Already, water scarcity affects four out of ten of the worlds population. Soon, it will be the future for many of us. And in many places, the countdown has already begun. [dramatic title music] [crowd cheering] [clock counts down] [crowd cheering] [clock counts down] new years eve, 2020, a very different kind of countdown. [crowd chants countdown] [crowd chants countdown] [loud bong emanates] [fireworks noise explodes] [music plays] it was time to say goodbye to the teen years of the 21st century. More people had had more fun than at any time in history. [music plays] [fireworks noise explodes] none of us knew it then but 2020 was about to go very wrong. The first coronavirus deaths were only days away. Within weeks there would be no more crowds no more parties no more celebrations for years, experts had predicted that a pandemic was on its way but not enough people were listening. [fireworks noise explodes] and on new years eve, 2020, the coronavirus was not the only disaster waiting to happen. [fireworks noise explodes] [anthony turton] the human population is outstripping the water supply. This is suicidal. [jay famiglietti] the water crisis is something thats happening now and its happening around the world when we dont have water, people fight. [dramatic music] [loud explosions] all hell breaks loose. [woman] oh oh, no, no, no. No. The house is burning. [chiwetel] in australia, 46 million acres of land is being incinerated by wildfire. Thirtyfour dead. An estimated three billion wild animals killed some species driven to the brink of extinction. Similar recordbreaking wildfires reported in california, alaska and siberia. Worldwide, extreme weather events have doubled since 1980. Officials in cape town, south africa say its just 92 days away from having to shut off most water taps. They are calling april 21st day zero. [crowd screams and whistles] [chiwetel] mexico city, one of the largest cities in the world struggles to come to terms with water shortage as a way of life. In the worst hit neighborhoods, the poor have taken control of the water supply into their own hands. [woman speaking spanish] [woman speaking spanish] in the midwest, the water which irrigates americas breadbasket is disappearing forever. [mike callcicrate] we are in a really, really big mess. Industrial agriculture is really a mining operation. Where they use up water, they use it up until its gone [helicopter whirring] [chiwetel] in brazil, hardpressed units of armed police are the last line of defense against the destruction of the amazon rainforest. [speaking brazilian portuguese] a force of only a thousand in an area the size of india. [laughter] [man speaking brazilian portuguese] the prize on this raid . An illegal tractor. But Small Victories will do little to slow down the pace of destruction. Nearly 20 of the forest has already vanished. And theres a price to pay. In recent years, research has shown that, in a rainforest, if you take away the trees, you take away the rain. And for regions far beyond brazil, the result could be catastrophic. [antonio] what would you do if you know what i know . Its absolutely essential that humanity, uh, understands what kind of risk we are running right now. I mean losing our habitat losing the planet where we have evolved it means really losing the capacity of continuing to live on earth. [chiwetel] the day that water runs out has been called day zero. This film is about people who are fighting to make sure it never happens. Around threeandahalf billion years ago water was where life on earth began and today all living creatures depend on it for existence. [peaceful music gradually increases] the florida springs. Thousands of lakes and dozens of rivers crisscross the state of florida on their way to the sea. For nearly 50 million years, it has been one of the wonders of the world. And for centuries, its provided the people of florida with most of their Drinking Water. But now, theres something going wrong in the florida springs. Jill heinerth has been diving here for more than 20 years. Shes seen how things are changing. Because below the surface of the springs, you can find the backdoor to the astonishing story of what is happening to the worlds fresh water. [underwater noise emanates] [choral music builds] [insects and birds chirp in background] [ethereal choral music plays] [chiwetel] the floridan aquifer, a reservoir of fresh water stretching for 100,000 square miles under the state of florida, and beyond the largest concentration of fresh water springs on earth. [jill] im still filled with wonder every time i have an opportunity to go into an underwater cave. Theyre just magical environments. I liken it to swimming through the veins of mother earth. I am swimming in the sustenance of the planet. [chiwetel] of all the water on earth, just over two percent can be used for human consumption. Most of that is inaccessible, locked up in ice