Water takes centre stage on this World Food Day, whose theme is ‘Water is life, water is food. Leave no one behind.’ The 2023 campaign, led by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, underscores the pivotal role water plays in securing our food supply. At the recent FAO Rome Water Dialogue, attended by various institutions, delegates, and speakers from around the world, there was a unanimous agreement that this is truly the year of water.

The UN Water Conference held in New York this March, the first of its kind in half a century, marked a turning point in recognising water as a critical issue deserving our immediate attention. From the sessions that I have attended in Rome, it’s become clear that addressing water issues within the confines of the water sector is inadequate. Water knows no boundaries, and is a cross-cutting issue affecting many, if not all, sectors. Food production is indeed one of the sectors most affected by water, and by climate change. A staggering 72% of global freshwater withdrawals are attributed to agriculture, with 16% allocated to municipalities for households and services, and 12% used by industries.

FAO Director-General QU Dongyu emphasised the interconnectedness of water, energy, and food as crucial themes leading up to COP 28 later this year in Dubai. Water emerges as a key connector to address these pressing challenges. Climate change, as highlighted by the speakers, has severely disrupted the water cycle, resulting in a surge of extreme weather events, many of which are witnessed around the world, from the recent floods in India to New York. It is often farming and agriculture that bear the most profound impact from extreme water events.

While there are plenty of solutions nowadays, they often remain fragmented and sector-specific. Innovative projects and approaches are emerging to bridge this gap. One of the most interesting takeaways from the Rome Water Dialogue was the ecosystem-based approach, which is a strategy for integrated water management of land, water, and more. Coupled with Nature-based Solutions (NbS), the ecosystem-based approach can be a lifesaver for the benefit of people and nature. Institutions are now calling on governments to design science- and evidence-based policies that harness data and innovation and coordinate across sectors to plan and manage water better. The International Water Association (IWA) and the Nature Conservancy (TNC), for example, have a Memorandum of Understanding to work on NbS mainstreaming in water infrastructure, planning, spending and management among utilities and regulators worldwide. The importance of regulation and governance was also widely discussed and is gaining momentum worldwide as a means to achieve the SDGs. IWA will be hosting the 8^th International Water Regulators Forum in Kigali this December, with the purpose of contextualising water and sanitation regulation in different settings.

Water, energy, and food are inextricably linked, and for policies to be successful, it’s important that they manage often competing interests without compromising the health of our ecosystems. A very useful tool for governments and policymakers to take concrete action is through the National Water Roadmaps. The UN is closely working with governments and communities to build country-owned and country-led National Water Roadmaps to strengthen intersectoral coordination of water at the national level. It also builds the datasets and technology they need to make well-informed decisions.

Another key aspect that was touched on is the integration of water within the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). For example, NGOs and other actors are now implementing measures to empower farmers and indigenous peoples to become agents of water management and be equipped with the right tools to do so sustainably while protecting biodiversity. Managing water starts by selecting and using the right biodiversity in production systems.

Water is not only a resource. Water is food and life itself. It supports all life forms on the planet and therefore it’s crucial to protect and preserve water for a thriving planet. We all need to stop taking water for granted. Making informed decisions about what we consume, wasting less water and food, and preventing pollution are easy things that all of us can do to contribute to positive #WaterAction for a brighter future for food, people, and the planet.

Nature-based Solutions, climate resilience and the circular economy of water are all key topics that will be discussed at the upcoming IWA Water and Development Congress & Exhibition in Kigali, Rwanda, on 10-14 December. Join this crucial gathering of water and development experts who will convene to find relevant solutions tailored for low- and middle-income countries. Registration is open.

Despite water covering 70% of the Earth’s surface, water is a lot less abundant than it seems, especially in places like Sub-Saharan Africa. Poverty, compounded with rapid population growth and rural-urban migration, have rendered Sub-Saharan Africa the world’s poorest and least developed region. Water scarcity is predicted to reach dangerously high levels by 2025. That is only four years from now – urgent action is required to turn the tide in Africa’s favour.

As Africa’s premier financing institution, the African Development Bank (AfDB) is working closely with the United Nations and a range of other partners to achieve SDG 6 by sustaining water resources, delivering services, and building resilience.

According to the World Economic Forum, water crises are one of the top five global risks. Around two thirds of the world’s population currently live without sufficient access to fresh water for at least one month of the year. Population growth, combined with overburdened water infrastructure systems, weak governance, and low investments further increase water stress in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Water-related risks have significant impacts on the environment, production, and development. As economies develop, water consumption patterns shift and overall demand rises to meet the needs of food production, thirsty industries, thermal power plants and households. Improving the efficiency of water use in agriculture is inextricably linked to many SDGs, such as those related to zero hunger, availability and access to water, climate action, and ecosystem services. Moreover, climate risks such as floods could displace up to 30 million people living in major cities in low-elevation coastal zones like Lagos, Banjul, Abidjan, and Alexandria. About two million people could potentially be flooded in the 2020s. As sea levels rise, so too does the risk that hard-won development goals could be washed away.

This is one of the reasons why the AfDB joined forces with former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to establish the Global Center for Adaptation in Africa. On 6 April this year, more than 30 leaders from Africa and around the world convened to discuss how to accelerate climate change adaptation in Africa. Together, we launched the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program.

We are working hard to establish a facility to implement this landmark program. It will mobilize $12.5 billion on top of the $12.5 billion that the AfDB has already committed from a range of very innovative sources. These funds will be used to speed up climate change adaptation through digital climate smart technologies for agriculture, an infrastructure resilience accelerator, youth entrepreneurship and job creation in climate adaptation and resilience component, and an innovative financial initiative component.

The AfDB will quadruple its climate financing to reach $25 billion by 2025, averaging about $4 billion a year by promoting climate-informed design and detailed risk and vulnerability assessments of its investments. In 2020, despite the challenges posed by Covid-19, which affected lending operations, the Bank channelled a total of $2 billion as climate finance across different sectors. Since 2010, the AfDB has invested an estimated $6.2 billion in water supply and sanitation services delivery. Our active water sector portfolio stood at $4.3 billion at the end of 2020. It was made up of 100 national projects implemented in 40 countries, and six multinational projects.

