Mina Guli: The Ultra-Marathon Runner Bringing Attention to the World's Water Crisis
From Arizona's scorching heat to Asia's snowy peaks, Mina Guli has run through it all. The Australian water campaigner and ultra-marathon runner is inspiring people all over the globe to protect the world's water resources. She advocates for water because it is often missing from the global conversations, even now that most of us experience the climate emergency through drought or flooding. And the way that she draws our attention is unique; she runs an astonishing amount of marathons and has turned that initiative into a global movement.
This week, I interviewed her for The Planet podcast. We had already been in touch about this plan more than a year ago, but recently we decided to firmly put it on our calendars. We are both preparing, albeit in very different ways, for next week's UN 2023 Water Conference in New York City and saw this as the best moment for recording the podcast.
The UN 2023 Water Conference in NYC
This biggest United Nations water event in nearly fifty years, from 22 to 24 March, will also end Mina's spectacular 'marathon of marathons.' For the culmination of 200 marathons in one year, the final one will finish on the steps of the UN Headquarters the day before the opening of the conference.
It made me wonder if I would be interviewing a water campaigner who runs marathons or a marathon runner who is also a water campaigner. Although I didn't ask her the question directly, and I'm sure it must be a bit of both, I would say it is the former. I have many friends and colleagues that work full-time on water, but I can't recall anyone that speaks so passionately about water as Mina Guli. With her campaign, she alerts runners and non-runners about the global water challenges and even turns water advocates into runners. Of course, you can also support her efforts by running; I'll write more about that at the end of this article.
The Thirst Foundation
Mina Guli's interest in water began during her career in law, finance, and climate change, where she realized the devastating impact of water scarcity on communities worldwide. This realization prompted her to shift her career toward water advocacy, and she founded the Thirst Foundation in 2012.
Thirst's mission is to raise awareness, educate people about water issues, inspire action on water, and drive change through partnerships with governments, NGOs, and corporations. One of their most significant initiatives was the #RunningDry campaign, which Guli launched in 2018.
The #RunningDry campaign involved Mina Guli running 100 marathons in 100 days to raise awareness about water scarcity and the sixth UN Sustainable Development Goal to ensure access to clean water and sanitation for all by 2030 (SDG6). The campaign was a massive success, generating global media coverage and inspiring millions to take action on water issues. Despite breaking her leg on marathon 62, communities worldwide came together to dedicate their kilometers to water and complete her 100 marathons on her behalf. This inspired the global movements that Thirst and Mina encourage to this day.
She also serves as an ambassador for the 2023 United Nations Water Conference, which explains why, after nearly 200 runs worldwide, she is now getting closer to the final marathon of the Run Blue campaign in New York City. She is already in the US and ran in several southwestern states last week. She was in Phoenix, Arizona, when she joined The Planet podcast.
The drought in America’s southwest
Naturally, the drought in America's southwest was our first topic of conversation. But Mina is an expert on the global perspective; she has traveled in many countries and learned so much about the water challenges in other places that she often compares experiences, policies, and workable solutions between different regions.
For instance, in the American southwest, she started in California. First, she saw people watering the green lawns in places like LA and San Francisco, where water is extremely scarce, but the community still doesn't understand how precious this water is. But her next stops were in places like Las Vegas or Phoenix, where the contrast with those Californian cities is quite dramatic. Former green yards have been replaced by desert landscapes. She describes what she sees during her long runs in those cities: "You don't see trees, but you see cacti, and you see an entirely different way of life that visually reflects the level of water availability in the area."
She called it an eye-opening moment, just like her conversations with farmers in California and Arizona. They have to deal with challenges like access to groundwater in the San Joaquin Valley or relying on the Colorado River in Arizona, which is at historically low water levels.
Shocked by the bathtub rings of Lake Powell and Lake Mead
Last week, she saw the shockingly low water levels in Lake Powell and Lake Mead, where she hadn't been for five years. In this relatively short period, the bathtub rings on the walls of the artificial lakes have dropped so much lower. And since Mina uses her ultra-marathon running to ask attention to the water emergencies of the world, she ran through a landscape that used to be a lake and is now dry and dusty.
