Workshop: Whose Water Future? Re-assessing Climate Change, AI and Global Inequalities

By 2030, AI data centres could guzzle up to 9.3 trillion litres of water per year — roughly the basic domestic water needs of 1.3 billion people in Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet the environmental cost is outsourced to water-stressed regions, while the economic benefits stay concentrated elsewhere.

Co-organised by BB Impact Solutions, foraus and the Geneva Water Hub, the session will explore:

• Water as a cycle, not a warehouse — moving past the outdated "stock management" mindset.
• The groundwater paradox — over 90% of our water security depends on it, yet it remains under-known and under-governed.
• Lessons from West Africa — from the OMVS benefit-sharing model to the Pôle Eau Dakar, showing that cooperation, not extraction, builds resilience.

The core question: will we treat water and knowledge as common goods, or let them slide into new forms of extractivism?