WEBVTT - Bonus: Game Changers, Part 2 0:00:05.360 --> 0:00:08.880 Hello, and welcome to Game Changers. I'm Matt Goldman. As 0:00:08.920 --> 0:00:13.039 the Earth is facing an increasingly consequential climate crisis, inquisitive 0:00:13.080 --> 0:00:15.560 minds all over the globe are hard at work trying 0:00:15.600 --> 0:00:18.520 to find solutions, and many of them have been able 0:00:18.520 --> 0:00:21.520 to translate their Eureka moments into action at a greater 0:00:21.560 --> 0:00:24.920 pace than scope than sometimes gloomy headlines might have us think. 0:00:25.560 --> 0:00:28.280 In this four part mini series, will meet the visionary 0:00:28.320 --> 0:00:31.400 minds who attempt to sculpt the future of sustainable energy 0:00:31.520 --> 0:00:34.560 and global resources. Will get a peek behind the curtains 0:00:34.600 --> 0:00:38.440 of their factory floors here of the sometimes surprising origins 0:00:38.440 --> 0:00:42.680 of their ideas, and be introduced to a potentially greener tomorrow. 0:00:43.600 --> 0:00:55.640 In this episode, water Harvesting. The Mexico City metropolitan area, 0:00:55.840 --> 0:00:59.200 home to twenty two million people, is densely populated and 0:00:59.240 --> 0:01:03.240 heavily traffic A visitor walking on its bustling streets might 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:06.399 be surprised to learn what lies underneath it. We are 0:01:06.440 --> 0:01:10.800 not in a vali, We're actually in a basin. That's 0:01:10.840 --> 0:01:14.840 Dr Manuel parallel Cohen, a full time researcher at the 0:01:14.880 --> 0:01:19.280 Institute of Social Investigations at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. 0:01:19.800 --> 0:01:22.240 We are on the top of lakes, but we don't 0:01:22.280 --> 0:01:28.920 see those lakes. This is also a basin where many 0:01:29.120 --> 0:01:36.800 rivers flow into the lower parts of the city, and 0:01:36.880 --> 0:01:41.119 you could see those rivers. Nowadays you see only highways 0:01:41.319 --> 0:01:45.480 with the name of those rivers. Founded in the fourteenth century, 0:01:45.560 --> 0:01:49.280 then known as Tenochtitland, Mexico City was initially built on 0:01:49.320 --> 0:01:52.560 a tiny island in the Valley of Mexico. Over the 0:01:52.600 --> 0:01:55.560 course of the last four hundred years, the city focused 0:01:55.600 --> 0:01:58.200 on draining the water as it was expanding its borders, 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:01.240 and it's been efficient. Where once there was a lake 0:02:01.680 --> 0:02:04.400 now stands one of the vastest cities in the world. 0:02:05.320 --> 0:02:08.359 But this doesn't mean the city is all dry. Mexico 0:02:08.440 --> 0:02:12.080 City gets more rain yearly than the notoriously wet London, 0:02:12.560 --> 0:02:16.080 and beneath its streets you'll find enormous aquifers. We have 0:02:16.280 --> 0:02:24.600 around eighteen hundred deep whales that provide that water, and 0:02:24.680 --> 0:02:29.720 we import also water from distant basis. So you have 0:02:30.960 --> 0:02:36.680 to realize that we have the largest water infrastructure, perhaps 0:02:36.800 --> 0:02:41.079 in the world, both to prevent the city from floods, 0:02:41.120 --> 0:02:44.960 but at the same time to provide water to those 0:02:45.440 --> 0:02:49.600 twenty two point five million inhabitants. Knowing this, it might 0:02:49.639 --> 0:02:53.400 seem paradoxical that Mexico City in many ways is lacking water. 0:02:54.600 --> 0:02:59.840 Those aquifers have been over exploited over the years. We 0:03:00.000 --> 0:03:04.480 which means that we take more water than the one 0:03:05.000 --> 0:03:11.639 that percolates into those aquifers. They are not imbalanced. We 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:19.679 draw too much water from them. A crumbling infrastructure isn't 0:03:19.720 --> 0:03:23.440 making things easier about. The water produced by the system 0:03:23.720 --> 0:03:26.920 is lost through leaks. All this combined has led to 0:03:26.960 --> 0:03:31.280 a crisis in this naturally water abundant area. Mexico City 0:03:31.320 --> 0:03:33.200 is one of the top ten cities in the world 0:03:33.320 --> 0:03:36.520 at risk of running out of water. There are at 0:03:36.640 --> 0:03:41.880 least one million people in Mexico City who live in 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:47.280 areas that are that are not suited for infrastructure, so 0:03:47.400 --> 0:03:53.920 it's very difficult to bring the water through the bipelines. 