World Water Bank
a network of local and national water resources
To read the whole story map, please scroll down till you reach "End".
What is the World Water Bank?
A country becomes water rich by managing its water resources well. Local water banks, built and maintained by local communities, are the holders of their water wealth, enabling a sustainable and prosperous rural life in arid and flood-prone lands. The water banks hold water harvested from the rain, and enabling a healthy small water cycle. They also determine the health of the national water bank of each country.
The Flow Partnership facilitates communities to share their secrets and methods for building their own water banks.
Below is the story of a community driven water bank project faciltiated by us in 2019 in India.
Karauli in Rajasthan India lies in an area of high water stress
The Saseri water bank
Driving along the dusty roads to Saseri in the Karauli district of Rajasthan, India, one is struck by the lack of plastic packaging litter on the roadside. We realise this is because there are no shops in the area to buy anything. People eke a living from the crops they are able to grow and live only by that. And in this semi-arid climate with summer temperatures of 50 degrees C, their existence is marginal. Many leave and migrate to the cities in search of the basics of life.
Karauli in its hot, dry, stressed state..
The world has often progressed by capitalising on the land from which simple community life has been displaced. But here in Saseri/Karauli, there is nothing to buy or make capital from. Such places do not figure in national financial calculations to open any banks or their branches...
And yet....
Taking the situation into community hands
The drone image on the right taken on April 15th 2019, shows a small group of villagers (visible as a circle of white), laying the foundation of a new kind of bank of their own...
(next section below)
Founding a Local Water Bank
The drone image on the right taken two weeks later on the 30th of April 2019 shows how busy the villagers have been over these two weeks, moving hundreds of cubic metres of earth to create... their water bank.
Community tractors ransporting the earth
The community owns the process of creating their water bank. There is no international financial authority or business investing millons to bring their bank's branch here. The water bank is made by their own efforts and hardwork.
Thousands of tractor loads of earth help build the bank
The first step is taken when the community decide what is of real worth to them. The commodities of the cities are worthless in rural areas. Here, no water = no life. The future they want to realise is in their own hands and they create their bank in anticipation of the monsoon rains to hold their life. With great collective commitment, the work is done at pace.
(next section below)
Paying into the Bank
The drone image on the right taken on 30th August, after the monsoon rains of the same year shows the complete and full water bank they have built. In just four months, they have created and built the bank and 10,000 cubic metres of water, enough for several years use by the villagers, has accrued in their bank. The water immediately enables 27 hectares of new farmland to be seeded with wheat, ensuring a new found security for life in the village.
The previoiusly dead, semi-arid landscape transforms into a lush tapestry of green, home to exotic birds and animals, where life has a chance to take foothold again...
And more wheat fields....
How does one calculate the prosperity and life that this water bank enables? Can one even calculate it in digital money? The wealth is in the regenerated landscape enabling a healthy life. This is the primary wealth that is worth realising and storing for future generations!
The farmer's new view....
(next section below)
Shareholders meeting
Many people today would question whether the money they keep in the bank is worth anything at all... With increasing natural crises, the volatility of commodity prices, suspended stocks and falling shares, what is that money worth? This water bank shareholders meeting (pictured right) has a new, prosperous feeling to it...
The local community, senior figures from ARUP Engineering, the WaterUP team of The Flow Partnership and project leaders of the NGO Tarun Bharat Sangh - all investors in the water bank at Saseri, are now holding the first shareholders meeting of the new community water bank. They are very satisfied with their investment in this bank. They can see the visible transformation their investment has enabled. Is this mutual feeling of sharing in a renewal of land and life the real true wealth?
CEO Dervilla Mitchell of ARUP Engineering and a community spokesperson share a moment of mutual recognition and appreciation
The Saseri rural economy is in circular motion again. The turnaround has taken place . The community are now the ones holding the real wealth. Corporate money too has been transformed by such a process and the feeling of richness is there for all to experience in this meeting..
Women are equal partners in this new Bank order
(next section below)
The World Water Bank
What if a time in the future comes, when the pace of extreme natural crises is so fast, that financial indicators such as GDP, stock markets, company profitability etc can no longer pretend to hold the wealth of the world?
Can the wealth generated by creating these local Water Banks, providing regional stability and local resilience to the landscape, become the measure for future growth?
Growth forecast from the Water Bank
Financial Institutions are looking at the problem the wrong way round. They are holding paperwealth ( now digital!) as if that was the only wealth the world needed to look after. That money is invisible and so too its power and impact seem invisible. Are those multi-trillion dollars hidden in vaults to be kept hidden and dead or can they be made active to help resolve climate change, natural disasters, world poverty? The multiple natural crises today are showing us the real source of wealth is not commodities, or coins, or currency but nature and water.
The real wealth..
At the moment water is treated simply as a commodity, to be used, consumed and drained away. Like everything else today, it seems to have only a one time single use.
Annually, a deficit of 760 cubic kilometres of water is wasted down drains taking away along with it the untold wealth for life transformation, climate stabilisation and health restoration.
Community resource for global change
We need an instrument that can value the benefit of holding millions of cubic meters of water. and enabling the two values to be exchangeable.
The local water bank proudly puts into the hands of communities, the wherewithal to be keepers of this real wealth. On a global scale the challenge is the same as that taken on by the local community.
Do you want a share in the prosperity that caring for the natural order can engender?
(next section below)
Withdrawing from the Bank (reaping returns)
We can choose how to engage with this water wealth . There are simple steps to be taken such as holding the rain where it falls, letting water recharge the aquifers and slowing the flow. That holding of water creates real, visible wealth, and we enjoy the returns of our investment in the form of nutritious and plentiful food, a healthy water cycle and equitable climate, peace on the land...
Saseri, before the work began
The Saseri village water bank structure with a realised capacity of 10,000 m3 of water, was built with contributions from the community (25%), ARUP Engineering (37.5%) and NGO The Flow Partnership (37.5%).
Tractors loading earth for the Saseri Bank
This will create real extra wealth in terms of an improved landscape, resilient climate and rural renewal, livelihoods and credit in the money bank for the villagers. From a local small scale water bank the enhanced local properity will be exchangeable into a globally recognised wealth.
As Banks around the world fund their virtual wealth through cycles of increasing debt, so the Water Bank is set up to turn back the debt from the water cycle into a positive natural wealth.
Improving outlook
Water Credits
A small portion of our paper wealth, can be held in these water banks to get us a high return on it through regeneration of a healthy planet. Our high dividend payments come not from shaky financial systems that make only a handful of people rich at the expense of all others, but from a vibrant health giving planet, that enriches all who live on it.
Water Credits issued through the creation of local water banks globally will record, certify and update the progress on all our pledges to create this wealth.
Healthy national water banks of each country revive rivers in desert areas and stop the build up of floodwaters before they reach our homes. They minimise erosion, recharge aquifers, regulate localised weather patterns, sequester carbon. They also create visible local, national and global wealth for all living beings on the planet.
'End'
