundwater at an alarming rate. But are the powers that be even listening? On this episode, Dr. Upmanu Lall joins host Jay Famiglietti to discuss why we’ve reached an “all hands on deck” moment with our groundwater crisis. Lall and Famiglietti discuss (along with Dr. Bridget Scanlon) before the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) which advises President Biden in December 2023. Hear how and why these researchers are urging political leaders to give groundwater their full...
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Water Costs Money: How Gary White and Matt Damon are Bridging the Gap
What About Water? with Jay Famiglietti
The World Bank estimated in 2016 it would take $1.7 trillion USD to achieve universal access to clean water and sanitation by 2030. By other estimates that amount is now even higher. Gary White is the CEO and Co-founder, along with Matt Damon, of Water.org and WaterEquity. The two also co-wrote the book The Worth of Water: Our Story of Chasing Solutions to the World's Greatest Challenge. White joins host Jay Famiglietti to discuss the inspiration behind his organization, the financial plumbing it will take from investors, and how women around the world are pivotal in...
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Quenching Desert Thirst: What Will It ‘Take’?
What About Water? with Jay Famiglietti
What is the true price of water? Considering growth and climate, how do we address the gap between demand and supply? Could we achieve water security by moving it across borders to dry regions like the American Southwest? John Take, Chief Growth & Innovation Officer at Stantec, discusses importing water, desalination efforts, and whether no infrastructure is the best infrastructure. At the end of the program, Dr. Denise Fort reflects on over a hundred years of infrastructure and development in the West. What would we do differently now, and how do we make that transition happen?
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Season 5 Trailer
What About Water? with Jay Famiglietti
Freshwater is essential for life on Earth, but analysts at the World Bank say more often than not, there's either too little, too much, or the water is contaminated and polluted. We look at whether desalinating ocean water and piping it across the desert would really solve water scarcity, why some cities and towns keep flooding, and how much is too much, when it comes to pumping freshwater out of underground aquifers. In Season 5 of What About Water, host Jay Famiglietti connects with scientists and regular people who are trying to solve some of our planet's trickiest water problems....
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Drilling Deeper Won't Fix This
What About Water? with Jay Famiglietti
People in the lower Colorado River basin are now witnessing drastic cuts to their allotments. In many cases, developers find alternate sources of water by drilling into underground aquifers. But in places like Pinal County, Arizona, that groundwater is already becoming scarce. We hear from , who sits on both the Pinal County Board of Supervisors and the board for the Central Arizona Pipeline. Without sufficient water for crops, and facing some of the highest temperatures on record, he says farmers in his area will fallow up to 70 per cent of their land this year. As Phoenix and its...
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The Colorado River's Alfalfa Problem
What About Water? with Jay Famiglietti
The meat and dairy industries are some of the biggest water users in the American West, thanks to one of cows' favorite foods – alfalfa. As aridification continues across the American southwest, water is becoming far more scarce on the Colorado River. A critical source of water for roughly 40 million Americans, we look at why so much of the Colorado River's freshwater goes toward growing water-intensive hay crops, and at what can be done to significantly scale back consumptive use in the future. In this episode, we hear from people who've traveled from around the world to see the...
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World Water Day 2023 with Autumn Peltier
What About Water? with Jay Famiglietti
When Autumn Peltier was eight, she learned the tap water on a neighbouring reserve wasn’t safe to drink, or even to use for hand-washing. That injustice triggered her decade-long advocacy campaign for safe drinking water. She made headlines as a 12 year-old, admonishing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at an Assembly of First Nations event for the choices his government had made for her people. In this bonus episode for , Peltier and Jay discuss the way her life shifted, as she started campaigning for clean water. Peltier also shares what it was like to shoot her documentary The...
info_outlineFrom farmer’s fields to the high arctic, from your morning cup of coffee to a glass of wine – everything we eat and drink depends on water. In the second episode of our summer mini season, we draw from our past interviews about water scarcity and its effect on our food supply.
We take a look at last year’s drought and withered crops on the Canadian prairies, and how melting permafrost in the arctic threatens traditional knowledge about food from the land for the Inuit of Iqaluit. We hear how coffee farmers in Sierra Leone are cultivating the climate-resilient "Stenophylla" species to bring it to market, and how crops like coffee beans and wine grapes are sensitive indicators of climate change -- and changes coming to these industries.
This mini-episode features the voices of Merle Massie, Reg Lowe, Aaron Davis, Daniel Sarmu, Micah Hewer and Janet Pitsiulaaq Brewster. You can find their full episodes from our previous seasons here:
S3E3 (Growing Food in Dry Times: Drought in the West) featuring Merle Massie and Reg Lowe: https://www.whataboutwater.org/s03e03/
S3E10 (Good to the Last Drop? Coffee and Climate with Aaron Davis) featuring Aaron Davis and Daniel Sarmu: https://www.whataboutwater.org/s03e10/
S2E8 (Slippery Slopes: Canadian Recreation Meets Climate Change) featuring Micah Hewer: https://www.whataboutwater.org/s02e08/
S3E2 (On Thin Ice: Iqaluit's Water Crisis) featuring Janet Pitsiulaaq Brewster: https://www.whataboutwater.org/s03e02/
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