 Everyone joining us today for this important topic in Sustainable Development Impact Summit session titled A Green Transition Starts with Blue Water. This session supports the World Economic Forum's ongoing work on water where our focus is on elevating and inspiring new ways of thinking about water in the context of our economy and our society and how water importantly links across other key sustainable development topics like climate and nature. We work very closely with our forum partners to support and advance public-private cooperation, whether it's the 2030 Water Resources Group, which has grown into a leading network of over 900 stakeholders across 14 countries and states and has enabled more than about $1 billion of investment into technology and water infrastructure. To the 50-liter home, an emerging partnership looking to transform the urban water and energy systems to the hand hygiene marketing accelerator looking to strengthen markets and supply chains of critical hand hygiene supplies. All of these efforts have innovation at its heart, new ways of seeing, thinking, and collaborating on water, which is our focus of the session today. Today, we will have two segments. The first segment will be on the record and made public and where we will hear from our forum partners and some pretty exciting innovation and ideas that we love to build on. And in our second segment, we'll engage in a peer-to-peer Chatham House Rule Exchange where we'll build on these ideas and try and look forward and see how we might accelerate and take these to scale for greater impact. Again, thank you all of you for joining us today and please do remember to keep yourselves on mute for our speakers. With that, I have the pleasure to introduce Heather Clancy, Editorial Director from GreenBiz and an award-winning journalist specializing in transformative technology innovation. She's a perfect person to help but navigate us through this session as our moderator. So, Heather, thank you very much for joining us to all of our speakers. Thank you. And Heather, over to you to take us through. Thanks. Thank you, Alex. Good day to everyone. Whatever time it is, wherever you are, thrilled that you're here with us today. This is one of those topics that we could spend many, many more hours discussing than the limited time we have. So, I'm going to just make a couple of comments and let our speakers get right to their framing commentary. One of the things as a journalist that I've been grappling with for many years is the focus so much on carbon reduction and there's so many elements of a green transition that require attention. Water is so critically important. It's part of so many of the sustainable development goals. It applies to food, poverty, climate, biodiversity. And we know we have two of us here in the New York area and have very vividly seen water challenges the last few weeks. Actually, three of us, probably more of us. But we know that our resources are being pushed to the edge. There are so many competing demands. We've got water pollution to handle. We know we have not been investing in our infrastructure. There are things that are happening that are impacted by climate change. Everyone is affected. Food production, energy generation, livability of cities, the health and well-being of all of us, no matter where we are. Doesn't matter how developed the country is, we are very beholden to the water around us. For businesses, we're talking about risks that could erode over $300 billion in value. That is five times the cost of taking action. There's many reports that underscore this. Addressing these risks require us to innovate, think differently, and to, it's an opportunity. There are many opportunities that businesses have to take us to a better place by addressing these issues. It's not just about conserving water, but that's part of it. But it's about how we can handle things differently. That is what we'll explore. Each of the panelists, I will introduce in a moment, we'll be making a three-minute or so comments, and then we'll be having some exchange after that. And I would love to just briefly mention all of them, and then we'll get right into it. We are privileged to have today Usha Rao Menari. She is the Under Secretary General and Associate Administrator for the United Nations Development Program, welcome. Mary Draves is Chief Sustainability Officer for Dow, and Patrick Decker is the Chief Executive Officer for Xylem. And with that, I would love to pass it over to Usha. I think one of the things I really love you to address right out of the gate is what business, what the business world really does need to do in order to tip the scales on the challenge that we face. Usha? Thank you very much, Heather. Thank you, Alex, for inviting UNDP and myself to be part of this important panel. So, you laid out some very important facts, and I'd like to just take it up from there. Your question was, how does business, or what should business do to do more for water? And I would take a step back, Heather, and I'd say, actually, given where we are today, where we are in some sort of, I believe, hopefully post-pandemic situation or post-crisis situation, which has caused an unimaginable