Africa can easily become a vibrant ‘blue economy’. 38 African countries are coastal,  and 70% of them have exclusive economic zones in the sea that are largely untapped. Africa’s blue economy is a resource which remains largely underexploited but has enormous potential to boost inclusive and sustainable development. More than 12 million people are employed in fisheries alone — the largest of the African blue economy sectors, providing food security and nutrition for over 200 million Africans and generating 1.26% of Africa’s GDP. However, the blue economy faces challenges deriving from weak policy and regulatory frameworks and unsustainable human activities, such as overfishing, pollution and coastal erosion. These compromise health, biodiversity and food security.

Coastal erosion in West Africa is estimated to put an average of 500,000 people at risk annually, with economic losses amounting to 2.3% of GDP in 2013 in Togo alone. If current fisheries management practices are not reformed, marine fish catches in West African coastal states are projected to possibly drop by half by the year 2050.

In the western Indian Ocean, between 1950 and 2009, sea temperatures increased by 0.60 degrees Celsius, triggering climate-related disasters. The economic costs of the 1998 coral bleaching event to Tanzania’s and Kenya’s tourism sectors were estimated at up to $2.2 million in Zanzibar and up to $15.09 million in Mombasa, respectively.

The AfDB encourages African countries to respond proactively to the prospect of water stress by adopting new ways of managing water, strengthening water governance, and recognizing the finite value of limited natural resources.

But it is also time for developed countries to do their bit, and to make available the $100 billion per year in climate finance promised to developing countries at COP 21, and to ensure at least half of this goes to climate adaptation. Currently, only 5% of climate finance goes to resilience, with just 3% going to water. This must change before it is too late.

Delays in climate finance and failure to deliver on pledges are not just limiting climate action. They make for a missed opportunity to be part of a trillion-dollar challenge that will shape the future not just of the African continent but of the global economy. Even a drop in the ocean can make a wave of change. Let’s combine our efforts and ensure the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.

This blog is part of Dr Adesina’s speech at the digital World Water Congress, click here to watch his keynote. 

The Water Industry is set to embrace several changes in the coming years due to rapid urbanisation, severe climate changes, rising customer demands and emerging digital technologies. These changes will present businesses with a complex set of challenges that could be worth addressing in order to stay competitive within the industry.

Can such challenges be turned into opportunities that benefit businesses, customers and the environment? We think yes. We highlight five scenarios and opportunities likely to have an impact on the Water Industry in the next decade.

1. Acting on the mounting effects of extreme weather events

Most effects of climate change are related to water in one way or another. Changes in climate affect agricultural production, contribute to sea level rise, trigger wildfires, and bring about drought and flood events. For example, with more than half of the world’s population living within 200 km of the coast by 2050, sea level rise and extreme storm surges will affect coastal communities to a large extent. Hard engineering structures such as seawalls, dikes and levees can be built to protect coastal communities against severe future flooding, but the use of sophisticated water modelling technologies can help determine current vulnerabilities and suggest effective solutions to better address these coastal challenges.

2. Protecting agricultural production

According to the UN, the world’s population is expected to reach more than nine billion people in 2050. To make sure there is enough food for everyone, it is estimated that global food production needs to be increased by 70%. This requires more arable land for crop production, with more extensive and efficient irrigation. All of this will challenge water resources and ecosystems. In order to be sustainable, efficient irrigation management and techniques such as erosion risk management, flood warning systems and precision farming systems can be used to optimise agricultural production using the least amount of water.

3. Reusing wastewater to support a circular economy

Traditional investment, planning, design and operation are linear in nature. Water is extracted from the source, checked for quality, used as intended and then treated and discharged in a receiving water body. However, wastewater and its discharged sludge contains a great number of valuable resources such as nitrogen, phosphorus, energy and other nutrients that can be recovered and reused in a circular economy to preserve threatened resources. By transitioning from a linear model to a more circular one, focus is placed on reducing water consumption and to achieve the overall objective of resource efficiency. Achieving this objective will require businesses to rethink traditional wastewater treatment models.

4. A customer-led revolution

Today, consumers are more than ever empowered by digital technology. As a result, they continuously expect more personalised products and services to optimise their work, improve their way of life and help them reach their goals. To meet these expectations, businesses must deal with the reality of an empowered customer. In this customer-led landscape, the Water Industry is continuously challenged to examine how to co-create solutions with customers. When this is achieved, there will be good opportunities for establishing long-term customer relationships while solving challenges within the water domain.

5. Smart and intelligent network technologies

Smart water network solutions improve the reliability of physical water infrastructure by collecting and analysing data more efficiently. The use of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and data analytics not only help to better manage infrastructure and reduce non-revenue water losses, but also support important changes to the ways in which water utilities and companies operate. Smart end-to-end water networks offer businesses the opportunity to improve productivity and efficiency while enhancing customer service.

DHI continuously solves water related issues by turning challenges into opportunities and solutions.

Glyphosate application in Sri Lankan agricultural Lands: do we circumvent Chronic Kidney Disease of unknown etiology?

Chronic kidney disease of unknown etiology (CKDu) has been a critical health concern, particularly in the North Central Province of Sri Lanka for two decades. Glyphosate [N-(phosphonomethyl)glycine] was the widely used herbicide in Sri Lanka until banned in 2015 for agricultural practices and is underpinned to be a triggering agent for CKDu. Glyphosate is commercially available as Roundup® in Sri Lanka. In comparison to other herbicides applied in agricultural practices in Sri Lanka, Roundup® was popular due to its high efficiency and effectiveness in weed control and low toxicity to non-target organisms. Ingestion of water contaminated with glyphosate and glyphosate-metal complexes formed subsequently with calcium and magnesium ions present in hard water is implicated to be instigating CKDu. The presence of glyphosate in Sri Lankan agricultural soils and potable waters in the CKDu prevalent areas has been still debating among the scientific community. Since there had been no evidence to showcase the glyphosate levels present in different matrices of the environment (soil and water), a comprehensive study was undertaken by the University of Moratuwa to investigate the presence and persistence of glyphosate in the CKDu prevalent areas.

