There’s a giant clock ticking until the next major city runs out of water, and it could take a trillion dollars a year to stop a countdown that affects us all. That’s what the World Resources Institute estimates the world would need to spend every year – 1% of global GDP — to deliver sustainable, clean water for the world. In our most ambitious mini-documentary yet, Water Crisis: Lessons from South Africa, I met up with journalists Sam Mkokeli, and Latashia Naidoo to report from where the reality on the ground suggests the clock is going to be repeatedly hitting zero. Cape Town made international news in 2018 on the subject, as it hurtled toward “day zero,” when a historic drought would force it to become the first major city to turn off running water to its citizens, and require people to collect it at distribution centers. Less widely reported though is that today, neighborhoods in South Africa’s economic hub, Johannesburg, have been without water for weeks. And this time, there’s no drought. South Africa’s director-general of water & sanitation Dr. Sean Phillips painted a dire picture of the country’s efforts to meet its constitutional mandate to provide clean water to all its people. “For the people in Johannesburg now who are experiencing disruptions in their water supply, it is a crisis.” — Joe Posner Read on for Joe’s view about why the situation for South Africa, and for the world, is “dire.” | 
