You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Hey, Shortwaivers, Regina Barber here with producer Rachel Carlson.

Hi, hey Gina.

Hey.

So in honor of World Water Day, you and Burley, another producer here at Shortwave, are exploring the ways water touches our lives, from increasing water shortages around the world to how it's affecting agriculture and aquifers.

And I've been looking specifically into that first part, shortages.

For much of the world, normal is gone.

Earlier this year, the United Nations declared the dawn of a new era, global water bankruptcy.

Calling for a fundamental shift in how the global community understands

our most vital resource water. Kave Medani is the director of the UN University's Institute for

Water, Environment, and Health. And that clip is from a press conference in January. But Kave's been

thinking about water for way longer than that. He grew up in

Tehran with two parents who worked in the water industry. Which of course is now experiencing

more intense water crises because of the war. Yeah, and he says he's been sounding the alarm about

water in Tehran for years. I'm known back home for a person who was warning about these days.

So this is happening.

And then media contacts me and says, how do you feel?

And what does he say?

I wish I was wrong.

It's miserable to feel and to know that your compatriots are suffering,

you are going to suffer, and the chaos, the fear,

the stress. Even in my darkest projections, I was not thinking that Tehran would hit this day

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