The mysterious new form of chronic kidney disease strikes mainly poor, agricultural areas in the tropics. It takes its heaviest toll in Central America, but it has now been reported in other regions. G. GRULLÓN/SCIENCE

It is the common practice that Roundup® is applied to the agricultural lands at the final stage of the dry season with the expectation of imminent rainfall events at the onset of cultivation season. In the CKDu prevalent areas, ground or surface water contains elevated hardness levels (more than 250 mg/L as CaCO₃) and is often used to prepare the Roundup® solution. Use of water with elevated levels of Ca²⁺ and Mg²⁺ ions results in the formation of complexes of glyphosate with Ca²⁺ and Mg²⁺ ions. The formation of glyphosate-metal complexes decreases the ability of glyphosate to kill weeds, thus declines the activity and effectiveness of Roundup^® in the field. Therefore, farmers tend to use higher doses of Roundup® mixed with hard water than what is required to control weeds to the expected levels. Consequently, in regions where there exists hard water, there is a propensity for higher levels of glyphosate to be present in the agricultural fields. The typical half-life of glyphosate (dissolved in freshwater devoid of high hardness levels) in soil and surface water is in the ranges of 2-215 and 2-91 days, respectively. Nevertheless, the half-life of glyphosate was reported to have increased even up to several years due to the substantial stability of glyphosate-metal complexes formed in hard water, making it less bioavailable for degradation. Therefore, the use of hard water in dissolving and preparing glyphosate solutions possesses a profound risk of higher persistence of glyphosate in soil and water.

Agricultural land: at the end of a cropping cycle and before glyphosate application for land preparation for the next cropping season

Glyphosate is often applied to wild vegetation during which a certain fraction comes into direct contact with the underneath soil matrix in the form of a thin mist. Moreover, a similar contribution of glyphosate to the soil could be expected with the rainfall, as water drifting from the leaves and vegetative parts containing glyphosate and dead plant materials. The fate of glyphosate in the soil is attributed to mineralization, microbial degradation, retention as it is, and leaching to water. In general, glyphosate is degraded via soil microbial mechanisms into its major metabolite; aminomethyl phosphonic acid (AMPA) and the typical half-life of AMPA in soil and water are in the ranges of 60-240 and 2-91 days, respectively.

Part of an agricultural land without weed control	Same part of the land after application of glyphosate: six months after glyphosate application

Field studies carried out disclosed that glyphosate (270-690 µg/kg) and AMPA (2-8 µg/kg) were present in agricultural soils in the CKDu prevalent areas. Presence of high valence cations such as Fe³⁺ and Al³⁺ in topsoil resulted in the formation of glyphosate-metal complexes; thus strong retention of glyphosate in high levels was observed in the topsoil of agricultural fields. Lower levels of AMPA (two orders of magnitude) than the corresponding glyphosate levels in topsoil could be attributed to the factors such as the strong adsorption of glyphosate to the soil making it less bioavailable and low microbial activity in soil because of prolonged exposure to herbicides that are toxic to microbial growth. The glyphosate levels of surface water were between 28 to 45 µg/L; no AMPA was detected. Trace levels of glyphosate (1–4 µg/L, 10-fold lower than those of surface waters) and AMPA (2–11µg/L) were detected in groundwater.

Glyphosate has a water solubility of 11.6 g/L and also strong affinity to be adsorbed to the soil particles (log K_oc = 4.34 and K_d=61 g/cm³). Therefore, glyphosate applied at the field has less potential to get dissolved and remain in the water but has a greater affinity and potential to be adsorbed to the soil matrix and retain in the solid phase. Evidence from field studies shows that glyphosate was present in remarkably high levels in agricultural soils and trace levels in potable water in the CKDu prevalent agricultural areas in Sri Lanka. Such high levels of glyphosate retained in the soil (even after ten years from the last field application of glyphosate) have the potential to leach out from the topsoil of the agricultural lands subsequent to single and multiple rainfall events and also followed by application of phosphate-rich fertilizers. In other words, glyphosate retained in the agricultural soil remains for many years (even more than ten years). However, the fate of such glyphosate retained in the topsoil remains a mystery, as no long term studies are conducted. The degree to which such glyphosate be mobilized from soil to water and the influencing factors triggering glyphosate mobilization would, therefore, be critical aspects to be investigated to circumvent CKDu being widespread in the Sri Lankan agricultural areas.

For more information, please contact Dr. Buddhika Gunawardana, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka on buddhikag@uom.lk or meet her at the IWA Water and Development Congress & Exhibition, 1-5 December 2019, Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Leaving No One Behind

This year, the UN’s World Water Day on 22 March 2019 theme is “Leaving no one behind”, considering groups whose access to water and sanitation may be overlooked and working to break down barriers to truly achieve “water for all”.

What is World Water Day ?

Sustainable Development Goal 6 says it clearly: water for all by 2030. By definition, this means leaving no one behind. But today, billions of people are still living without safe water – their households, schools, workplaces, farms and factories struggling to survive and thrive. Marginalised groups – women, children, refugees, indigenous peoples, disabled people and many others – are often overlooked, and sometimes face discrimination, as they try to access and manage the safe water they need.

This World Water Day, 22 March 2019, is about tackling the water crisis by addressing the reasons why so many people are being left behind. IWA members’ daily job is to fight this life threatening situation that costs so many people’s lives and hinders economies and environment to flourish.

IWA Photo Whirl – our IWA membership moves every moment, every second around to work on the SDG6 from different perspectives, sectors, cross-cutting edges and to tackle the challenges and provide solutions. The photo whirl highlights their work and shows the various ways in which water professionals ensure that no one is left behind.

The UN reports that the world is currently not on track to meet Sustainable Development Goal 6 by 2030. What’s your assessment?