caps and glaciers. A third of the fresh water we can get to is found underground, in these vast rockbound aquifers. They contain a 100 times more than all the surface water in lakes and rivers combined. Until now, its been enough to sustain life on earth but modern life on earth is something different. [jill] what ive learnt over many years of being here is that that clear water doesnt necessarily mean clean water. Ive seen the flow of the springs slow down as if theyre tired and getting sick. Ive seen the bottom vegetation disappear and being replaced by filamentous algae, whether that is nitrate pollution from agriculture or whether it is just using too much ive seen it change. Ive seen things disappear. [ethereal choral music plays] [chiwetel] jill is like the canary in a coal mine. Pollution, depletion the clues shes found here are a warning that something is happening and not just in florida. [tense music plays] los angeles, a good place to start an investigation into water. [tense music plays] theres never been enough to go round [music plays] [passing traffic sounds] a hundred years ago, they built the Worlds Largest aqueduct to stop the city drying up. And in the days of the prohibition, when the rest of the country was dying for alcohol, in la, they were fighting each other over water. Water crisis is in the citys dna. Los angeles is the showcase of the american dream. The shopwindow of the modern way of life. The World Capital of the swimming pool, 250,000 in la county alone. [choral music builds tension] but stuck between the desert and the ocean, the people of la might just be living dangerously. [string music rises] this is jay famiglietti. Water scientist. Every time california starts running out of water, hes the pundit they come running for. [bill maher] senior water scientist from nasas jet propulsion laboratory, jay famiglietti. [cheering and applause] hey, professor. How are you, sir . [string music rises] [coffee bubbles] [string music rises] [bill maher] finally, a witness that will tell us expert testimony about this. They call you the al gore of water i hear. [jay] wow, well, thats, thats impressive. Well, you know its a [laughter] [jay] when stories like this break, they break in a very, very big way. [bill] why isnt there a panic or at least a sense of urgency . Where is the governor going on tv . Whats the plan, man . Well, thats, thats the point. Water, its serious shit, bro. [laughs] [jay] its not clear to me that the general public really appreciates that the water crisis, the water scarcity is something thats happening now and its around the world. Its happening all over the world. [chiwetel] severe drought has been a regular feature in the californian story. [train horn blares] the years between 2012 to 2014 were the driest for over a thousand years but its not only californians who are in trouble. At nasa, Jay Familglietti pioneered a Space Mission to try to discover what was happening to Water Supplies over the entire planet. [woman] three, two, one and lift off of Grace Mission tracking the movement of water across our planet. [chiwetel] the project was called grace, the gravity and climate recovery experiment. It acts like a scale in the sky. [digital bleep] its composed of two satellites about the size of a squashed minibus. They orbit at about 400 kilometers and they are separated by about 200 kilometers, and they are chasing each other around as the earth spins around. And when the satellites fly over that region, the region exerts slightly less of a gravitational tug on the satellites and they float just a little bit higher. [digital bleep] its really allowed us to map up the regions around the world that are gaining or losing water. [digital bleep] [chiwetel] grace was a huge scientific success but the news from space wasnt good. Two billion people around the world depend on vast underground aquifers for Drinking Water and growing food. The grace satellite proved that most of these aquifers are losing water much faster than anyone predicted. [jay] the drought situation is much worse, uh, than i think is generally perceived. This maybe why were not getting the public response we want. We found that over half of the worlds major aquifers, over half, 20 of them, are past sustainability tipping points and by that i mean that the water is being removed. Its being extracted from these aquifers at a rate thats greater than its being replenished. [chiwetel] grace was a wakeup call. The satellites had looked into the future, and for vast swaths of the us and the world, the future is dry. [jay] population is growing, and climate is changing. We dont have the water that we thought that we did. So its a different world out there. [digital bleeps] [digital bleeps] [background piano music plays] [william] weve been spending all these revolutions looking at the moon then as we come around this noninviting place, we look up and there