Why creating abundance should be central to water stewardship

The following is an excerpt from "Water Stewardship and Business Value: Creating Abundance from Scarcity," written by Will Sarni and David Grant and published by Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

Technology is a resource-liberating mechanism. It can make the once scarce the now abundant.

Taking this statement (from the book "Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think") as a starting point, we believe that a significant portion of a post-water-stewardship strategy (a robust water strategy) will be a focus on innovation.

Innovation will take us from 19th- and 20th-century public policy and infrastructure to 21st-century solutions by leveraging exponential technologies (material science, internet of things, etc.); crowdsourcing and prize competitions; innovative business models (water as a service); financing (green bonds and socially responsible investing); and new stakeholder ecosystems (Replenish Africa Initiative).

There are several companies that are building upon water stewardship and taking a unique position by leveraging their scale, skills, partnerships and technologies to have a broader impact on addressing water quantity and quality challenges.

Be passionately committed to abundance thinking

We are mired in the same cycle — the same old actors talking about the same old problems and using the same old tools. While we all acknowledge that significant portions of the global population face water scarcity and a lack of access to safe drinking water, we must also focus on how to create abundance. Incremental improvement, through evolutionary processes, is inadequate. Instead, what is called for is a radical rethink and commitment to leveraging exponential technology and innovation in entrepreneurial models that tap into non-water actors.

What gets us to abundance? Certainly technology innovation but also mobilizing global stakeholders to develop innovative solutions in business models, financing and partnerships.

Moving towards abundance requires innovative approaches — crowdfunding solutions, prize competitions and technology hubs/accelerators. These initiatives can move us off of a scarcity trajectory to abundance. A few examples of new approaches to solving "wicked problems" and tapping into the entrepreneurial community are XPRIZE.org, 101010.net and houseofgenius.org.

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Taxonomy

• Water
• Environment
• Sustainability
• Human Rights
• Water Stewardship