The challenge with SDG 6 is that it is not a direct continuation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs focused very much on improving access to water, but SDG 6 is fundamentally different and far more ambitious, because it also looks at the sustainability, quality, and allocation of water, the implications of the way in which we manage water, and the participatory aspects of the way in which water management decisions are made. A straight line continuation of the efforts that were made for the MDGs will not necessarily get us to the SDGs, so we will need to revisit some of the basic assumptions that we have been using about water management if we want to meet both the water services goals and the broader goals around water resources management.

 We need to change the way we manage the economic signals around water to ensure it is used sustainably, to safeguard its quality, to promote its efficiency and productivity, and to allocate it to its best uses.

What approaches or lines of action can change course to get SDG 6 back on track?

We have traditionally not treated water as the scarce resource it is, so we need to change the way we manage the economic signals around water to ensure it is used sustainably, to safeguard its quality, to promote its efficiency and productivity, and to allocate it to its best uses. We also need to look differently at our water engineering paradigm; to consider nature based solutions as well as built infrastructure, but most importantly, we need to move away from a ‘single use’ engineering approach to much more circular water systems.  Finally, we need to revisit our water management paradigms. In the context of unpredictable hydrology and climate change and the restrictions that scarcity is beginning to demonstrate, multi-purpose water use planning has to be much more common, adaptive and flexible if we really want to deliver efficiency and equity, as the SDGs are targeting.

Are there already examples of these new ways of thinking that re-examine the economics, engineering and water management paradigms?

In terms of the water economics paradigm, there is a range of incentives. Reflecting the true value of water through pricing is one, but it is not socially acceptable everywhere. There are charges on effluent that can help to incentivise the sustainability of water withdrawals as well as to improve the quality of the water that is returned back to the environment. There are water conservation incentives, as well as water markets that allow the movement of water between different users on a voluntary basis to more socially productive or highly valued uses. Because cultural norms, economic conditions and regulatory systems vary by country and even among states and smaller jurisdictions, the way water markets operate on the ground is very different, even though the core water conservation purpose is the same. In the Murray-Darling Basin of Australia, for example, each season farmers holding water entitlements (a permanent right to take/use/extract a volume of water that is determined based on overall water availability) decide whether or not it will be more profitable to grow crops with their allocated water, or sell some water and reduce crop production.

In terms of engineering, there are very exciting examples of integrating natural capital into urban planning, extraordinary circular economy examples in various mega-cities, such as rainwater capture with permeable surfaces and drainage systems, as well as the use of aquifers that underlie cities and that can be recharged with treated wastewater. We are seeing examples of water reuse at different prices for different uses, so that water can be produced from treated wastewater or desalination.

In terms of the water management paradigm, there are highly functioning river basin organisations, laws and treaties, that recognise that the uncertainty of water requires flexibility in terms of water allocations; differentiated drought pricing policies that would adapt to uncertain hydrological extremes, and a general recognition that the adaptive management of water needs to be built into the institutions, the water rights regimes and the water allocation regimes that we have, because we are more often facing scenarios that fall well beyond what has historically been considered the norm.

In some corners, there’s this strong notion that nature based solutions cannot respond to the pace at which many developing countries are sprawling and the water challenges that come with it. For example, the consideration of the extensive land requirements of wetlands and other nature-based solutions. What’s your view?   

One of the most interesting aspects of thinking through that question is that there is an assumption that you have a direct trade-off between keeping land in its natural state, as natural capital, and developing the value of land. When rapidly developing cities, that may encompass farmland or wetlands, begin to urbanise that land, draining wetlands and building over them, there is not much recognition of the value that is being lost when those natural capital assets are being undermined.  And the truth is that we know that green, liveable cities are highly desirable. You find better air quality, higher property values, and often lower crime rates and lower incidence of mental illness in areas with water and green spaces nearby. Green spaces are also very effective in terms of floods control and recharge of aquifers to avoid landslides.

The notion that nature-based solutions only work where extensive land is available is challenged by several experiences around the world. In the Netherlands, one of the most densely built countries in the world, water resilience goes hand in hand with urban planning, which values this type of infrastructure not just for the added resilience but also for their potential to improve well-being. The Eendragtspolder in Rotterdam is a reservoir for floodwater, but also a popular retreat for its bike paths and water sports. In Singapore, where high-density urban development is the norm, the Active Beautiful Clean waters program developed by the Public Utilities Board provides reference to developers on how to implement nature-based infrastructure and has contributed to a greening of public and private spaces as well as increased resilience to urban flooding. Finally, let’s not forget that many nature-based solutions such as green roofs and green-blue walls have little or no land requirement and can provide significant water resilience in cities.

 In many of the most developed urban spaces investments are being made to add green spaces that were originally removed. 

This whole idea of affordability of sustaining natural capital or natural ecosystems within urban spaces is something that needs to be revisited. In many of the most developed urban spaces investments are being made to add green spaces that were originally removed. The idea is for developing countries that are in the process of expanding their urban areas to try to mindfully integrate natural spaces in a rational way into their urban planning, and essentially leapfrog many of the cities who are finding that they need to re-invest in green spaces to make their cities more liveable.

You are currently living in Colombo, Sri Lanka. How is the city becoming more adaptive and liveable?

Colombo is a wetland city, and government authorities here are doing a pioneering job in trying to consciously and fully integrate wetlands directly into ‘green-grey’ style urban expansion and planning. The wetlands in Colombo significantly help control floods, supply food sources such as rice, vegetables and fish, and sustain a rich ecosystem in particular for bird life. Colombo has in fact applied Wetland City Accreditation from the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, which is the intergovernmental treaty that provides the framework for national action and international cooperation on wetlands.

The International Water Management Institute has dedicated to applied research on the safe recovery of water, nutrients and energy from domestic and industrial waste streams. Can you share some of the most representative initiatives and business models emerging from these practices to make wealth from waste?