socioeconomic crisis globally with no one that has been spared from this crisis, we're at a point where I think we look at progress and solutions in terms of partnerships. So, when you say what should business do, right, to tip the scales, I think was the exact question, towards more in water, I would say it's a partnership between the private sector and the public sector and civil society. I think it has to be a partnership. Alex, you mentioned the Water Resources Group. Indeed, that was a model that has tried to do that, and it has been immensely successful. But what do I mean by that? If I look at the private sector, and I look at Patrick and I look at Mary, and I immediately think of two things as a public sector person. Now, I used to be private sector. I say, I'd like finance and I'd like innovation. And in innovation, it's not just about new technologies, but I'd like your help on new business models. How do we do what we want to do in a more sensible way? What do we do about this continuing issue around pricing or valuing of water, et cetera? So, I look to the private sector to help me with that. Of course, finance. I mean, finance is needed for any sort of progress anywhere. So, how can the private sector put money into water? Because you know, Heather, if you take a step back, water continues to be the most underfunded infrastructure sector, and the most under-innovated infrastructure sector, even today in 2021. And I find that mildly shocking, given that I've been associated with this sector for two decades or more. And I hope Patrick and Mary will prove me wrong on the innovation side there. But what does, so what do we have to do? So on the one hand, government has to put in place an enabling environment, whether it's regulatory frameworks, whether it is policies and procedures to, to not incentivize, but to enable really, I use that word intentionally, the private sector to come in with the expertise that they bring. But I don't think that anybody should think that the private sector can do it all. They cannot. They need this partnership between public and private and they need, as somebody said in the film, youth activists and civil society to help create the integrity and trust of the interventions that we make going forward. In UNDP, we consider this a whole of society approach. It's a big term. And when I came in, I was like, what is that? What that is, is exactly this. We connect dots all the time as we go forward to create the solutions. We connect dots between participants. We connect dots between finance, governance, innovation and infrastructure. These, in my view, this is the way, this is the whole of society approach that we have to take to go forward and create more finance, more innovation, more advancement in the sector. Back to you, thank you. Yeah, I wanna go back to something you said early in your comments, which is the chronic underinvestment. What is keeping businesses from investing in this? The industry from investing in this? Is it those policies not being in place? What's the issue? Well, I don't, that, you know, honestly, you will all know this on the panel. We could literally talk four days about this, but I think the issues are around the file. I'll just enumerate them Heather, if I may. So one, water is not priced or valued properly enough for it to be something that you can invest in to use that word intentionally, right? Exactly. Number two, water has unfortunately become over politicized globally and people just don't wanna have anything to do with it, I'm quite frankly. And thirdly, it is a molecule. It's a very fragmented sector. It's not a molecule that can easily be transported. It's heavy, it's local. There is, if you look around the world, there's never been any governance at the federal level. I'm exaggerating, probably somewhere there is, but I haven't seen as much as there should be, unlike say, energy, where there's always a federal level ministry looking after it. So I think those are three reasons. Okay, do you, as you point to the need for public private partnership, which we know is, well, not just, I mean, for a partnership, collaboration around these solutions. Do you, can you point to any examples of worth emulation, things that an area or a place where you see things that you'd love other people to model? Well, you've given me a real lead in. I mean, one is the Water Resources Group, which Alex was talking about. I think it was set up as a simple and unambiguous partnership between three parties. And the idea was to create these multi-stakeholder partnerships in country. So it did two things. One, it created the partnership, but two, it took it down to the country local level, wherever. So it wasn't some great global, many global partnerships work, but many don't, because they don't take it down to the country level. Again, I think this is a place where UNDP excels because we work in 170 countries, boots on the ground. So those are the kind of things that I would love to see emulated. Yeah, as we know, this is a very local issue. So that's super important for those resources to be there. One more quick question for you before we draw the others into this conversation. If you could tell the business