Dr. Peter Gleick

Dr. Peter Gleick is a leading scientist, innovator, and communicator on water and climate issues. He co-founded the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California in 1987, one of the most innovative, independent non-governmental research centers, creating and advancing solutions to the world’s most pressing water challenges. He is currently President-emeritus and Senior Fellow at the Institute. Dr. Gleick is a scientist trained at the intersection of hydrology, climatology, and policy. His work has redefined water from the realm of engineers to the world of social justice, sustainability, human rights, and integrated thinking. He developed one of the earliest analyses of the consequences of climate change for water resources, the earliest comprehensive work on water and conflict, and defined basic human needs for water and the human right to water – work that has been used by the United Nations and in human rights court cases. He pioneered the concept of the “soft path for water,” developed the idea of “peak water,” and has written about the history and background of the growing bottled water phenomenon.

Dr. Gleick is a MacArthur “genius” Fellow, an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In 2019 he was awarded the Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization. He received his B.S. from Yale University and an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Gleick serves on the boards of numerous journals and organizations, and is the author or editor of many scientific papers and twelve books, including the influential series The World’s Water, Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water, and A Twenty-First Century U.S. Water Policy. His most recent book, The Three Ages of Water: Prehistoric Past, Imperiled Present, and a Hope for the Future, was published in 2023 by PublicAffairs/Hachette.