IWMI has been working for 15 years now mainly to refine this concept of resource reuse and recovery. The waste streams that we see growing are full of resources – both wastewater and municipal waste carry with them tremendous assets that are often released into the environment untreated. If properly treated, however, these waste streams contain water, nutrients and energy that can be safely recovered and returned into productive use. Some of the business models that we have been looking at is a combination of composting municipal waste and faecal sludge, which is particularly important for rapidly urbanising peri-urban areas, where you do not have a matured connected sanitation system, but sludge needs to be removed from residential areas. This combination of composting sludge and food waste can be undertaken in a way that safely produces fertiliser pellets that can capture the nutrients that are inherent in these waste streams and return them to productive uses in agriculture. Here in Sri Lanka we are working with plantation owners of rubber, where these sort of fertilisers can help return carbon to the delicate tropical soils as part of a process that removes hazards from the environment.

There are a lot of business models depending on what resource you need to recover, whether it is biogas, fertilisers or the treatment of wastewater for use in manufacturing or gardens, and different business models that are appropriate for different sewage systems, levels of population and land requirements.

What incentives are needed to help upscale innovations in water reuse?

I think outscaling may be as important as upscaling, as many of the lessons that we are learning come from the most decentralised, modular and scalable systems. There are many economic tools to encourage waste management, economic and regulatory incentives that will compel residents of urban areas to manage their trash and have their waste and sewage collected, and other mechanisms can be created by subsidizing and encouraging adoption of technologies. There are also tremendous opportunities for public-private partnerships (PPP) because these waste streams do become income streams, and if PPP can be established where the creation of the enterprise is made easy and possibly incentivised by the government, they can be financially self-sustainable, and bring a social advantage. Part of the real challenge, however, relates much more to behaviour around perceptions. Waste streams are two sides of the same coin – they are hazardous, and that is why we need to take responsibility for them; but they are also incredibly valuable, if we manage them mindfully and safely, and recover those resources for returning them to productive use.

 Waste streams are two sides of the same coin – they are hazardous, and that is why we need to take responsibility for them; but they are also incredibly valuable, if we manage them mindfully and safely, and recover those resources for returning them to productive use.

Irrigation efficiency is key to mitigate water scarcity, yet scientific evidence suggests that efficiency improvements alone do not deliver the presumed benefit of increased water availability. What type of tools and analysis can support real water savings in agriculture?

IWMI has been working on ‘water accounting’, which looks at the basin wide scale of water fluxes and flows, and the different uses that water is put to across a landscape or basin scale that can account for changes in hydrology, reflux to agriculture, transpiration across different landscapes, or to simply understand how much water there is, what is been used for, and eventually its quality. That level of understanding of the hydrologic systems is what we ideally would have in order to manage water in a truly integrated life-cycle, because any user within a basin system can withdraw water, use it, and some share of it will move back into the system. There will necessarily be trade-offs between users as basins increasingly become closed (that is, a system in which all water is put to some use or another), so really understanding those trade-offs require systems of modelling, accounting, and analytics that are still being developed today. The whole concept of sustainable water use, which is called for in the SDGs, is one in which we need information to assess and understand what the full resource envelope is within each system, so that all systems can interact. Only then can we know if we are managing it sustainably.

What are the next generation jobs in water and sanitation?

The water sector is traditionally considered the purview of engineers, but I think there are going to be important opportunities for data and information professionals to really engage in the way we develop and deliver water services by keeping track of the availability and quality of water. We will want to invest more on behavioural sciences with regards to water management, because these social behaviours will really shape our water future. Understanding people’s perceptions of the value of water, the hazards of dirty water, the acceptability of recycled water will be essential as scarcity causes many of the trade-offs between water users and externalities that are created from one set of users to a part of the society. Water economists will also become an important part of the workforce,  to manage, measure and communicate the trade-offs in the water management decisions that we make. Finally, systems science and ecology are areas that will need to be integrated much more to account for the impact on ecosystems.

 Due to rising uncertainty and scarcity, you can no longer separate the communities of practice between those who deliver water services and those who manage water resources

What is it that you are most excited about to participate at the IWA World Water Congress & Exhibition?

The reason that I’m excited to participate in this conference is because I come from the water resources world and I see that the distance between water resources and water services is something that has finally begun to disappear. Due to rising uncertainty and scarcity, you can no longer separate the communities of practice between those who deliver water services and those who manage water resources; the whole urban water cycle needs to be considered if services are to be sustainably and viably delivered, and if the resource itself is to be managed sustainably and for its best uses. To my mind, the big issue for our global community of practice is how to better integrate water resources management with water services delivery, and to use the technologies and the information systems that are increasingly available in the service of that goal.

The Internet of Things (IoT) technologies like data analytics, cloud computing, augmented intelligence and blockchain give us new capabilities to analyse, automate, correct in real time, predict and minimise risks. They have the power to help water and wastewater utilities address many of the challenges they face, including extending the life of aging assets, reducing leakages, attacks or other abnormalities in the distribution network, improving water quality monitoring, service levels and reliability of supply, promoting water conservation, or increasing revenue through operational efficiencies. While there is an increase of digital adoption in water, the sector still lags behind other industries in integrating new, smart technologies into the whole water ecosystem. We asked Rebekah Eggers, IBM’s WW IoT for Energy, Environment, & Utilities Business, and keynote speaker at the IWA World Water Congress & Exhibition 2018, what ‘going digital’ / ‘digitalisation’ really means for the sector, how to overcome key barriers to successfully digitise water, and ultimately, who can reap the benefits of this technological revolution.

The digitalisation of water is no longer optional, what will be the major impacts on water utilities?

New technologies have the potential to deliver significant outcomes in the water sector. As technology capabilities advance, so does our ability to collect information from remote devices and correlate that information across diverse systems to help us achieve near-real time situational awareness, or leverage augmented intelligence to interpret an array of structured and increasingly unstructured, text based or sensory data.  Cognitive analytics lies at the heart of the ability to derive actionable value from these data and execute or automate the next best action based on predictive and prescriptive data science. It seems that these technological advancements will have a major impact on utilities, but that’s the easy part.

