Explained | World's Water Crisis | FULL EPISODE | Netflix

Summary

このスクリプトは、水の危機という人類史における重要な課題を描いています。世界では7人に1人が自宅で水を利用できるにもかかわらず、カプートウンなどいくつかの都市では水不足に直面しています。2040年には水の需要を満たすことができなくなる地域が多くなり、水は液体ゴールドとして商品化される可能性もあります。しかし、水の価値を認識し、節約と管理を強化することが必要です。カプートウンの事例では、市民の水の使用量を劇的に減らすことで「デイゼロ」を回避するのに成功しました。これは水の重要性と、それを適切に管理できる力があることを示しています。

Takeaways

• 🚰 人類の歴史において、水の確保は重要な課題の一つであり、文明は水を活用して栄えたり衰退したりしてきた。
• 🌊 現在、地球上の7人に1人は自宅で水道水を利用できるが、多くの都市が将来に水不足に直面する可能性がある。
• 🏙️ カイロプは世界で最初の水を供給し続けられないでいる大都市になり、他の都市も同様の状況に陥りそうだ。
• 💧 人々は水が豊富な資源であり、誰もが自由に使えると誤解しており、これは大きな問題である。
• 📉 2040年までに、世界では需要を満たすために十分な水が不足するというグローバルな水不足危機に直面している。
• 🔄 地球上の水は不足していないが、私たちが利用できるのはわずか1%であり、そのほとんどは地下に存在する。
• 🌍 水の分布は極端に不均等で、カナダは1人あたりの水の量がクウェートの1万倍以上ある。
• 🏙️ 都市化と人口増加により、地下水を過剰に採取し、土壌圧縮や沈下を引き起こしている。
• 🌾 農業と産業が水のほとんどを消費しており、食料や製品の多くには隠れた水が含まれている。
• 💰 水は資本主義の基本則に従わないため、農民はほとんど無料で水を使用し、水の真正のコストは商品に反映されない。
• 🌱 水の価値を認識し、適切な価格を設定することで、無駄な農耕や非効率的な灌漑方法を防ぐことができる。
• 🌐 水の私有化と価格の高騰は、資本主義的利益を追求する企業に利益をもたらす一方、競争の中での勝者と敗者を生み出す。
• 💡 水の価値を高めることで、人々は節水に努め、インフラの修復に費用を割くかもしれない。
• 🌊 淡水資源の競争は暴力的な紛争を引き起こし、政府は新たな水を創出するアイデアを検討している。
• 💔 水不足は貧困問題に影響を与えており、水の価格が上がると貧しい人々が最も大きな影響を受ける。
• ✨ 人々が水の価値を認識し、節約に努めることによって、水不足の危機に立ち向かうことができる。

