Mina Guli's body is broken and battered as she runs up to the steps of the United Nations in New York having just completed her 200th marathon in a year, traversing 8,440 kilometres across the world and arriving at the first UN Water Conference in 46 years.
It's a long way from her home country of Australia where she began 12 months ago, but the millions of dead fish floating down the Darling-Baaka River at Menindee are in the forefront of her mind — and the whole reason she's put her body on the line.
"When I saw the pictures from the fish kill last week it made me incredibly sad. Sad, because I think we're going to see more of these in the future as climate change puts stress on our water," the Melbourne woman said.
"Water impacts all of us and for too long water has been everything, but we've treated it as if it's nothing.
"I think this is yet another sign that that needs to change. We cannot allow more events like this to happen in our lifetime without considering how we can prevent them in the first place."
Running 200 marathons in 365 days may seem like a crazy thing to do, but for Guli it's a way to get attention and raise awareness about the global water crisis.
"I am running … to show the urgency of the problem that we're facing and to drive action from governments who have the capacity to set the agenda," she said.
"And action from companies who represent almost 90 per cent of global freshwater use, either directly or indirectly, and action from all of us as individuals because, ultimately, we have the power to create change."
Climate warnings
The UN water conference comes in the same week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned global warming has already impacted water security with half the world's population experiencing water scarcity for at least part of the year.
Ahead of the conference the UN published a report warning of a looming global water crisis with an "imminent risk" of shortages due to overconsumption and climate change.
There are hopes the conference could provide a pivotal moment, similar to the Paris Agreement on climate, for countries to address global water scarcity.
But Guli said even if that didn't happen, she hoped it would set the framework for stronger action on water security.
"I don't expect that we will see a groundbreaking breaking agreement, I don't expect that we will see governments finally announcing that they're actually going to do what's necessary," she said.
"What I do expect is that we will see a groundswell of public opinion and public awareness about this issue that will ensure that these governments are held to account, that companies are held to account."
Around the world
Guli has seen first hand the devastating impacts climate change and mismanagement are having on water across the world.
In Tajikistan she completed a marathon on Fedchenko Glacier, the longest glacier in the world outside of the polar regions.
It has shrunk by 1.4 kilometres since 1933.
"I think it's easy in cities to think that water comes out of a tap, but the truth is that water comes from healthy ecosystems, and without our glaciers providing a source of water a lot of those ecosystems are in big trouble," Guli said.
"Getting up into the mountains and seeing these glaciers, witnessing the loss, looking out across the valleys that should be filled with ice and are now just barren land … was just a really, really big education."
In the Amazon, Guli witnessed the impacts of deforestation on Brazilian ecosystems, water cycles and communities.
"To run through these charred, blackened tracts of land which used to be filled with big trees, I think that was just a very real example of what's happening to our planet and the importance of protecting all aspects of it," she said.
"This is far more than just an environmental problem, this goes far deeper into communities and also economies.
"We forget that water goes into everything we use, buy, and consume every day — from the food we eat, the clothes that we wear, to the power that we use."
From floods to drought
It's not just water scarcity that's the problem, climate change is also bringing with it more extreme flooding events.
"Whether it's too much water, too little water, too dirty water, or too hot water, it impacts communities in ways that most of us who live in cities and where water comes out of the taps never envisaged," Guli said.
"We've had examples where we ran through flash floods with deep water. We've seen the impact of floods in Australia, now in California, as obvious examples. There's too much water, as well as too little water.
"I saw the drought and the water scarcity that exists across the Aral Sea as I wended my way through fishing boats that lay stranded in the sand."
As Australia prepares for another El Niño that could see a rapid shift to hot, dry weather, the change from too much to too little water is front of mind.
But Guli said she was impressed by the inroads made by cotton farmers she met along the Murray-Darling Basin.
"The sheer ambition from the cotton industry to reduce water use and to use water more efficiently, it made a huge impact on me when I saw it for the first time," she said.
"But even more of an impact when I started travelling around the world and I saw how far ahead our cotton growers are in terms of the way that they're using regenerative growing techniques and smart agricultural processes to ensure that they use their water more efficiently."
Doing more with less
With rising incidences of extreme and prolonged droughts and more pressure on water resources, Guli said how water was managed was vital.
"I think a big part of how we manage that supply-demand imbalance is a management challenge, a governance challenge," she said.
"You see that in places not only like the Murray-Darling, but also in places like the Colorado [River] in the western United States which flows through seven states … and two states in Mexico," she said.
"I think that figuring out how to manage a restricted flow of water through these rivers is hard, particularly when you have increasing demand from farmers, demand from power production, and demand from the communities that rely on that water for their lives."
The last leg of her journey was through the United States and Guli said Las Vegas was "counterintuitively" an example of how cities can adapt to limited water.
"[It's] the city of glitz and glamour, but when you look below the surface literally what you see is a massive water recycling system," she said.
"They've paid the local community to remove the gardens that they've traditionally had, so their lawns and their old trees, and encouraged them to replace them with much more water efficient gardens."