is the earth. Its 240,000 miles away, it was small enough, you could cover it with your thumbnail. [anders] wow thats crazy. [lovell] aww, thats a beautiful shot. [peaceful background music plays] [camera shutter clicks] [peaceful background music plays] [chiwetel] the time christmas eve, 1968. The location the apollo spaceship on the far side of the moon. [camera shutter clicks] [background piano music plays] when this photo was taken, there were only threeandahalf billion people on earth. Already, there are twice that many. In the 1960s, new york and tokyo were the only two megacities with populations of more than ten million. Now there are more than 30. Most of them much bigger than new york. It was water that made these cities possible in the first place. But what happens now if the water starts running out . [tense background music plays] [rushing sound of the wind] [tense background music plays] [rushing sound of the wind] [children speaking indistinctly] [children] one step, two step, tickle you under there. [laughter] [newscaster 1] cape town in south africa is facing one monumental question. How does it survive . [newscaster 2] four million residents of cape town are staring down a painful reality. In a little more than two months, the south african city could run out of water. [child] woah [laughs] [chiwetel] february 2018, cape town, south africa, theres hardly been any rain for three years. The reservoirs are almost empty. [Running Water] [tense background music plays] [man] day zero, a doomsday scenario when the taps run dry. For cape townians, it is a real possibility as long as their cities main water supply looks like this. They are calling april 21st day zero. [woman] im not saying its bigger than 9 11 but im saying it poses as much of a challenge as a catastrophe such as 9 11 did but in a completely different way. [chiwetel] tourist brochures were still calling cape town the honeymoon capital of the world. But the plastic water cans were telling a different story. [anthony] there is the perception that this is a shortterm drought and day zero is needed just to tide people over to the next rainy season, which will be two or three months in the future. The data that we have all tells us that this is not a shortterm disturbance. From the 1980s onwards, theres been a perceptible shift in the rainfall pattern in south africa. The Weather Service in south africa are unable to predict the future under these conditions of climate change. [bird screeches] [tense background music plays] [chiwetel] cape town is proud of its mediterranean climate but the climate is changing and the future is unpredictable. A population that was two million 20 years ago is fourandahalf million today. The demand for water never stops growing. Water is not only the stuff you drink or the stuff you shower in or the stuff you flush the toilet with. Water is embedded in everything. Water is part of, of our everyday modern living. Water creates the jobs that give people the salaries that they live on. Water creates the food. Every element of our modern economy requires fresh water. [uplifting piano music] [water splashing] [chiwetel] the theewaterskloof dam, cape towns biggest reservoir. This is what it used to look like. A 100 billion gallon playground that has kept the city watered for the past 40 years. But that was before it stopped raining. And when a city starts running out of water, no one can be sure of a soft landing. [insect chirping] the same reservoir three years later. By then theewaterskloof had become an International Icon of water crisis. [woman] this is one of cape towns main sources of water. A source that could run completely dry within a matter of weeks. The last ten percent of the water is unusable so to all intents and purposes this reservoir is empty. [chiwetel] old farm houses old roads from before the dam was flooded. Rows of vines that have stood many years under water. The manmade solution to cape towns water problem was no longer up to its job. [insect chirping] [anthony] a dam always has in the bottom a sediment pile and when the dam dries out, that desiccates. It becomes dry like blotting paper. So, when the rain starts falling and the first water comes in, the first thing it has to do is rehydrate that pile of blotting paper. So, you are talking of 100s of millions, if not billions of liters of water that will get absorbed by that before the water becomes available, uh, as yield. There is a need for a philosophical shift away from we are masters and owners of nature to we are now developing in partnership with nature. We have to give nature a little bit of a space in order to provide good and useful services for humankind. [chiwetel] but the water crisis, when it comes, will not affect all of humankind in the same way. This is helen and ray, the kind of people who until now have never really had to think about where their water came from. In normal