Q & A

地球上の水はどれくらいありますか？

地球上には326兆ガロンの水があり、常にそこにあるとされています。

人類が生き残るために必要な水の割合はどれくらいですか？

人類は地球の水の1%にすぎません。

カプタウンはなぜ水の供給停止を計画していますか？

カプタウンは深刻な干ばつのために、世界的に初めて水供給を無期限に停止する都市になる可能性があります。

2040年までに水不足が予想される地域はどこですか？

2040年までに、世界中のほとんどの地域で需要を満たすだけの水が不足するという予測があります。

カプタウンの「Day Zero」は何を意味していますか？

「Day Zero」とは、カプタウンが水供給を停止し、市民が水配給を受ける必要になる日を指します。

メキシコシティはどのようにして水を確保していますか？

メキシコシティは他のメキシコ地域からの水のパイプラインと、地下水をポンプして水を確保しています。

地下水を過剰に採取する影響はどのようなものですか？

地下水を過剰に採取すると、土壌を圧縮させ、都市が沈下する可能性があります。メキシコシティはそのような影響を受けています。

カプタウンの市民はどのようにして水を節約しましたか？

カプタウンの市民は、水の使用制限に従い、水の使用量を大幅に削減しました。その結果、「Day Zero」の到来が遅れました。

水の価格を上げることでどのような効果が期待できますか？

水の価格を上げることで、節約を促進したり、インフラ整備のための資金を確保するなどの効果が期待できます。

水の価値を認識することはなぜ重要ですか？

水の価値を認識することは、水不足の危機に対処するために重要であり、適切な価格信号を送ることで無駄な使用を防ぎます。

水の供給不足はなぜ暴力的な紛争を引き起こす可能性がありますか？

水の供給不足は、資源の競合を引き起こし、政府が管理できなくなるほどの緊張を高める可能性があるためです。

水の価格と貧困レベルにはどのような関係がありますか？

水の価格が上がると、貧困レベルの人々にとっては負荷となり、彼らの生活に影響を与える可能性があります。

フィラデルフィアはどのようにして水の価格と収入を紐づけようとしていますか？

フィラデルフィアは、水の価格を収入に応じて設定することで、基本的な人間のニーズを保護しようとしています。

カプタウンの「Day Zero」はどのようにして回避されましたか？

カプタウンは市民と当局の協力により水使用量を大幅に削減し、雨が降ることもあって「Day Zero」の到来を回避しました。

水の価値を認識し、それが私たちの生活にどのような影響を与えるか説明してください。

水の価値を認識することは、私たちが水を節約し、適切な価格設定を通じて資源管理に取り組むことを意味します。それは私たちの生活に直接的な影響を与えるだけでなく、将来の世代のためにも重要な貢献です。

Outlines

00:00

💧 世界における水不足の危機

この段落では、人々がいつでも必要なだけ清潔な水を手近に得ることができるという当たり前の出来事が、人類史における重要な課題だったことを思い出させる。水を活用した文明は栄え、失敗した文明は衰退したとされる。現在では、地球の人口の70％が自宅で水道水を得ることができるが、それでも水不足は深刻な問題だ。カプートウンは世界で初めて水を供給しない都市になる可能性があり、他の都市も数十年後には水不足に直面する可能性がある。水は代用ができないため、私たちはどのようにこの貴重な資源を管理するかが重要であると語られている。

05:00

🌊 水の使用とその管理

この段落では、水の使用法とその管理の問題が焦点に当てられている。水の大部分は農業と産業に使われており、私たちが日常生活で使う水は総消費水中のわずか8％に過ぎない。例えば、コカコーラのボトルの98％の水は、そのボトルにある水でなく、原材料を育てるために使われる水であるとされている。さらに、水の価格は通常、その価値に見合っていないため、無駄遣いになっている。一方で、水の価格を上げることで、無駄を防ぐシグナルを出すことができると主張する声もある。

10:03

🏭 水資源の競争と私有化

水の不足が進むと、水へのアクセスは競争になるようになり、勝者と敗者が現れる。メキシコのメキシカリでは、大きな投資が見込まれるビール工场の建設が計画されており、それが地下水をさらに削る懸念がある。メキシコ政府は企業に地下水を抽出するのを容易にする法令を出しているが、これは私有化プロジェクトに反対する人々にとって警告となっている。水不足が世界中で暴力的な紛争を引き起こしているとされており、政府は新たに水を作り出す方法を模索している。

15:04

🌍 水の価値と人権

最後の段落では、水の価値とそれに伴う人権に関する議論が行われている。水は人権の一つとして認識されており、それは貴重な資源であると同時に、誰もがアクセスできるべきだとされている。しかし、水の価格を上げることで貧しい人々が最も大きな影響を受けることが懸念される。一方で、水をより価値あるものとして扱うことで、無駄を防いだり、節約を促進することができると主張する声もあがっている。ケープタウンでは市民の協力が水の使用量を大幅に減らし、水不足の危機を回避するのに成功した例がある。

Keywords

💡水の供給

水の供給とは、人々が必要な時に必要な量の水を得ることができる状態を指します。ビデオでは、水が供給されていると人々はそれを当たり前に考えがちですが、歴史上では水を得るために多くの困難を乗り越えてきたと述べています。カプタウンが水不足に苦しむ様子も紹介されており、水の供給がないと都市がどのような影響を受けるかが示唆されています。

💡デーゼロ（Day Zero）

デーゼロとは、都市が水不足に陥り、水道からの水供給を停止しなければならない日を指します。ビデオではカプタウンが世界初のデーゼロに直面する都市となり、市民が水を節約しなければならなくなった状況が描かれています。デーゼロは水不足の深刻さを象徴する重要な概念です。

💡地下水（groundwater）

地下水は、地中深くにたまっている水のことを指しており、長い期間積み重なることで形成されます。ビデオではメキシコシティが地下水を過剰に採取し、水不足に陥っている例が紹介されています。地下水は人類が生活を維持するために頼りにしている重要な水資源ですが、持続可能な管理が求められます。

