
Water powers civilization and sustains daily life, underpins sustainability's three pillars, and shows how to secure a clean, continuous supply for current and future generations.
Explore the distribution of Earth's water, noting 97% saltwater and 3% freshwater, with most freshwater frozen in glaciers and only a small accessible portion in land water.
Explore the water cycle and freshwater availability by tracing evaporation and evapotranspiration, condensation, and precipitation as water moves between oceans, land, atmosphere, and groundwater.
Explore how uneven freshwater distribution and rapid population growth drive rising water demand across agriculture, industries, and municipalities, impacting global water availability and scarcity.
Explore how greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide and methane, trap heat and drive long-term global warming, impacting freshwater resources and requiring century-long data to reveal clear trends.
Explore how atmospheric carbon dioxide shapes global temperatures, tracing 800,000 years of CO2 cycles and the post-1950 spike to about 419 ppm, with a temperature simulation from 1880 to 2020.
Examine how volcanic eruptions and ocean dynamics cool or warm the climate, with oceans regulating heat, moisture, and the water cycle, influencing extreme weather.
Explore the drivers of global water demand, including agriculture, human settlements, industry, and energy. Examine how land use, pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions shape water resources and future security.
Explore how crop and livestock production and land use changes drive agriculture emissions, based on 2018 data, with Asia, Africa, South America leading, and methane and nitrous oxide as drivers.
Agriculture pollutes water resources through overuse of fertilizers and pesticides, with nitrogen and phosphorus driving surface runoff and soil infiltration that fuel eutrophication in lakes, ponds, and estuaries.
Explore how agriculture drives direct energy use across electricity, natural gas, and diesel, and how the energy-water nexus, including hydroelectric footprints and Europe’s 3.3% of final energy consumption, shapes sustainability.
Explore sustainable agriculture by preserving soil integrity, optimizing irrigation, and reducing water pollution. See how ecosystem services, agroecology, and regenerative practices curb food loss and support sustainable food systems.
Promote sustainable food systems through seasonal eating, Mediterranean-forward diets with less meat and dairy, reduced waste, local purchasing, natural farming, efficient irrigation, crop rotation, vertical farming, and sound government policies.
Explore municipal water within sustainable development, highlighting urbanization, slum growth, access to safe drinking water, wastewater treatment, and governance needs in cities and rural areas.
Access to safe water is a human right and essential for health, sanitation, and development, highlighting rural disparities, gendered burdens, and global sanitation shortages.
Learn how industry ranks as the second largest water withdrawer globally, responsible for about 20 percent of freshwater use, including energy's 10 percent share.
Highlight how water and energy are tightly linked, with energy utilities showing the highest water and energy intensity and vast freshwater use for power and industrial processes.
Identify opportunities for business to turn energy and water risks into advantages by pursuing low-carbon renewables, energy efficiency, and circular water management, balancing dam tradeoffs and stakeholder engagement.
Ensure water resource sustainability by balancing quantity and quality to guarantee clean, available water. Address the pressures from industries, domestic use, and agriculture on water resources to prevent pollution.
Explore how agricultural, industrial, and municipal wastewater pollute water bodies via point and diffuse sources, detailing surface runoff, percolation, and health, environmental, and economic impacts.
Protect water quality through wastewater treatment and environmental flows. Manage diffuse pollution from agriculture and urban runoff using integrated water resources management and river basin plans.
Explore the 2015 Sendai framework for disaster risk reduction, with seven targets and four priorities, emphasizing prevention and preparedness to reduce risks—including water-related hazards—and strengthen resilience by 2030.
Explore how water links climate risk, regulation, and sustainable finance through the EU taxonomy and SFDR, plus TCFD scenario analysis for water resilience.
Currently, sustainability is a very popular term. From public services to business world, from environment to industry we are trying to render our world more sustainable. However, many are lost within the definitions and promises of new realm that is being created. Do we really know what we mean when we say ‘sustainable’? Sustainability encompasses more than few keywords we are used to hear nowadays. Due to lack of fundamentals and critical thinking of cause and effect relation between human and earth, we are bound to be very slow and inefficient in our actions to tackle unsustainable patterns we have developed.
Water&Sustainability is designed to teach you the essential knowledge and the working mechanism of natural and human-made processes to understand the consequences of our actions. Once you comprehend driving forces and human-made pressures on our earth you’ll connect dots and critically think to find resolutions to challenging situations.
Why water? Water is in the core of most fundamental sustainability issues we face today. We are worried about climate change. While ‘water’ is not directly mentioned in most climate policies, in fact, the unwanted consequences of climate change directly relate with water.
Current international policy frameworks for sustainable development, such as UN SDGs, reveal that water is, directly or indirectly, connected to other goals to achieve sustainable development.
Upon completion of the course you’ll gain a broader vision to reason issues, judge current practices and develop strategies to tackle unsustainable patterns in different business sectors, society or simply in your daily lives.