I'm Elise Hu. You're listening to TED Talks Daily.

We know this about our water supply. We have to conserve more of it and pollute less.

But as entrepreneur and TED fellow, Sonar Luther tells us, we have no reliable way of forecasting our water problems in the future.

The biggest question is, is our water safe? In his archive talk from TED Summit 2019, Lutra lays out how we should monitor and

forecast our water just as we do for the weather. We need to build a weather service for water.

Yet until we collectively demand accountability, the incentives to fund it will not exist.

The first time I spoke at a conference was here at TED eight years ago.

Fresh out of grad school, little did I know that in those few

minutes on stage I was framing the questions I was going to be asked for the next decade.

And like too many 20-somethings, I expected to solve the world's problems, more specifically

the world's water problems with my technology.

I had a lot to learn.

It was seductive, believing that our biggest water quality problems persist

because they're so hard to identify.

And I presumed that we just needed simpler, faster, and more affordable sensors.

I was wrong.

While it's true that managing tomorrow's water risks is going to require better data and more

technology, today we're barely using the little water data that we have.

Our biggest water problems persist because of what we don't do,

and the problems we fail to acknowledge.

There's actually a little question about what today's water data is telling us to do as a species.

We need to conserve more, and we need to pollute less.

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