💡水の商品化

水の商品化とは、水を商品として扱い、その価値を市場経済の下で定義する考え方です。ビデオではウォーターウェイズが投資家にとっての「液体のゴールド」として水を見ている様子が描かれており、水が商品化されることで新たな価値観が生まれることも触れられています。

💡水の埋め合わせ（water rationing）

水の埋め合わせとは、水不足に対処する手段として、市民に対して水を一定量に制限して配布することを指します。ビデオではカプタウンがデーゼロに備えて水の埋め合わせを行う様子が紹介されており、水不足の現実を前にして市民が直面する困難が描かれています。

💡水の循環

水の循環とは、水が地球上で凍りついた氷や蒸発して空気中に変わることで循环するプロセスを指します。ビデオでは地球上の水が不足するわけではなく、水は常に循環していると説明されていますが、人類が利用できるのはそのほんの一部に過ぎないと強調されています。

💡水の埋没（water scarcity）

水の埋没とは、特定の地域で水が不足している状態を指します。ビデオでは2024年までに世界大半の地域で水の需要を満たすために十分な水がなくなると予測されており、水不足がグローバルな危機となっていると警告しています。

💡水の価格設定

水の価格設定とは、水の価値を市場経済に基づいて定義し、その価値に応じた価格を設定するプロセスです。ビデオでは水の価格が上がることで、無駄な使用を防ぐことができると示唆されており、水の価値を認識し始めることが解決策の1つとされています。

💡水の漏れ（leakages）

水の漏れとは、水道網の欠陥から水が無駄に漏れ出ることを指します。ビデオではメキシコシティが水の漏れから漁る被害を受けており、水の漏れが水不足問題に寄与していると説明されています。

💡水の節約

水の節約とは、水を無駄にしないで必要な量だけ使用する行動を指します。ビデオではカプタウンの市民が水を節約し、デーゼロを後押しする様子が紹介されており、個人の行動が水不足問題にどのように影響を与えることができるかが示されています。

💡水の私有化

水の私有化とは、水を民間企業所有のものとして扱う動きを指します。ビデオではゴルドマンサックス銀行が水を21世紀の石油と予測し、民間企業が水の私有化を進めている様子が描かれていますが、それが持続可能な水管理にどのような影響を与えるかが問題とされています。

Highlights

Access to clean water is a defining struggle of human history, with civilizations thriving or falling based on their ability to harness water.

Currently, 70% of the world's population has access to running water, but this is threatened by looming water crises in major cities.

Cape Town, South Africa, faces the possibility of becoming the first major city to run out of water due to severe drought.

Global water crisis is worsening, with projections indicating most of the world will not have enough water to meet demand by 2040.

There is a common misconception that water is abundant and accessible to all, which contributes to the crisis.

Earth has 326 million trillion gallons of water, but only 1% of that is accessible fresh water for human use.

Geographical disparities in water availability are stark, with Kuwait being one of the poorest and Canada one of the richest in water per capita.

Most of the accessible fresh water is underground, making it difficult and expensive to access.

Mexico City's population growth and groundwater over-extraction have led to the city sinking and facing a water crisis.

Global water consumption has increased sevenfold this century, with climate change making water availability more erratic.

Agriculture and industry account for the majority of freshwater use, with embedded water in products often overlooked.

The production of meat, particularly beef, is extremely water-intensive, with one hamburger requiring 1,650 liters of water.

Current water pricing does not reflect its true value, leading to wasteful practices in agriculture and industry.

Goldman Sachs predicts water will become the petroleum of the 21st century, with private interests buying up water rights.

Higher water prices could encourage more efficient use and investment in infrastructure, but also risk burdening the poor.

Cape Town's response to the threat of Day Zero led to significant water conservation and a delay in the city's water crisis.

The UN recognizes access to water as a human right, presenting a challenge in valuing water while ensuring universal access.

Innovations in desalination could provide more water, but the process is currently expensive and energy-intensive.

Individual and collective action can make a significant impact on water conservation, as demonstrated in Cape Town.

Transcripts

[narrator] Turn on a faucet and clean water rushes out,

as much as we want, anytime we want.

It's easy to forget that the quest for this

has been one of the defining struggles of human history.

Civilizations that harnessed water, thrived.

The ones that failed... fell.

Today, seven in ten people on Earth

can count on having running water in their homes.

[man] The water flows from the risers to connecting mains,

and finally through service connections into each building on the street.

[narrator] At least, so they think.

Cape Town. It could become the first major city in the world

to run out of water.