Like everywhere else where she runs, she always meets the local people and has an eye for the impact of the water problems on the community, which will be dramatic for those living in the seven US states that depend on the Colorado River and the two states in Mexico that also require water from the Colorado River. She warns that the scale of the problem is even more significant than many realize since the water is also needed to fuel the farms that produce the food and fiber that so many in the US depend on.
And she explains it's not just a climate- and an economic catastrophe; it's also a social catastrophe. Mina continues: "We strangle the lives of the communities along the river. I cannot tell you how many communities I've been to which have been so starved of water that they can no longer survive, and for-sale signs literally litter the streets. People cannot sell their property because without water, what's the point of having a property or business? So you watch these communities literally collapse, and the value of the property and the value of those communities collapse alongside them."
We need to come together
She calls the drought in the southwest and its consequences a big lesson for all of us in coming together. She adds: "We need to come together not only across state boundaries, but we need to come together across industry, businesses, and communities, and we need to come together across NGOs and conservationists. Because only when we figure out solutions that meet all of our requirements do we actually solve this problem."
Mina recently met a woman from the Nevada Water Authority. And she referred to a quote from The Princess Bride: "This will be painful. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying." Mina adds, "And it's true. This is going to require us to do some hard things. But the good news is we can do hard things. I know because I'm in the middle of doing one incredibly hard big challenge that I thought I couldn't do."
Although we started with the Colorado River, Mina traveled around the world during our talk. She effortlessly steps from the bathtub rings in Lake Powell to the wrecked ships in the dried-out Aral Sea to the challenges in Australia's Murray Darling river system.
The impact of water stress on women and girls
But then we realize it's International Women's Day, and Mina talks about the women and girls who are often at the frontline of the water challenges. She tells heartbreaking stories of the many women she met who spent many hours each day fetching water, including young girls. Therefore, they can't go to school and stay home to look after the babies while the mom gets water.
I hope you will listen to the full podcast. Mina had so many stories to tell that I can't summarize all of them here. For instance, it includes the part where she describes how the movement she started went from one to many, which she calls one of the most inspiring moments of her life. She continued: "Not only because of what I've seen, but because of the hope it gives me for a better future for the next generation."
If you got this far, you have arrived at a crossing in this post where you can go five ways, but I hope you will walk them all.
First, listen to the podcast, which is available on Spotify, or you can click here for Apple Podcasts or listen here on Callin.
Second, follow Mina Guli on social media. There is her Twitter account and Instagram, and I love the exceptionally well-produced videos on her YouTube channel (don't forget to subscribe to that one).
The third one is to follow everything about the UN 2023 Water Conference. That's the easiest one since if you follow Mina and me, you can't escape it for the next ten days.
Fourth: watch this video. It tells the story of the evolution of Mina's campaign from one to many activists. It's so beautiful, brave, and incredibly motivating.
Fifth: Join Mina Guli and people across the world to run or walk during #WorldWaterRun week, March 16th - 22nd. For more information and to sign up:
https://www.worldwaterrun.com
And most of all, remember and act upon her story, to quote her one more time from the podcast interview: "We need to recognize that we can't continue to treat water as if it's nothing because it's everything."
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Mina’s story is one of total commitment, sacrifice and courage in advocating for water for all inhabitants of the 🌍; she is quite remarkably educated in all aspects having seen first hand the global impacts of water 💦 misused and wasted, absence of planning as many people simply assumed it would always be here at the turn of a faucet. She is visionary in her approach, now with collaborators internationally. She is the face of water, it’s history, it’s present and it’s future. I am so pleased her work has been valued, shared and that she will serve as an invaluable resource at the water conference at the UN in coming days. She is now the icon for water as well she should be given her efforts in bringing the attention of the world to the water crisis. We have been to some extent aware but she has actually VISUALIZED the impacts of water shortage worldwide; who else can make that claim? Best wishes to both of you as you seek and evaluate solutions to this crisis in the days to come.
Loved the podcast. Mina is such an inspiration. Signed up for the World Water Run - I will be walking though. I'll probably talk more about water in my next two podcasts (we already talked about fast fashion & clothes in relation to water needed). Mina has definitely inspired me to also write about water. I'll be walking along rivers for the Word Water Run - there will be stories to tell. Thanks for having her on your podcast and good luck to both of you in New York.