0:03:54.920 --> 0:04:00.240 It's it's almost impossible. That's only in Mexico City. I'm 0:04:00.240 --> 0:04:08.600 not talking about Mexico Cities metropolitan area. And those people 0:04:08.720 --> 0:04:12.960 who are most hurt are the people who live in 0:04:13.000 --> 0:04:17.919 the worst conditions, the poor people, because they live in 0:04:18.040 --> 0:04:23.560 the worst located places. On the one hand, but on 0:04:23.640 --> 0:04:28.400 the other hand, poor people really don't have places where 0:04:28.520 --> 0:04:40.719 to store water. You know, living without water is something 0:04:40.760 --> 0:04:43.680 that if you've never actually experienced, it's hard to imagine 0:04:43.720 --> 0:04:46.760 not and it dominates your life. This is in Reque. 0:04:46.839 --> 0:04:50.080 Lomnitz one of the co founders and general director of 0:04:50.240 --> 0:04:54.279 Isla Urbana, a project dedicated to developing water sustainability in 0:04:54.360 --> 0:04:58.960 Mexico City. So, especially low income parts of Mexico City, 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:01.720 peripheral parts of Mexico City and the people that live 0:05:01.760 --> 0:05:04.800 around it are now facing a situation where they open 0:05:04.880 --> 0:05:07.839 the top and no water comes out or brown water 0:05:07.960 --> 0:05:10.120 comes out for a few seconds. So if you live 0:05:10.160 --> 0:05:13.120 in a house that doesn't get water or gets water 0:05:13.240 --> 0:05:16.440 just once every you know, one or two weeks, water 0:05:16.480 --> 0:05:19.839 starts becoming this really central dynamic that takes over almost 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:22.880 all of the house now, So everybody is very very 0:05:22.920 --> 0:05:25.320 attentive to when there's water. So if there's water in 0:05:25.360 --> 0:05:27.120 the good for a moment, everybody runs out and tries 0:05:27.160 --> 0:05:29.960 to fill up all of the buckets and containers that 0:05:30.000 --> 0:05:32.679 they possibly can so that they can kind of hold 0:05:32.720 --> 0:05:35.320 over for however long they need to until they get 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:37.960 water again, which they never know when there's gonna be 0:05:38.000 --> 0:05:40.960 water again. You know, about ten years ago in Regue 0:05:41.040 --> 0:05:44.080 and one of its co founders, both industrial designers, were 0:05:44.120 --> 0:05:47.719 discussing ways to support sustainability issues in the low income 0:05:47.760 --> 0:05:51.279 parts of Mexico City, with no clear ideas in mind. 0:05:51.480 --> 0:05:55.239 They started interviewing people about their everyday lives and water 0:05:55.320 --> 0:05:58.880 started coming up over and over and over again. People 0:05:58.920 --> 0:06:01.240 just started telling us about out water, and they start 0:06:01.279 --> 0:06:04.040 telling us about how their water situation was getting worse 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:06.039 and worse. They started telling us how they, you know, 0:06:06.040 --> 0:06:07.960 they used to get water out of the grid maybe 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:10.000 two three times a week. Now they're getting water one 0:06:10.080 --> 0:06:12.599 day every two weeks. How they never used to buy 0:06:12.680 --> 0:06:15.040 water trucks, now they're buying several water trucks a year. 