In April 2015, Daegu City and North Gyeongsang Province will cohost the seventh World Water Forum.

Daegu has emerged as a venue for energy-related events since it hosted the World Energy Congress in 2013. As water-related issues are interwoven with the energy sector in many aspects, it is not surprising that the World Energy Council, the organizer of WEC, and the World Water Council, the organizer of WWF, have formed a strong relationship and chosen Daegu as the venue for their event.

Following a memorandum of understanding in March 2014, the World Energy Council and World Water Council have been exploring even more ways to cooperate on finding solutions to the challenges facing the water and energy nexus.

Against this backdrop, my speech last week at the International Water & Energy Conference, held in Lyon, France, as the pre-event to the seventh WWF next year, naturally focused on ways to promote cooperation between the water and energy sectors.

Water is an incredibly precious and powerful resource for human beings. Its intrinsic value is far beyond what we pay for it. New realities must be faced in order to achieve water sustainability.

Water’s scarcity and abundance impact the availability and price of goods, the profit of companies, and the vitality of economies.

Climate change realities coupled with urban growth, infrastructure demands and economic constraints create additional pressures on cities, businesses and water utilities.

These circumstances highlight the need for increased awareness about the value of water and its impact on business operations.

Yet, we need to take a look at the facts: The world population is growing at a rate of 80 million people a year. It is estimated that by 2030 the world will need 30 percent more water, 40 percent more energy and 50 percent more food.

That is not just to feed, sustain and supply the new arrivals, but also those currently living “off the grid” in developing countries as they rise out of poverty.

However, both the water and energy sectors suffer from the same predicament: the so-called “trilemma.” This is the threefold challenge of the insecurity of supply, the extreme poverty faced by disadvantaged communities and unsustainable development.

To begin with, there is no doubt that both sectors must deal with the grave challenge of the insecurity of supply arising from severe constraints on the accessibility of resources.

Second, disadvantaged communities around the globe face extreme poverty due to a lack of affordable resources, raising serious humanitarian issues. The insecurity of supply to such communities is happening to such a degree that ignoring this concern amounts to being immoral as well as inhumane.

Finally, there is the conundrum of sustainable development, for which we obviously need both enormous water and energy resources.

No one can deny that a global drive for development is being carried out in many developing economies at the expense of the environment. As such, to make development sustainable, we need to provide global arrangements for better methods to urge the responsible use of these resources.

Despite knowing that these challenges exist, neither the energy nor the water sectors have been able to satisfactorily address them in an accessible, affordable and accountable manner, even in the face of such ominous issues as global climate change.

In this context, I find it very encouraging that we have included the “science and technology process’’ as part of the next WWF to be held in Daegu next year. This track has been conceived for the purpose of sharing developments in the latest cutting-edge technologies.

We hope that this will be an opportunity for all those committed to solving this problem, including both scientists and business executives, to contribute their expertise.

Hopefully, the science and technology process will unveil breakthrough technologies that, in turn, will help support the achievements of the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations over the long term. At the 2015 WWF, we should not simply be discussing the water and energy crises. Rather, the WWF should be an opportunity to discover what we can do to solve these problems.

By Kim Young-hoon, Daesung Group chairman and World Energy Council cochair