Turning a crisis into an opportunity

Cape Town is running out of water.

DAY ZERO – the day when water reserves are at zero – is approaching. For three consecutive years rainfalls were less than normal. But it is not the missing rainfall, reasons for the water shortage in the urban agglomeration of 3,8 million people go deeper, says the Economist. It is a lax response to a growing population and growing economic activities together with an over-subsidized agricultural sector, which uses the bigger part of the water. It happens that we are organizing the next GLOBAL INNOVATION EXPERT seminar in Cape Town, on March 8/9, 2018. And we are confronted with dramatic headlines:

For the first time in modern history a major city runs out of water…

says BBC and names the 11 cities most likely to run out of drinking water. So, doomsday is approaching. Maybe not. In Europe we tend to overlook that the world has been steadily becoming a better place. Poverty is on decline and human mankind had never before enjoyed such a high level of material wealth. (But distributed more and more unevenly, you will reply. No, on global level that is not the case. Developing countries are catching up.) Behind this success story lies one important force: Innovation! And that is what our seminar in Cape Town is all about. So we have organized a specific session in our seminar:

Turning a crisis into an opportunity: Cape Town’s water crises – by George Gabriel