times, their consumption is about 80 gallons a day. Now its down to 13. And thats a life changer. Were not the same people that we were this time last year. [helen] its not full. [ray]no, babe. The idea that we could turn our taps on and there would be no water was real. [man] the officers are acting on a tipoff. Local residents told them, employees at this body shop are washing cars with city water, and that is a criminal offense. I personally felt incredibly anxious. [aggressive screaming and shouting] [aggressive screaming and shouting] [woman] there have already been scuffles here. Security guards now monitor the site. And there was this sudden madness that was going on. [everyone chanting] water for all or the city must fall. [woman] the local government has brought in severe restrictions forcing people to look for alternative supplies. They ran out of water at the, at the department stores. They ran out of containers at the plastic supply stores. [everyone chanting] water is life. [man] water is life. [everyone chanting] water is life. [man] theres no man with water. No motor cars, no jobs, no farm workers, no vegetables. It becomes unimaginable. [helen] it has been quite humbling. Its always crappy being the the camel. [helen] pack horse. If i pass out along the way, just give me mouthtomouth. Just keep going, little man. Keep going, little man. Stopping. You can do it, baby. Now they are just cutting into my hands. [chiwetel] the water crisis laid bare a secret that cape town would like to forget. Thirty years after the end of apartheid, the city still has the reputation of being one of the most unequal places on earth. The water you get still depends on who you are and where you live. Helen and ray live in newlands, one of cape towns most desirable neighborhoods. The Woman Working on the balcony is their maid paulina. And where she comes from, every day is day zero. [paulina] to newhaven, i was 28years old. Im now 54 years old. Im doing everything at their house wash, clean, iron, everything. I cook. I do everything. But with all that things, i need to save water, because one day were gonna wake up, we dont have water, and then whats gonna happen without water. [chiwetel] every friday, helen gives paulina water and paulina takes it home. These heavy bottles contain a hidden truth about water shortages, not just in south africa but around the world. [indistinct chatter] [indistinct chatter] [van door slams] [paulina speaking native language] [paulina] i always give some people, you know, i always give water. [chiwetel] the question is why paulina needs to take the water home. And the answer becomes clear once we know exactly where home is. Paulina lives in capricorn. One of the informal settlements, shanty towns, on the edge of cape town. Few people here have access to Running Water in their homes. For many years, there were only 21 public water taps in the whole settlement. [van door screechs open] bye, guys. [indistinct chatter] [indistinct chatter] [feet scrapping on stones] [chiwetel] in prosperous newlands, day zero seems like an unprecedented disaster. But here in capricorn, its just another day. [paulina] there is a problem with water in capricorn. We get water in the morning at six oclock. Around 10 00, 11 00, there is no more water. In my house, i tell them every day, we need to save water. We cant just do whatever we do with water. We need to save water. [indistinct chatter] i wake up five oclock in the morning to fetch water. Only lasts for one hour. Some of us are working night shifts. When we are coming back, theres no water. Cant bathe for the day. We must wait tomorrow. And theres water in the taps. You cant drink them. They smell, they horrible. Sometimes, they green. You dont even know what is happening. But we must drink them. There is no choice. [child coughs] sometimes theres not even water to cook, to cook prop yeah, to cook. Theres no water. [woman] mm. Even to buy the water, its expensive. [paulina] to buy the water is very expensive. Very expensive. [paulina] really, really [woman] because i buy for my son. Its safe for him to drink that water than this one thats coming out of the tap. I dont you dont trust them. Capricorn just get rotten every single day. Theres suffering in this town. [chiwetel] in an ideal world, access to water is a human right. But, in the real world, water is a yardstick of inequality. Over two billion people still live without safe Drinking Water in their homes. The average american flushes more water down the toilet than most africans use every day. Worldwide, poor water sanitation kills nearly a Million People every year. The threat to cape town came and went. In may 2018, the threeyearold drought was over. [laughter] [indistinct chatter] [indistinct chatter] [chiwetel] they prayed for rain and the rain came. The whole city celebrated. [man] so having analyzed the new data, we are now in a position