A five-year Arizona State University initiative called FutureH2O is flipping the global conversation about water – focusing on abundance and how to create it, rather than on scarcity.

John Sabo, a senior sustainability scientist and professor in the School of Life Sciences, directs the new initiative and announced it at a White House Water Summit on March 22, 2016.

“FutureH2O will look for new opportunities to harness the abundance of water on the planet,” said Sabo. “Some of these opportunities are things you’d expect us to do as a university, like training the next generation of water managers. But some of the other opportunities are things that ASU is uniquely poised to do."

ASU will work with large corporate water consumers to restore what they use, train a new generation of leaders on water usage, turn a Phoenix-area municipality into a model for reducing outdoor water use, as well as maximize sensors, data and the internet on a global scale to instantly manage water and hydropower.