In a confluence of intellect and urgency, thought leaders from agriculture, climate science, governance, and planetary health gathered to address what one speaker called “The defining hydrological challenge of our epoch.” The dialogue, at once sobering and catalytic, underscored that the path to a sustainable future is not a straight road but a winding course—one that must be chartered with purpose, data, and a renewed social contract with the Earth.

Dr. Kezevino Aram, President, Shanti Ashram, Coimbatore, opened the proceedings with a clarion call to acknowledge the complexity of the challenges before us, urging participants to see in these very complexities the seeds of purpose and inspiration. Her framing of sustainability was less as a goalpost and more as a journey—one that will test moral fortitude as much as scientific ingenuity.

Dr. Ashok Dalwai IAS (Retd.), Chairman, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru & Chairman, Karnataka Agriculture Price Commission, Government of Karnataka, Bengaluru, with his characteristic blend of pragmatism and philosophical breadth, paid tribute to the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, warning that if agriculture “does not get it right, nothing else gets the chance to go right.” He lamented humanity’s disquieting shift from renewable bioresources to exhaustible fossil resources, cautioning that such regression imperils both planetary resilience and intergenerational equity.

Dr. Dennis Garrity, Chair of the Board, Global EverGreening Alliance, Kenya, drew upon the harrowing history of the 1975 Asian food crisis as chronicled in Famine, recalling M.S. Swaminathan’s role as a research leader in the eye of that storm. Turning to the present, he described the “great global heating emergency,” warning that Earth’s energy imbalance has reached alarming proportions. Garrity outlined a triad of interventions—a planetary toolbox encompassing emission reductions, carbon removal, and climate-cooling strategies—each requiring political courage and societal consent in equal measure.

Perhaps the most data-rich intervention came from Dr. Arunabha Ghosh, Chief Executive Officer, Council on Energy, Environment and Water, New Delhi, whose exposition on the hydrological cycle was at once scientifically granular and geopolitically expansive. He painted a portrait of water not merely as a resource, but as a vector of nature, economy, and governance, its flows traversing not just borders but atmospheric corridors linking nations. With land precipitation at 120,000 cubic kilometres per year and ocean evaporation at a staggering 471,000 cubic kilometres, the sheer magnitude of Earth’s water budget belies the local scarcities that afflict the poorest.

Dr. Ghosh quantified the cost of inaction for India alone at $ 2.52 trillion by 2050, then unveiled the Global Commission on the Economics of Water’s five “mission areas” for climate resilience: Revolutionising food systems to cut water use by a third through micro-irrigation; conserving and restoring natural habitats, with a target of 30 per cent forest land restoration; establishing a circular water economy that monetises the billions embedded in treated wastewater; enabling a clean energy and AI-driven economy with lower water intensity; and ensuring no child perishes from unsafe water. He cited the Odisha Millet Mission and the revitalisation of rainfed agriculture as exemplars of systemic change, noting that 66 per cent of India’s farmland is rainfed yet underperforms due to “green water” deficits. Conservation agriculture, he added, can save between 20–60 per cent of irrigation water while bolstering resilience.

However, perhaps his most striking argument was for a global water data infrastructure—an ambitious framework to map, monitor, and monetise water flows with the same rigour accorded to carbon. “Without the architecture of knowledge,” he said, “we cannot construct the edifice of action.” The estimated 1,498 billion cubic metres of national water demand by 2030—already outstripping India’s annual utilisable resources of 1,123 BCM—only amplifies the imperative.

The discussion’s throughline was unmistakable: water, food, and climate are not discrete policy silos but interlocking cogs in the machinery of survival. The transition from fossil to bioresource, from extractive to regenerative agriculture, and from water waste to water wisdom will require nothing less than an audacious reinvention of our economic, technological, and ethical frameworks.

If the tone was urgent, it was also resolutely hopeful. As one participant noted, history has shown that humanity’s most formidable challenges have also been its greatest catalysts for innovation. The question now is whether we can summon the will to transform our hydrological destiny before that destiny transforms us.