Water: Too Much, Not Enough, Not Safe

Dr. Peter Carter, Paul Beckwith and Regina Valdez are joined by guest panelists Dahlia Sabri and Caleen Sisk to share their perspectives on the vital topic of water. This discussion took place at COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

This video was recorded on November 8th, 2022, and published on January 19th, 2022.

Some of the topics discussed:

• How water is life and without water there is no life.
• How for many people in the world today water has become a daily drama and, in many cases, a disaster.
• How the monsoons in Southeast Asia have been completely disrupted by climate change with the monsoon season beginning earlier and ending later leaving fields inundated and cities decimated. At the same time, we are also seeing a great deal of drought throughout the world.
• How the large multinational agricultural industry is able to get all of the water it needs depleting aquifers with many of these crops including grain used to feed livestock.
• How the intensity of both droughts and floods will increase as the global average temperature rises to 1.5°C and beyond.
• How the main cause of the intensification of both floods and droughts, which is climate change, is increasing exponentially especially at higher latitudes with extreme weather events increasing in frequency, duration, and severity.
• How global weather variations are increasing leading to weather whiplashing scenarios.
• and much more. . .

Links:

• State of the Global Climate - WMO-No. 1290 (p. 4 of 57) (pdf)

• Global Flood Risk Map

• IPCC AR6 Figure SPM.5 - Soil Moisture Change

• The Role of Urban Growth in Resilience of Communities Under Flood Risk (AGU Paper)

• A Global Flood Risk Modeling Framework Built With Climate Models and Machine Learning (AGU Paper)

Special Guests:

• Caleen Sisk - Spiritual Leader and Tribal Chief of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, located along the McCloud River watershed in Northern California. For more than 30 years, Caleen was mentored and taught in traditional healing and Winnemem culture. Since assuming leadership responsibilities in 2000, Caleen has focused on maintaining the Human Right to Water and the protection of Indigenous sacred sites.

• Dahlia Sabri - Director of International Water Resources Association and an expert in water resources engineering with over 18 years of experience in water-related projects in the private sector, the UN, and other international organizations. She has worked as a water engineer and contributed to several interdisciplinary international projects.

Regular Panelists:

• Dr. Peter Carter - MD, Expert IPCC Reviewer and the director of the Climate Emergency Institute

• Paul Beckwith - Climate Systems Scientist. Professor at the University of Ottawa’s Paleoclimatology Laboratory as well as at Carleton University

• Regina Valdez - Program Director, Climate Reality Project, NYC. GreenFaith Fellow and LEED Green Associate

Video Production:

• Charles Gregoire - Climate Reality Leader, Electrical Engineer, Webmaster and IT prime for FacingFuture.Earth and the Climate Emergency Forum

• Heidi Brault - Climate Reality Leader, BA(Psychology), Library & Information Technician Diploma - Video production and website assistant - Organizer and convener, Metadata technician, COP27 Team Lead for FacingFuture.Earth and the Climate Emergency Forum.

Attributions:

Background Music:

• Title: Through the City II
• Author: Crowander
• Source: Free Music Archive
• License: BY-NC 4.0

Image and Video:

• Image and Video Attributions