Cape Town, South Africa, is inching closer now to Day Zero.

Just 92 days away from having to shut off most water taps

because of a severe drought.

[narrator] Cape Town is the first major city in the world

to plan to indefinitely shut off its water supply.

Four million people would stop getting running water.

They'd get water rations,

and they'd need to line up at city water stations to get it.

And it's not just Cape Town.

São Paulo, Melbourne, Jakarta, London,

Beijing, Istanbul, Tokyo, Bangalore,

Barcelona and Mexico City

will all face their own Day Zero in the next few decades,

unless their water use radically changes.

There are perceptions that it is there in bountiful amounts

and everyone has access to it because you can turn a tap,

and that's a big problem.

[narrator] In fact, by 2040

most of the world won't have enough water to meet demand year-round.

We're facing a global water crisis and it's getting worse.

We're at a real inflection point where, if we're not careful,

we may actually get out ahead of our ability to manage it.

[narrator] There's no substitute for water.

Each of us will die in just a few days without it.

How have we built a world

where we don't have enough of its most valuable resource?

And as this crisis grows,

what will the new world look like?

[man] Waterways, built by the people

to free the land of the tyranny of nature.

For some investors, what they see in this glass

is liquid gold.

Clean water. Now.

[crowd chants]

-[in Spanish] In defense of water. -[man 2] Water becomes a commodity.

It takes on new value.

People claim it, haul it, treasure it.

[man 3] Dare we take our water supply for granted as we do the air we breathe?

[narrator] Earth is the blue planet.

There's no shortage of water. We have 326 million trillion gallons of it.

Always have, always will.

Water may freeze into ice or evaporate into air,

but it doesn't leave our planet.

If you sucked up all the water on Earth, it would fit into this sphere.

But 97% of it is salty and 2% is trapped in ice at the poles,

so all of humankind relies on just 1% of that water to survive.

When people talk about running out of water,

what they really mean is,

do they have access to that very small percentage?

[narrator] And the answer depends a lot on where you live.

Kuwait is one of the poorest countries in terms of water per capita,

and Canada, one of the richest, doesn't have twice as much

or even ten times as much. It has 10,000 times as much.

But it also matters where the water is.

That 1% of Earth's water that we all rely on,

most of it is underground and really difficult and expensive to get to,

so humans have mostly settled close to surface water, like rivers and lakes.

Around 90% of the world's population

lives less than ten kilometers from a freshwater source.

Hundreds of years ago, when the Aztecs settled on what is now Mexico City,

they saw a giant lake.

These are the last remnants of the canals they made.

When the Spanish came in the 16th century,

one soldier marveled at the Aztec city rising from the water

that seemed like an enchanted vision.

But then the Spanish started draining the lake,

and over the next few centuries that space was filled by people.

Like in most places, surface water in Mexico

was treated as a public resource, key to development.

And since 1950, Mexico City's population has exploded.

It's now home to 22 million people.

I would say some of the most important threats

for Mexico City are related to water.

[narrator] Mexico City gets more rain than notoriously rainy London.

But the lakes that would have collected that water are long gone,

so the city floods.

But they still need to pipe in

most of their water from other parts of Mexico.

Or they pump it from underground.

We've gotten a lot better at accessing groundwater.

But there's a catch.

Those water deposits, called aquifers, have accumulated over millennia

and they'll take millennia to fill back up.

Groundwater is sort of like the savings account,

which it's fine to draw on sometimes, especially when you have a drought.

[narrator] That's not what Mexico City's been doing.

We take out from the local aquifer around 50% of our water supply.

That means that probably we'll lose half of our supply of water

in the next 30-50 years.

[narrator] Sucking up that groundwater has another side effect.

It compresses the soil.

Mexico City is literally sinking.

In some places, as much as nine inches a year.

NASA satellite data shows aquifers in northern India

decreasing by 29 trillion gallons in just a decade.

There are simply more people on Earth consuming more water.

This century, water consumption has increased sevenfold.

And the rain and snow that we count on to water crops and refill lakes and rivers

is getting less reliable.

[Otto] Climate change is making available water much more erratic.

We're seeing areas around the world

that are experiencing much more extended dry periods.

[narrator] But the problem isn't just that there's more people on Earth using water,

it's how we're using water.

Humans need to drink almost a gallon of water per day.

Brushing your teeth, washing your hands typically uses about a gallon.

[flushes]

There goes three gallons.