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:17.440 The water trucks are an attempt to put a band 0:06:17.440 --> 0:06:20.680 aid on the wound. The government subsidizes water trucks for 0:06:20.680 --> 0:06:24.279 low income places. So maybe you have to go to 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:27.640 like a government agency order a water truck, and but 0:06:27.680 --> 0:06:29.480 they'll tell you, you know, you'll get your water truck 0:06:29.520 --> 0:06:32.880 in two to four weeks, for example, and no idea 0:06:32.960 --> 0:06:35.280 when so a lot of houses actually have to have 0:06:35.360 --> 0:06:38.480 somebody at home all the time in case the water 0:06:38.560 --> 0:06:40.359 truck shows up. So that they can receive it not 0:06:40.400 --> 0:06:42.480 because if not they don't, they lose. They lose the 0:06:42.480 --> 0:06:46.000 water truck and their place in the line. Enrique and 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:49.040 his colleagues zeroed in on an idea. Instead of getting 0:06:49.040 --> 0:06:52.240 water by truck or from below, how about looking to 0:06:52.320 --> 0:06:55.760 the sky. There's nothing new about rainwater harvesting, and people 0:06:55.800 --> 0:06:57.880 have been harvesting rainwater since they first kind of like 0:06:58.200 --> 0:07:00.080 open their mouths and looked up at the sky. At 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:02.960 the same time, notice that there's rainwater harvesting systems that 0:07:03.000 --> 0:07:07.080 are six thousand years old throughout the world. But um, 0:07:07.080 --> 0:07:10.360 but I don't think anyone had really taken the challenge 0:07:10.360 --> 0:07:14.600 of how do we get a modern, massive metropolis to 0:07:14.640 --> 0:07:17.760 start harvesting rainwater on a massive scale. The team built 0:07:17.760 --> 0:07:22.280 their first rainwater harvesting system, a simple and cheap arrangement 0:07:22.680 --> 0:07:25.720 made up of a big plastic water tank installed on 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:29.400 the ground level, gutters, some pipes, and a filter hooked 0:07:29.480 --> 0:07:31.680 up on the roof. One of the women they had 0:07:31.720 --> 0:07:35.200 interviewed agreed to try it out. And this woman, who 0:07:35.280 --> 0:07:38.640 I think is very scientifically minded, Uh, shut off the 0:07:39.080 --> 0:07:42.480 city grid, the water, the city water connection. She said, 0:07:42.560 --> 0:07:45.520 let's see how we do just with rainwater. Not even 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:49.160 the East lat Urbana team expected the outcome. And they 0:07:49.160 --> 0:07:52.640 went eight months, eight continuous months before they had to 0:07:52.640 --> 0:07:54.880 open up the city grid again. So they did eight 0:07:54.880 --> 0:07:59.480 continuous months of full autonomy just on rainwater. And that 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:02.040 was like a that blew up in my mind and 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:04.760 and and this my co founder Renata, who I was 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:06.679 working with it it kind of blew our minds. We're like, okay, 0:08:06.680 --> 0:08:09.960 this is this is really good, Like this really works 0:08:10.000 --> 0:08:12.720 beyond what we kind of had imagined. The team rented 0:08:12.720 --> 0:08:15.360 a room across the street from the first installment and 0:08:15.400 --> 0:08:19.280 proceeded to organize community meetings. A bunch of the neighbors 0:08:19.320 --> 0:08:22.880 started like joining in kind of none. We started installing 0:08:22.960 --> 0:08:27.119 rainwater harvesting systems with our neighbors little by little, and 0:08:27.480 --> 0:08:28.920 you know, it was a very want at a time, 0:08:29.120 --> 0:08:33.760 very retail kind of community activism kind of work, talking 0:08:33.800 --> 0:08:37.480 to communities about rainwater harvesting and and people you know, 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:40.120 like agreeing to experiments. So we start experimenting with different 0:08:40.160 --> 0:08:44.040 rainwater harvesting systems, and um we started putting up more 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:45.840 and more and more of these systems in the area. 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:49.160 As the word spread, the local government got in touch 0:08:49.640 --> 0:08:53.160 and they came back and they said, um, could you 0:08:53.200 --> 0:08:56.760 please write us a quote for five rainwater harvesting systems. 0:08:57.360 --> 0:08:59.200 And this was the first time anybody had asked us 0:08:59.240 --> 0:09:02.120 for like a quote, and so we like, we're very excited, 0:09:02.160 --> 0:09:06.280 and we wrote a very um a very like low budget. 