Utilities can be proud of the reliable services they have been providing for over one hundred years, but not much has changed over time in terms of operational tactics. The real impact of digitisation is tying new technologies to reimagine business processes and facilitate their adoption across the enterprise.  A recent IBM Institute for Business Value Study titled, “Who’s leading the cognitive pack in digital operations?”, highlighted the fact that even in leading organisations where core operating functions are well on their way to reinvention, both strategy and execution is lags.  Further companies are struggling to keep up with the talent demands resulting from ‘digitisation.’   Specifically, there are three key recommendations.  First, secure executive buy-in, devise a digital strategy with action plan and stick to it!  Second, build the technological foundation by ensuring you have the basics in place to support future growth.  And third, focus on business imperatives and communicate quick wins and pay-offs to tie the investment in digital to outcomes that support the strategy you outlined with leadership in the first step. This will position us to drive the digital agenda in water rather than having it imposed on our utilities.

  The real impact of digitalisation on the water sector is the wholesale reimagining of business models, enabled by today’s advanced technology

Are there lessons we can learn from other sectors?

Private sector infrastructure delivery is a promising space to examine for best practices and lessons learned around optimal project delivery models.  From a digitisation perspective, the energy sector is a great proxy. Over 10 years ago, they began with smart meter deployment. Today, over 50% of the US and European households are “smart”. Those electric and gas utilities started raising the question ‘how do you really obtain the value of being ‘smart’?’ Water utilities can benefit from the lessons learned and the established best practices all the way from deployment of those smart devices to benefits realisation. There’s also the potential for leapfrogging, since technology has evolved, the prices for smart devices have decreased, and the functionality has increased.

Another great space to explore are areas where network infrastructures have already been deployed by municipalities or the electric and gas utilities, this is now a place where water utilities have the potential to elaborate the project and pay back on investments that have already been made in the region by the people who are the constituents adopting those services in the areas.

Private sector water utilities, such as Thames Water and members of the Intelligent Water Network in Australia, are already leaders in the digital space and active in sharing their successes leveraging connected devices, AoT, and machine learning.  This digital transformation powered re-imagination of our sector will enable a broad spectrum of outcomes from improved efficiencies to optimised asset management across providers and maybe even new business models such as consolidated multi-utility retail operations.

What will be the big digital water trends over the next decade?

Digital water is really about setting the foundation for utilities to begin applying data science and augmented intelligence techniques to business problems, so this virtual representation of the water system will enable situational awareness or near-real time flow and quality monitoring, which has great potential to solve many of the challenges faced by the industry. We’ve seen improvements in event- response times by 20%, increases in work reutilisation by 25%, 15% reductions in energy use across the network and other benefits across the value chain, specifically in the area of asset management. Most utilities today have an EAM (Enterprise Asset Management) or CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) in place that helps them with network execution. Over the next decade or so, I foresee that all utilities will take that next step to moving from time-based to condition-based maintenance, so by adopting the ability to understand the effective age of their assets and then forecasting potential failures, utilities will be able to identify and schedule massive improvements in life extension maintenance activities as well as strategically plan for their replacement in their long-term asset plan. There’s probably a third area of progress enabled by cognitive or augmented technologies. We’re already able to use video imaging and pattern recognition to review and analyse images. If we consider the area of asset management, the ability to process images captured during a normal inspection process enables speedy identification of anomalies and defects by matching patterns to images that were previously analysed and classified. That will allow us to identify hundreds or thousands of defect models and create those using cognitive technologies that have been trained by human expertise. I’m really excited about that in the application to leak detection, water quality management and asset assessment.

  We are in a far better position to understand conservation requirements in times of drought thanks to accurate groundwater resource modelling or conservation habits.

Green innovation around agriculture is an emerging area in which the IoT is making huge progress by digitising the supply chain for the production of coffee beans, for example. Farmers are getting paid appropriate prices now for their products whereas before, none of the processes was being tracked properly. From a water-stand point too, we can use weather data to predict the amount of rain that is going to come onto the land, so we can help farmers better manage the amount of harmful chemicals that they put into the soil and then ultimately run off into our drinking water sources, so I think that’s an incredible application. At the same time, we can use technologies to help those farmers come to the market with prospective buyers, because we can notify the latter which sort of crops are coming to market in advance. This example also reveals that building trust is a critical factor in spreading adoption of technology – farmers need to trust the data that we’re bringing to them and see the benefits that they can reap on leveraging this or that technology or system.

Finally, I must call out the discipline of resiliency or disaster preparedness which is on the rise in terms of critical focus.  We live in a time of increasingly frequent and severe floods and droughts, and as such water utilities and cities are looking for ways to become more resilient.  Losses due to disasters from natural and man-made hazards including floods, storms and the impacts of climate change are mounting and on average cost governments over $300 billion USD globally each year.  For example, the Rockefeller Foundation has made an important investment in this space with the 100 Resilient Utilities initiative.  IBM has partnered with the United Nations to publish a Disaster Resiliency Scorecard which over 200 cities globally have used to assess several aspects critical to anticipate, mitigate, prepare for and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner including the policy and planning, engineering, organisational, financial, social and environmental aspects of disaster resilience.  We have further modified the scorecard and applied to the water, electric, and gas utility industries to set a current state baseline and future state near and long term aspiration in strategy planning.  Furthermore, companies like Cloud to Street are contributing by monitoring flooding likelihoods and impacts in real time, helping to avert the human and economic costs of flooding, as well as assist in the aftermath. We are increasingly seeing smart storm water systems that leverage existing infrastructure. Also, we are in a far better position to understand conservation requirements in times of drought thanks to accurate groundwater resource modelling (Hydromodel Host), for example, or conservation habits.

  The most significant barrier to adoption of digital technologies in the water sector is the diamond water paradox, which is to say that even though water is an essential element of life, diamonds are more ‘valuable’ in the marketplace. 

What are the main barriers to adopting digital technologies in water and wastewater utilities, and how can those barriers be overcome to accelerate full digital integration?

