Dear global leaders: water is the key

As we speak, ‘Paris’ is trying hard to solve one of the world’s biggest challenges ever: how to deal with global climate change?

By Rutger de Graaf-van Dinther (Blue21)

This is a complex problem with many interrelated issues, such as water management, food supply and energy security. However, we think the following three elements are essential in any climate strategy:

1) Make cities resilient to flood risk
2) Capture CO2 and use it productively
3) Grow food without sacrificing nature

The key to achieve these three goals is very simple: use the water.

Water covers 70% of our planet. We can use the water to capture CO2 and use it as a resource for growing algae to produce food and biofuel. No new agricultural space on the land has to be created so nature will remain. Water also offers space to build floating cities that adapt to the sea level rise and are resilient to storms.

This is what we found:

In order to reduce our CO2 emission with 23 Gton/year, and thereby keep the temperature below 2°C, our preliminary findings show that we need less than 1% of the ocean for floating urban and agricultural development. Less than 1%!

Dear global leaders, that’s why water is the key to solve the climate challenge. The time is now.