But the drinking, washing and toilet flushing

of every person on Earth only accounts for 8% of our freshwater use each year.

Most of the water goes to agriculture and industry,

and into the food and products we use.

Let's take a bottle of Coca-Cola.

98% of the water in that bottle

is not what you see in that bottle.

98% of the water is actually embedded in all the ingredients that were grown

to make that bottle of Coca-Cola.

[narrator] 74 liters of water goes into every glass of beer.

A cup of coffee? 130 liters.

Each of your cotton shirts - 2,500 liters.

But nothing has as much embedded water as meat.

Alfalfa is a common ingredient in cattle feed,

and growing a kilogram of it takes 510 liters of water.

An average cow consumes about 12 kilograms of feed a day.

Divided up,

just one quarter-pound hamburger takes around 1,650 liters of water to produce.

The world is eating more and more like Americans.

Higher calorie diets with more meat.

But everyone can't eat like Americans.

There actually isn't enough water in the world.

Water doesn't abide by some of the basic rules of capitalism.

Farmers hardly pay anything for it.

So the true cost of water doesn't end up in the cost of the burger.

Which is why those fast food places can offer you bargain burgers.

[man 1] How can it be 99 cents?

[man 2] For only 2.99. You heard right: 2.99.

[narrator] In most places in the world,

water is treated and priced like there will always be enough of it.

So we end up using it in absurdly wasteful ways.

Arid Southern California uses over two trillion gallons of water a year

to grow alfalfa, which they get from the Colorado River,

hundreds of miles away.

The amount they pay for it doesn't even cover the cost of delivery.

Just a fraction of the water used by South Africa's wine industry

would be enough for Cape Town's taps.

India and China both grow their most water-intensive crops

in some of their driest regions.

But as water gets more scarce, that may change.

The bank Goldman Sachs predicted that water would be

the petroleum of the 21st century.

And private interests, like hedge funds, have started buying up water,

prompting fears that they'll take advantage of scarcity to turn a profit.

And if that sounds like a villain's plot in a James Bond movie,

that's because it was.

As of this moment,

my organization owns more than 60% of Bolivia's water supply.

This contract states that your new government...

will use us as utilities provider.

[narrator] But putting a higher price on water might have benefits.

The benefit of valuing water as we should

and sending, you know, a price signal,

is that we wouldn't be growing alfalfa in the desert.

[narrator] Remember that point. It'll be important later.

We wouldn't be growing crops that don't make sense in really arid places.

Because the economics of it wouldn't make sense.

[narrator] And 95% of the irrigated farmland in the world

probably wouldn't use the most inefficient irrigation method...

just flooding the fields.

And if water had a higher price,

governments might decide it's worth the money

to repair our water infrastructure.

[Kramer] We are not investing the financial resources needed

to make a good maintenance of the system.

One critical result of this is that we have 42% of leakages

in the water network.

[narrator] Mexico City, which is facing an existential water crisis,

loses close to half of its drinking water to leaky pipes.

We value water so little,

we dump two million tons

of sewage and agricultural and industrial waste into it every day.

There's no sense of value

to what is really an incredibly invaluable resource in water.

But then when we run out, we find what the cost of water truly is.

[yelling]

[speaking Spanish]

[narrator] In 2017,

the city of Mexicali finalized a deal with Constellation Brands,

the maker of Modelo and Corona beers,

to construct a brewery.

It would be the biggest investment the region had seen in years,

creating 750 permanent jobs.

And, in exchange, the brewery was guaranteed a lot of water.

But Mexicali doesn't have a lot of water to spare.

Its main water source is the Colorado River,

which starts in Colorado, in the U.S.

Fed by melting snow in the Rocky Mountains,

warmer temperatures in recent years have meant less snow,

which means less river.

You can tell how much less by that big bathtub ring.

The river flows south, quenching a few American cities along the way,

like Denver, Salt Lake City,

Las Vegas, Phoenix and Los Angeles.

Oh, and almost six million acres of farmland.

By the time the Colorado River reaches Mexicali,

it looks like this.

[man, in Spanish] It's been a long time since we've had enough water.

If the brewery settles in and starts producing,

in a few years, we'll run out of underground water.

[in Spanish] The farmers are the ones who get the worst of it.

[in Spanish] They need 20 million cubic meters per year.

If we compare that to, say, cities such as Ensenada,

which need nine million cubic meters, it's more than double.

More than double of a city.