industry leaders on this panel, well, you're going to, what would you like to see them do? Especially what we do, we have a very important summit, the first UN Water Summit in over 40 years coming up, 2023. What, and we've got, of course, COP next month, action, specific things that businesses can do now, can take now in order to prepare for those two very critical junctures. There are a lot, but the one or two requests I have for the private sector, for Patrick, for Mary, for everybody else is please come into the discussion around water with patients and without your flags. Let's sit together as colleagues and come up with solutions that work for the people and the planet because if you come in with your fly, if I came in and I said, I'm UNDP and this is how I want to do something, it's not going to work, if Patrick came in and said, I'm Xilin, this is what we have to do, we have to make 20% IRR on every dollar we put up, it may or may not work, I hope it works for you Patrick. But the point is that let's come together, that's my request, let's come together before the summit and at the summit maybe even announce some exciting initiatives where we kept our flags at home but really came up with some excellent solutions. Does that make sense to you, Heather? Yes, it does, thank you for those visuals here, yeah. Okay, with that, thank you, Usha, Mary, you're on the spot now. So you've just heard what UNDP would like. I know you have a lot of things going on in terms of innovations that have to do with the water space and you wanted to address one of them specifically today, you have more than that, I know, but how does Dow look at this? I mean, you're in the business to make profit and obviously you have opportunities to help and also to grow in other areas. So what do you see as a space that Dow can innovate in as far as water technologies? Yeah, Heather, I think that Usha's comments are right on the mark, right? And I think what themes I heard from her is we have to work together to solve this. It's like any of the other major challenges we have, as we see climate impacting our freshwater resources, we must work together to resolve, how do we get freshwater to be in abundance rather than as a scarcity? We believe it's our responsibility but yet also our opportunity to do just that and we have to collaborate with other sectors of society to do that and how do we do that through our own operations, is how we optimize our operations? How do we focus on using less freshwater? How do we also though innovate? I think that Usha also challenged was bring innovations to us. Dow also participates in the UN Global Compact CEO Water Mandate and the Water Resilience Coalition. We believe that along with other members of the CEO Water Mandate that we have to, as you say, put a stake in the ground to say that we need to lead in this space rather than, I think Usha, you said, come with our own flags. This is about us collaborating and working together. I think the one thing that we really think is important is action. And how do we bring things to the market that help us improve our water use? And I'm wearing one of those innovations today. So one of the most exciting things that we announced this year in a partnership with Ralph Lauren is the use of a product called EcoFast Pure. Now, if you think about how we innovate, and we're a material science company. So we are constantly bringing best science to the table. How do we make things more sustainable? How do we make things use, that use less energy, less water and create less waste? I mean, that is in our fabric. That is in our DNA. It's like safety for manufacturing organization. But EcoFast Pure is a brand that is amazingly, it hits all the marks in terms of environmental performance. It can dramatically reduce water. It can dramatically reduce energy. 50% less dye use in the process, 40% less energy. So EcoFast Pure helps the apparel industry. And this is a shirt dyed with EcoFast Pure use less of everything, right? And I think that's really, really important. This is that we've brought that innovation to them. We partnered with Ralph Lauren to bring this to market. And the collaboration has just really truly been amazing. The other thing, Ralph Lauren, we share very similar sustainability practices and principles. The performance of our product for Ralph Lauren also doesn't compromise the performance of the brand that they have, while also meeting all of our sustainability requirements and what we need to deliver for the world today. We also believe that things like this, we need to scale them, scale them so that we can have a continual impact. And if you think about what could happen in the apparel industry, if everyone cut their water use by 50%, if all fabric dyes cut water or energy intensity by 40%, that could be have a tremendous impact on this just one industry. So we're very excited also to bring our thinking on this with Ralph Lauren to the rest of the world. So available in just a few weeks, you'll see a step-by-step guide and how to actually do this, right? How to actually implement and take action in your manufacturing process. And I think that that's really at the core of who we are as a