0:09:06.360 --> 0:09:08.560 You know, we just wanted them to to to accept 0:09:08.600 --> 0:09:11.000 the quote now. So we wrote this quote for five systems, 0:09:11.880 --> 0:09:14.520 and they came back and they said, okay, we want 0:09:14.600 --> 0:09:19.480 five hundreds of these systems. And so we were like terrified, 0:09:19.880 --> 0:09:22.400 no and very excited, but also like, okay, how do 0:09:22.440 --> 0:09:25.400 we do this? And that was this huge quantum kind 0:09:25.440 --> 0:09:28.440 of step for us, and we installed. We ended up 0:09:28.440 --> 0:09:31.320 installing close to a thousand rainwater harvesting systems, working directly 0:09:31.360 --> 0:09:36.560 with this local administration. By now, a decade after installing 0:09:36.600 --> 0:09:39.680 the first unit, East La Urbana are working directly with 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:43.400 the government of Mexico City, installing almost sixties systems a 0:09:43.480 --> 0:09:48.000 day throughout the metropolitan area, over twenty thousand or out there, 0:09:48.000 --> 0:09:50.880 harvesting a total of eight hundred and seven million liters 0:09:50.880 --> 0:09:54.240 of water annually. For the recipients of these units, this 0:09:54.320 --> 0:09:57.080 can be truly life changing. So if you have a 0:09:57.080 --> 0:10:00.240 house that has say a hundred square meter roof stay, 0:10:00.720 --> 0:10:04.120 which would be what um nine square feet or something 0:10:04.120 --> 0:10:06.880 like that. It's not it's not a huge house at all. 0:10:07.160 --> 0:10:09.280 It's the house like that can get up to around 0:10:09.280 --> 0:10:11.800 a hundred thousand liters of water per year, which is 0:10:11.880 --> 0:10:15.040 about twelve water trucks. The problem at that point becomes 0:10:15.200 --> 0:10:17.160 they just don't have enough tanks to store it all. 0:10:17.400 --> 0:10:19.760 Like actually, they'll use as much water as they can store, 0:10:19.840 --> 0:10:22.480 and they'll go the whole rainy season and they'll usually 0:10:22.520 --> 0:10:25.400 go five, six, seven, eight months a year. They can 0:10:25.400 --> 0:10:28.440 be water autonomous. Now, it's that depending on the size 0:10:28.480 --> 0:10:31.000 of their roof. And then houses that have bigger tanks. 0:10:31.200 --> 0:10:33.680 I mean, there's houses that go all year, and that's 0:10:33.679 --> 0:10:35.760 really what we're after now. No, it's just doing more 0:10:35.760 --> 0:10:38.560 and more rainwater harvesting systems and getting entire parts of 0:10:38.600 --> 0:10:42.439 Mexico City to become places where every time it rains, 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:45.640 just thousands and thousands of rainwater harvesting tanks just fill 0:10:45.720 --> 0:10:52.200 up with water. For his part, Dr Perlo sees new 0:10:52.240 --> 0:10:55.920 models being developed and it makes him optimistic about the future. 0:10:56.200 --> 0:10:58.760 We're not going to be able to return to the 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:03.560 old lake, say stem or the old Teno Stitland, the 0:11:03.640 --> 0:11:07.520 Aztec city in the middle of the lake. That's gone. 0:11:08.880 --> 0:11:13.120 But we can have a new water model for the city, 0:11:13.440 --> 0:11:20.400 a model where we keep water, a model where we 0:11:21.320 --> 0:11:25.920 have enough water. We have springs, we have rivers, we 0:11:26.000 --> 0:11:30.840 have small lakes, we have hydraulic parks. We have really 0:11:31.559 --> 0:11:37.000 uh world of water. And that's possible. It's not utopia, 0:11:37.240 --> 0:11:42.240 it's not something that comes out of a dream. It 0:11:42.280 --> 0:11:51.040 can be a reality. This episode of Game Changers was 0:11:51.080 --> 0:11:55.240 produced by Magnus Hendrickson and presented by Yours Truly Matt Goldman. 0:11:55.640 --> 0:11:58.600 It was based on recording by Tom Gibson. For a 0:11:58.720 --> 0:12:01.720 visual experience of Games Drangers, check out our videos at 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:05.959 bloomberg dot com slash Green. Francesca Levie is the head 0:12:06.040 --> 0:12:08.640 of Bloomberg Podcasts. See you next time.