I think the most significant barrier to adoption of digital technologies in water is the diamond water paradox, which is to say that even though water is an essential element of life, diamonds are more ‘valuable’ in the marketplace.  Water is considered a commodity and in many places a ‘right.’  For that reason, critical investment decisions go unfunded year over year, contributing to the aging infrastructure challenge and new ideas around digitisation are considered a luxury or would require immediate pay back in order to gain approval for implementation. Further, the fragmented nature of the water and wastewater utility value chain strand decision making, restrict funding pools, and strangle business cases.  Some of this stems from regulations which, traditionally, are barriers to innovation. Other stakeholders, such as employees and technicians and/or unionisation are naturally resistant to change.  But most stakeholders, including regulators, utility employees, and the communities they serve are thoughtful and can understand the benefits of digitisation, there’s so much that will need to change to truly adopt these technologies, and we’re making small changes along the way.  One imperative is to bring the stakeholders into the discussions earlier, encourage more collaboration and consideration around what’s the ultimate vision that we’re trying to achieve, and that will help us to get there. Having conferences like the IWA World Water Congress are great to foster collaboration and open discussion among all stakeholders involved.

Will we see new, more agile competitors to established utilities disrupting the sector?

There’s been this strong feeling that these big mature companies are on the defensive in risk of being disrupted by start-ups and digital challengers, but that belief actually ignores a built-in competitive advantage that is not easily replicated or leapfrogged by new comers. There’s this statistic that says that only 20% of the world’s data is publicly available; the other 80% is behind firewalls. This realization gives rise to an era for business that we’re calling “incumbents strike back”, where those organisations that own 80% of the world’s data and the direct interactions between consumers and producers are essentially best positioned to dominate the market and create these new business models that will lead to a successful digital transformation of a utility.

In emerging markets we will continue to see more and more creativity and new business models. There will also be a proliferation of onsite treatment and reuse in new high-rises etc., as well as greywater recycling (at some point). “In-function” recycling will also emerge (sinks, showers, etc.). But where centralised utilities are now, there they shall remain.

What will be the effect of these transformations on the “digital” consumer?

I can understand the perspective that the digital transformation is happening to consumers and believe that it’s up to us to ensure that with any changes there is a communication strategy in place to bring all “digital” stakeholders, including consumers, employees, regulators, ecosystem players, etc. in the digital transformation.  On the other hand, I would suggest that the digital consumer is actually driving the change to some degree versus acting as a recipient of it. Customer’s expectations around sustainability are driving behavioural changes in traditional utility practices, and this concept of consumers as prosumers is widely applicable to water. Some consumers already participate in water conservation and reuse as prosumers, and they will be able to do that more and more as utilities digitise, making smarter decisions about how they use and reuse their water. At the same time, consumers are also coming up with innovations. I’m reminded of the 7^th grader from Denver who decided that it was silly to have to wait so long for lead testing so she built herself a sensor to test the amount of lead in water and she won a science award for her innovation and, even more exciting, she’s in the process of commercialising her idea.

We’re hearing a lot about blockchain technology and its potential to enhance trust by creating transparent supply chains or trade of water rights in water markets. Where do you see it can be most beneficial for water utilities?

There is a wide ranging hope for blockchain. An area where I think it could be interesting is in addressing the problem of drought. Think of the potential of blockchain credits for proving efficiency measures. If utilities could prove that they are being more efficient, they could earn blockchain credits and this could create a market with the shifting of water and drought situations that could affect real change in behaviours, because there will be a monetary reward for being more efficient and that is definitely something that IBM and our partner ecosystem are exploring today in proofs of concept and trials.  Other more advanced use cases include, cybersecurity, water rights trading, smart contracts and settlements, peer-to-peer trading, and capital raising.

Will cyber security become an issue for water utilities?

Cybersecurity is already a concern today and the risk is increasing. Historically, the water utility control systems were not designed with security in mind, and while this alone doesn’t make them vulnerable, considerations must be made when you’re digitising an existing system with older applications and tools. Network intrusions have long been a concern for utilities as well, because they’ve had processes in place for many years around the protection of personally identifiable information, and that’s something to remain to be concerned about. Increasingly, there are threats around the critical control systems, especially those that control water flows, so treatment works and dams come to mind immediately as security and safety threats.

Looking at 2030, what will be the big question water-related professionals will need to answer with regards digitisation?

When you start talking about new technologies like augmented intelligence, cloud, and sensor technology from the standpoint of a water utility, many of them are still struggling with reports that are on paper, so there’s a long way to go. It’s not IBM that’s going to come in and digitise a utility – it takes an entire ecosystem. There are already incredible innovation partners, incubators across the world who are making huge advances.  On the flip side, I worry about what will happen if we don’t move quickly enough.  The water, energy, food triad is real and at our current pace of growth and consumption water scarcity has the potential to grind food and energy supply chains to a halt impacting economic growth.  To accelerate the pace of change, the real question is how we can help these innovative incubators establish the foundation and use the power of IBM as a strong, mature, trusted company, to become providers for these water utilities, while helping the latter to adopt these technologies. Our current focus is really about establishing that backbone that can enable the trial and testing of these technologies, and accelerate the results that we’re obtaining. We’re just getting started, so let’s work together to drive real change in this world!

Meet Rebekah Eggers and other creative thought-leaders at the IWA World Water Congress & Exhibition, 16-21 September 2018. Register now!

Cities today face many competing demands. They must ensure enough food and water to sustain growing populations, plan to adapt and mitigate impacts of climate change, and build attractive urban centres. Financing projects in cities to develop their resilience is no easy task. Many banks, financiers and private companies have trouble investing in supportive measures due to the lack of information and potential associated risks. Now, more than ever, we need to rethink the way we invest in urban resilience.

Innovative financing models, like those outlined in IWA’s Principles for Water-Wise Cities, allow cities to remain flexible when changes or disasters occur – fostering more efficient solutions with smaller and more frequent investments. Cities need to consider the importance of integrated services that meet multiple demands with targeted investments in order toprovide options that overcome their lack of financial capacity and bring about new funding opportunities.

Pathways to investing in water quality

Many cities are implementing innovative financing mechanisms. Examples include Philadelphia’s stormwater billing, DC Water and the nation’s first Environmental Impact Bond (EIB), and other cities who have implemented The Nature Conservancy’s water funds.

