Our risk environment is growing. As we warm the planet we’re loading up the atmosphere with water and disrupting climate systems. Are we ready to respond, however? Signs are we’re probably not, at least on current evidence. Yet solutions can lie in unexpected places, and we need to learn from them – fast – to ensure all our water futures are more secure. Alan Nicol walks us through some answers from recent research experience in Ethiopia where people are taking matters in hand as citizen scientists. Dr Alan Nicol is a development researcher with three decades of experience working in the water policy space across Asia, Africa and the MENA region. He is a passionate advocate of community-led development and the ways in which individuals working collectively can change their own micro-worlds and the wider world around us all. He believes that currently the global commons faces an unprecedented series of risks and threats responding to which requires all of us to own the problem and support collective action approaches. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx