Echo River Capital - March Recap

March connotes change. The spring equinox arrived on March 19th as the sun transits from the southern to northern hemisphere; winter subsides and spring is upon us. Brisk mornings turn to warm afternoons. Not coincidentally, March 22nd also marked World Water Day, directing the focus of the United Nations on this crucial resource with the timely theme of Water for Peace. March also opens up the spring conference season, and I attended two gatherings focused on sustainability from different perspectives.

At the Sustainable Water Investment Summit in early March, water and finance professionals gathered on the ocean bluff above the glorious Pacific Ocean in southern California. Old friends and colleagues from my TNC days, Clay Landry and Harry Seely of Westwater Research, hosted the conference alongside the Brownstein Hyatt law firm. Largely attended by capitalists, panels focused on projects and technologies with potential to improve supply reliability while also producing returns for water and land asset owners. Numerous private equity firms participated, demonstrating a shift as water and agriculture investing becomes more mainstream. Early-stage technology investors like Echo River Capital, Burnt Island Ventures and XPV Capital shared ideas. I presented on Echo River Capital’s investments in Nature-Based Solutions including Open Hydro and CREW Carbon, highlighting efforts to mitigate the 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions that originate from aquatic ecosystems and human management of water. Portfolio company AgMonitor was touted as a tool for institutional agriculture landowners to track, manage and report on energy use and emissions across thousands of acres. I left with an understanding that capital allocators are convinced of the increasing risks facing our water system , and an awareness that additional investment will be needed to support increasing demand for food production and drinking water. These trends were underscored by a new report, “Investing in a Water Secure Future” from Global Water Intelligence and XPV Capital. This report explained that as the atmosphere breaches the 1.5C threshold, global capital deployed for water security will need to rise from $3.8 trillion in 2024 to more than $12 trillion in 2034. As an allocator of impact capital, Echo River is positioned to support the technologies that will be needed to secure clean, reliable, and affordable water while reducing harmful emissions from the water cycle. While capital allocators were busy discussing how best to deploy assets for the water sector’s growing needs, a different group, the Bioneers, were preparing a more heart-centered approach to tackling similar problems.

Bioneers celebrated their 35th annual conference in Berkeley, California highlighting the critical role of social movements to address the ecological crisis, including water’s role. Over 100 indigenous tribes were represented among the 2,000+ attendees, a critical pillar in understanding the current state of the ecological crisis. The conversation focused on how both traditional ecological knowledge and new scientific discoveries play a role in society’s understanding of just how tenuous the human enterprise is on Earth. Humans were likened by one indigenous elder as “fleas on a dog” that could be shaken off with ease by The Boss -- Mother Nature – undergoing a climate-driven “purification.” Tribal elders explained how their ancestors have known for hundreds of years that the dominant culture of European democratic-capitalism is bent on extraction, destruction and greed imported from war-torn Europe from the 1300s to 1900s. These elders described how their communities have known “the purification (climate change) is coming” and that “one day, they will need people like us” when they come out of desecration to guide human civilization back to a communal relationship with all of nature’s beings. (These ideas are from keynote talks by Oren Lyons (Onondaga), Casey Camp-Horinek (Ponca), and Samuel Genshaw III (Yurok)). Erica Gies gave us pause to reflect on new ways of approaching our relationship with the Earth in her presentation on the Slow Water Movement. Genshaw spoke eloquently about Klamath River’s ongoing dam removal and how this was becoming a model for freeing rivers elsewhere, highlighting the role of dams undermining biodiversity and producing significant greenhouse gas emissions. The traditional ecological knowledge shared by these wise elders can be woven into modern projects and technologies to make communities more resilient, moving us closer to living in water harmony with nature – the ultimate mission of Echo River Capital.

These two conferences reflect the parallel efforts of progress towards sustainable water management – harnessing capital to develop nature-base solutions; and social movements powered by traditional ecological knowledge to unite in stewardship of our most precious source of life – water.

What I’m listening to: “We Are Water” meditation. In honor of this year’s World Water Day, we can all take a moment to find new ways to appreciate water. As native peoples remind us, water holds memory. Water is spiritual. Water is our relative. By listening to this just released 30-minute meditation on Insight Timer, get ready to embark on an interior journey to a new understanding of water’s role in our lives. "We Are Water" is a meditation journey in which we experience ourselves as a water being in a new embodied way. Helena Petersen, Jeremy Boxer, and Water Group 6 of the Le Ciel Foundation co-created this remarkable experience opening new pathways for people to feel connected to life’s fundamental element.

New Investment:  Open Hydro is a leader in modeling, reporting, and tracking emissions from reservoirs. Echo River participated in this $600,000 investment round to propel its efforts in decarbonizing freshwater systems. This funding round was led by Sustainable Ventures, a key player in climate tech investments. Find the press release here.

Portfolio News: Imagine H2O released their latest cohort that includes two Echo River portfolio companies: Open Hydro and CREW Carbon.  Congrats to both teams, and to Imagine H2O for recognizing the brilliance of these companies and their potential to mitigate emissions from aquatic ecosystems and wastewater, respectively. Open Hydro’s goal is to prevent over 1 gigaton of CO2e.

AgMonitor released its 2023 impact report showing reductions in over 1,200 metric tons of CO2.

Verdi Ag’s 1-minute video explainer supports agricultural producers seeking water and climate resilience

Waterplan and Kurita Water Industries of Japan forge strategic alliance

Reath is hiring a UK-based sales leader. Pass it on!

What I’m reading:

Mexico City is running out of water (LA Times)=

Bengalaru’s mismanagement is leading 15 million people into water scarcity

(New York Times)

New study projects $12.6 trillion capital needs towards water security if global temperatures exceed 1.5C.  (Global Water Intel & XPV)

What I’m watching:

Dune 2 on IMAX was the ultimate film going experience and satisfied my curiosity about this next chapter of how the desert dwellers on Arakais would try to rise up against those seeking to mine and export “spice.”  Some see this as an allegory of western exploitation of oil in the Middle East. I prefer to view Dune as an exploration of how communities survive and thrive in an age of water scarcity, from the use of evaporator suits to the recapturing of water during a burial process.

"3 Body Problem" is a new SciFi series on Netflix by the same creators of Game of Thrones based on the book series by Liu Cixin. In a weirdly similar imagining to the Dune dehydration process, virtual lives can be preserved and re-animated through desiccation and re-hydration.

What’s Happening in April:

Elemental Interactive in San Francisco:  Several portfolio companies will be in town, including Emily from Reath and Mansi from Digital Paani.

Imagine H2O is hosting its Startup Summit welcoming the next batch of 10 startups in this year’s cohort including Open Hydro and CREW Carbon.

Global Water Intelligence is hosting its Global Water Summit 2024 in London April 15-17.

San Francisco Climate Week is featuring portco Waterplan

Thanks for reading and for your daily efforts shifting water into closer harmony with nature.