Texas A&M professor Rabi Mohtar will present his keynote address at Watershed, a conference held in Vatican City intended to start a global conversation about the importance of water to the future.             
Pope Francis will kick off the conference with his General Audience Wednesday and Mohtar will address the 400 international thought leaders expected to be in attendance at 7:30 a.m. CST.                  

Mohtar said he views Watershed and its unique venue as an opportunity to promote understanding of a global issue on a global stage.                  
“I have been involved in water resources management and raising awareness towards water issues for many years,” Mohtar said. “Vatican City, Rome is a unique platform to continue raising awareness for the importance of water to world economies and sustainability of natural resources. I appreciate the Pope’s humanitarian outreach and appreciate his speaking out on the subject of the global water crisis.”                  
The key thing Mohtar said he hopes his audience will take away from his speech is that action must be taken now to reach a sustainable future.       
“Business as usual will not get us toward meeting the future challenges,” Mohtar said. “There is an increasing demand on water from various sectors including industry, agriculture and human needs. This is expected to create a 40 percent future water gap if nothing is done. We need to reduce water dependency and increase synergies among world primary resources so we have enough water to sustain our living.”                   
Watershed will be streamed live from the Vatican and can be viewed at www.facebook.com/valuesofwater. Mohtar’s speech is scheduled to start at 7:30 a.m CST.