Water security is key to our collective future, yet many parts of the world are deeply water insecure with these impacts only predicted to intensify. We worked with IWMI to create a compelling animation to help raise the profile of water security within climate discussions, with an eye ahead to COP27.

Animation lends itself well to communicating both complexity and emotion, making it the ideal medium for this project. We needed to convey rising seas, flood, drought, water-borne disease, political insecurity, investment, innovations, ecosystems, gender, migration and much more.

Ultimately, through our three main characters and the journey they take together, we wanted to show that water security issues are being felt by communities around the world. Despite vastly different lives and contexts, many will have similar experiences including being forced to leave their homes in search of security elsewhere (water, food, nutrition, income, safety).

We brought the IWMI brand into our illustrations, using a blue hue for the characters and rounded shapes throughout.