NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

It’s just typical. You wait almost five decades to make the case for urgent action and investment on the global stage in the world’s financial capital, and along comes a banking crisis to steal your thunder. That’s the prospect facing some 8,000 people descending on New York this week for the United Nations’ first major confab on water security since 1977.

They’re convening just months after a third of Pakistan was submerged by floods; while Somalia is suffering from water scarcity-driven famine; after recent huge amounts of rain and snowfall have proven insufficient to overcome the aridification of America’s western states; and after consecutive floods helped cause the worst food inflation in Australia since 2006, per Rabobank.