company, right? Sustainability as our fabric and our DNA, our responsibility to act, but also to innovate to help our customers do the same. That's a really super important example. I love that sharing of what you're learning. How do you think, I mean, is that, you've got this super focused partnership with Ralph Lauren. How do you scale that to other companies? Is it that through just open sourcing these innovations? Yes, I think it is. Heather, and I would say too, transparency is really important. How did we get there? Frankly, what did we do to get there? What mistakes do we made so others don't have the, what did we learn? All those things are now, there will be available. And it also helps, I would say helps the rest of us understand how we can move forward and implement these very similar solutions. I think also too, transparency is important in how we use water. Dow has reported our sustained, we've been transparent reporting our work for the last 18 years and most recently issued our first combined ESG report called Intersections. I think I challenge all of us as a business to do that and to also talk about our use of water and we do that very clearly and what actions we're taking to use less and improve our performance. Super, let's draw Patrick in now. And obviously we just heard from a fashion industry example. There's many, many other industries that Xylem is working with on similar solutions but also very different ones. What other innovations do you see that could really help scale what we need to do and what the actions we are that we need to take? Patrick. Well, thanks Heather. I mean, thanks Alex for having me. I wanna go back to something that Usha said earlier and that was how do we come together? Our tagline is let's solve water and every single form that I ever speak in front of I always say let's remove the apostrophe from let's and it's let us solve water. So it's not about Xylem, okay? It's about all of us coming together. Secondly, there's something that we don't spend too much time talking about in the world that I think is gonna become more and more prominent and that is what is a watershed? Everybody has their own net zero commitments but it's within the four walls of their factory or within their own kind of section of things. And I think we have to create more awareness of kind of the impact that we all have including things like the fashion and textile industry that it's more than just the water that's taken in or discharged. It's the impact it has on the broader watershed. Many communities around the world are already dealing with water scarcity and it was happening long before the pandemic or recent climate crisis. To tackle the issue in my own humble opinion, we've got to address the water issue with the same urgency that we have the carbon challenge. Water is an economic force. It is the essence of life. Alex, as I mentioned to you the other day, anybody who's on this session right now already kind of gets that but the challenge for us is how do we get that voice out? How do we create awareness around that? And one of the ways that I think we do that is through youth. Getting youth engaged in this conversation to the point where, again, I forget what the name of the band is but we're not gonna take it. I mean, the solutions to this challenge already exist through technology, through innovation. And Heather, the point is they're all affordable. So when we talk about investable, we can talk about that separately. I mean, of course, Xylem is a for-profit organization but we're doing things in an affordable way. We're helping customers do things in an affordable way because if you check with any one of our colleagues, they will say, Patrick always talks about how do we create social value and economic value? The two go hand in hand. This is not a competition but it comes down to things being affordable. We're also seeing the power of aligning sustainability and business strategies. I mean, I get so tired of hearing other CEOs or companies talking about what their ESG strategy is. Really? But really? Like you're doing it because you want the investor to jump in that you're doing the right thing as opposed to sustainability needs to be at the core of what your business strategy is. Yeah. I can't agree with you more. Yeah, I can't agree with you more on that one. That's just for sure. I would love to, you talk about the affordable solutions. Could you point to a few of them? I mean, some specific things. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, no, I absolutely, I'd love to. Again, I'll keep it very brief. So we had a terrific opportunity a couple of years ago in South Bend with, at the time, Mayor Pete. Now, Secretary Pete of Transportation who's leading all of the infrastructure bill discussions. And one of the biggest challenges he faced was stormwater overflow. The St. Joe River, it floods pretty frequently. And he was facing an EPA mandate. Again, for those that are outside of the US, the EPA has mandates around certain key regulatory things like stormwater overflow. It was gonna cost South Bend upwards of $800 million. And at a household level, that would have been thousands of dollars that would have had to have been assessed. So the technology that our team brought to bear was to use distributed technology sensors around the entire watershed to be able to mimic how does that water distribution network perform during a storm event so that they could find ways to move water around so that they could reduce the impact of the storm. More importantly, affordability. The team was able to give them a solution that literally was less than 20% of what they had originally signed up for. It made it more affordable. It made it more practical. And more importantly, it empowered the local water utility to say, hey, as long as I, as somebody's helping me with technology, I can do a better job. I can bring new ideas and new solutions. What we don't do, we don't go in and tell somebody how smart we are versus what they're, they are, we're trying to say, meet you where you are. What are the critical challenges that you are dealing with as a water utility? And how can we use innovation and data to empower you? Super example, thank you. We only have a few more minutes left of this public session and I know we're going to lose Usha for the second part. So I have a lot of questions for Mary and Patrick in the second half, but I'd love to go back over to Usha for some sort of final thoughts, particularly on Patrick's comments about watershed approach, but I think that's, I'm hearing more and more water-positive declarations now by companies. How should businesses be looking at watersheds, not just sort of this universal goal? Thank you, Heather, and very quickly. I mean, Patrick is absolutely correct. I think, and it goes back to the point, I think I believe I made about connecting dots and taking integrated approaches to making solutions. When you consider it as a watershed, because there are many users of the resource, businesses just want. And so if business just takes actions based on their use pattern or use profile, it doesn't work. I mean, and they will find that their walls and so on and so forth and they can't get beyond them. But if you take a watershed approach, I think that's the, you take everybody's interests and needs and motivations into account when you create an integrated solution. It was, when I was younger, it used to be called integrated water resource management. I mean, that took a watershed approach. It wasn't very fashionable at the time for some reason, but I do think that we should revisit it today. So Patrick, thank you. I think that's exactly right. And if more businesses would think like that and bring in their incredible intelligence and expertise and technologies and so on and so forth, I in the sector would be in a better place. And with that, I'm afraid I do have to go off rather quickly, Heather and Alex and Patrick and Mary. It was an absolute pleasure, the brightest part of my day. I have to be with you. This is the best part of my day this far. And I would say, what I would also say is we, everybody that's listening into this, we are the privileged ones. So if we can't figure it out, nobody else can. I know. You couldn't be less, Patrick. Even the idea, and I'm gonna come back to all of you, Mary and Patrick on this idea and then we'll take it from there. Thank you very much, Alex, Heather. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful rest of the session. Pradeep, I hope you're somewhere there. Okay, thank you. Yes, I am, Ushua. Great, thank you so much, Ushua. Before we do go to the one-on-one exchange or the peer-to-peer exchange, I wanted to just give Patrick and Mary just one very short, quick response for the public session here. One big key for another business that's really just starting to grapple with the blue part of the green transition. What would you tell them to focus on first? Mary, I'm gonna put you on the spot first. Yeah, I would say, Heather, Dow started a journey 30 years ago and we said, okay, what is important to us in how we operate and start small and then grow? Get some traction on some things. We started with our safety performance. And if you see where we are now, we're talking about being carbon neutral. We're talking about reducing our freshwater intake by 20% by 2025, which is huge for us. So start, but you have to start. And I think Patrick, you made some great comments as you have to start somewhere. So drive the stake in the ground, start somewhere and then you'll watch this just really grow, grow, grow in your company. And as Patrick said, it becomes who you are. It's just how you operate. It's not something you go do. It's part of our fabric of our being. Speed answer, Patrick. Build it into your sustainability goals, make it real, make it measurable. But secondly, find ways to engage all of your colleagues in water issues in their community from a philanthropic standpoint, like get them involved so they actually see and feel what people in their own communities are dealing with. Great. All right, so plenty of things to ask about now in the peer-to-peer exchange, which we will be going to in a moment. I wanted to thank you, Mary and Patrick for being here on our panel today. Thank you so much, Alex, for asking me to do this. This is one of the highlights of my day because it's an issue I've been thinking about a lot.