[narrator] The more scarce water gets, more access to it becomes a competition,

with winners and losers,

often with governments picking.

In July 2018,

the federal government of Mexico issued a decree

making it easier for businesses like Constellation Brands

to extract surface water all around the country.

[in Spanish] We see this as a stick-up.

It's also a warning

not only for the Mexican people but the entire world.

We know that many other parts of the world

are fighting against these privatization projects

that line the companies' pockets.

[narrator] In January 2018,

protesters tried to physically block the construction

of the brewery's aqueduct.

[in Spanish] The entire group of policemen came through that road in the front.

They came here with their protective shields, in a single file.

She's the lady that shows up in the video holding a pipe.

[in Spanish] But we have to defend our water.

Because it's a vital liquid.

It's the most important thing we have right now.

[narrator] Water scarcity is increasingly driving violent conflict around the world.

My personal experiences of where this has been dire

have been in northeast Nigeria.

As we saw over the years of the drying up of Lake Chad

so did livelihoods dry up. And that tension really did erupt

in a way in which governments could no longer contain it.

[narrator] Water scarcity is at the heart of the ongoing conflict in Darfur

which, since 2003, has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.

And some analysts say the Syrian civil war

was caused in large part by a severe drought in 2006.

As tensions rise over freshwater,

governments are increasingly eyeing an idea that was once far-fetched.

Creating more of it.

Desalination of ocean water has more than doubled over the last decade

but the amount we make a year

still adds up to less than 1% of the water we use.

We've been waiting for the holy grail of breakthrough in how expensive it is

to desalinate water, that is to take ocean or brackish water

that has a lot of salts in it, from underground,

and treat it to drinking-water standards.

That takes a lot of money and it takes a huge amount of energy right now.

[narrator] That would make more sense if water was more valuable.

But that would also mean the water in everything would cost more.

The price of consumer goods would skyrocket.

Some industries might collapse.

Companies like Constellation Brands might make different decisions

about where they set up their operations.

Because remember...

The benefit of valuing water as we should

and sending, you know, a price signal,

is that we wouldn't be growing alfalfa in the desert.

[narrator] Growing cattle feed in the desert.

That's what the Mena family does.

And if water suddenly became the next petroleum,

they'd be out of a living, too.

The thing is, water isn't like petroleum.

Or any other commodity on Earth, for that matter.

Because without water, we die.

In 2010, the UN recognized access to water and sanitation as a human right.

And that's the challenge of our water crisis.

How are you supposed to value an invaluable resource

while ensuring everybody has it?

When the price of water is raised, to fix pipes or encourage conservation,

it has the greatest impact on the poor.

Sydney water is pushing for a 15% hike over four years,

putting more pressure on family budgets.

This drive for water conservation, water saving,

is now a burden that poor people must carry.

Living on a fixed income, I cannot afford any of this.

[narrator] It might be that we don't end up treating all water equally.

We know that there is a certain percentage of water,

it's around 60 liters per day per person,

that is associated with human rights issues,

but above that, people should pay for water.

[narrator] In 2017,

Philadelphia started experimenting with tying water prices to income.

We need to price it in such a way

that we protect basic human needs.

[narrator] The fact that we all need water makes this crisis exceptionally hard.

But it can also inspire people to act in exceptional ways to solve it.

Cape Town's Day Zero was first scheduled for March 18.

But then people started conserving.

The water restrictions are clearly having some effect.

Day Zero has been pushed back by a month.

[woman] Cape Town announced it pushed back Day Zero until July 9th.

Authorities expect Day Zero, as it's been dubbed,

to take place at the end of August instead of July.

Now, that's since been pushed back to next year,

thanks to extraordinary efforts of residents and authorities.

[narrator] By early 2018, the city's water consumption

was less than half what it had been just four years earlier,

and the Day Zero countdown clock was paused indefinitely.

Not enough action was taken until they started talking about Day Zero.

That really got people's attention.

And it was remarkable,

between the time that the city started to talk about Day Zero

and, a month later, how much people cut back their water use.

And it goes to show what we can do.

[narrator] But Cape Town also got lucky.

It rained.

The trick is recognizing how valuable water is before there isn't enough of it,

and remembering that our fates are tied to what rushes out of our taps.

[Kramer] Mexico City was founded within a lake.

But today our relation with water is very distant.

It's very important to recover our historical consciousness with water.

There are many actions individuals can take in order to save water,

but also to be aware that water has a value.