Water funds are unique in that they enable cities and investors to move away from traditional funding and consider the co-benefits of looking at a wider scale: the basin. We all know water for our cities is supplied from sources further away, and it is critical that we bridge the gaps between upstream and downstream users to create funding mechanisms that consider the quality of the water supply at its source.

Water funds work as an institutional platform developed by cities and conservation practitioners that can bridge governance issues as well as science, jurisdictional, financial and implementation gaps. Resources, both funding and capacity, are then dedicated to taking action towards a common goal to improve water quality.

Realising basin-scale outcomes

Cities depend upon their basin, which supplies them with water, food and energy. The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has found that four out of five cities can reduce sediment and nutrient pollution by a meaningful amount through investing in and implementing forest protection, pastureland reforestation and improved agricultural practices in the basin.

By taking part in basin management through water funds, cities can simultaneously secure resources; reduce flood risks; and enhance economic health. Water-wise communities also enable the implementation of resilience frameworks by connecting people to integrated solutions, highlighting the value of co-benefits, and unlocking flexible and fit-for-purpose investments. Likewise, through water-wise communities we can bring people together from across the basin to realise the role they can play in managing water supply across scales.

Implementing city resilience frameworks will help break down the initial barriers to water funds, which include a lack of common objectives, lack of data and information to support science-based decision-making, and lack of a credible track record to support public and private investments. Urban and basin stakeholders need to identify common objectives for a shared vision, and align water-wise communities for sound decision-making.

Sharing the value of healthy watersheds

TNC has already helped implement 29 successful water funds across the globe, and have witnessed the benefits to local communities and urban areas in sharing the value of healthy watersheds as a result. In Hangzhou, China, the Longwu Water Fund is working with local farmers to identify and apply best management practices in the catchment area that supports a thriving agriculture community in the Zheijang province.

While, in Brazil, the Brazilian National Water Agency and the Guandu Watershed Committee were supported to create a water fund to compensate local landowners for conserving and restoring forests in the headwater catchment of the Guandu River – an important source of water for Rio de Janeiro’s nearly 10 million urban residents.

In Kenya, the Upper Tana-Nairobi Water Fund – the first water fund in Africa – provides Nairobi water users with the opportunity to mitigate water threats. Investing in upstream watershed conservation efforts benefits farmers, businesses and millions of Kenyans who depend on the Tana River for their fresh water.

These examples highlight how critical it is to work across scales and sectors to implement innovative financing mechanisms to improve water quality for all. The work TNC does with partners around the world, and tools such as the IWA Principles for Water-Wise Cities, provide a means to do this. Join us on the journey to water-wise cities.

As the global population climbs toward 9 billion, rivers will experience tremendous pressure. To provide the necessary resources for our growing communities, more river flows will be diverted for agriculture and industry, stored for drinking water and harnessed to meet rising energy demands.

Global forecasts suggest a doubling of renewable energy sources by 2030, and hydropower currently offers nearly twice the generation of all other renewables combined. Hydropower’s contributions will grow as the world commits an estimated nearly US$2 trillion of investment between now and 2040.

Meeting our resource needs while keeping the climate in safe boundaries presents a number of complex challenges and tradeoffs. For instance, completion of hydropower dams currently under construction and those that are planned will affect 300,000 kilometers of rivers globally through fragmentation or changes to river flow patterns. This threatens freshwater fisheries that feed hundreds of millions of people and presents other social and environmental risks.

So, how do we balance our development goals with retaining the values free-flowing rivers provide? And how do we ensure that investments in hydropower are lower risk and realize a broader portfolio of benefits?

It requires reframing the challenge between development and rivers as one of system design–meaning, we must consider a comprehensive management system that balances the needs of energy and industry with what river basins need to remain healthy and thriving. A new report, The Power of Rivers: A Business Case, published by The Nature Conservancy, in partnership with McGill University, the University of Manchester and PSR, brings decision makers a first-of-its-kind global analysis to help yield better economic, social and environmental outcomes in hydropower planning and management. This is the foundation of a system-scale approach we call Hydropower by Design.

A distributary in the Atchafalaya River Delta, Louisiana, USA © Carlton Ward Jr.

The business case builds from the 2015 Power of Rivers report and draws from the Conservancy’s 65-year history of providing evidence-based, bottom-line oriented solutions to balancing conservation and development needs. Key findings suggest that the potential global economic benefits of widespread adoption of a system scale approach to hydropower planning and management are significant: even a 5 percent improvement in other water-management resources in hydropower-influenced basins would produce up to US$38 billion per year in additional benefits, a sum comparable to average annual investment in hydropower.

Another financial value for investors lies in improved risk management. Hydropower by Design can guide site selection toward a portfolio of projects with a lower percentage of significant delays and cost overruns due to environmental and social risks.

System scale thinking: essential to increasing investment benefits, minimizing risk

Across renewable energy sources, it’s critical that we consider early planning and holistic approaches to avoid or mitigate impacts to our productive lands and waters. While site-level mitigation of hydropower impacts can help, a number of issues cannot be addressed effectively at the scale of single dam. System-wide processes and tools are needed to identify development and management options that are both strategic and low impact, as well as financially competitive.

Countries facing urgent demands to increase electricity generation are understandably hesitant to embark on a strategic planning process if they believe it will delay delivery of projects that can meet rising demand. By drawing from integrated water-management, energy and financial models, Hydropower by Design (HbD) can deliver useful insights about development and management options for governments, investors and developers in a relatively short period of time. And the potential to capture economic values beyond energy generation is substantial.

In a set of nine case study basins, HbD approaches increased the level of other values—including water supply, flood-risk management and habitat for migratory fish—by 5 percent to more than 100 percent, compared to business-as-usual approaches. This occurred generally with no or limited reduction in energy generation—in some cases, there was a considerable increase in generation.

The powerful insights that an HbD approach can provide in the short-term, can deliver long-term, positive outcomes capable of maintaining connectivity on hundreds of thousands of river kilometers while realizing a broad range of other financial and economic benefits.

To learn more, and explore a series of quantitative case studies through download of the business case report, visit www.nature.org/powerofrivers.

Header photo: © Michael Yamashita

As a fast growing economy, urbanising at an even faster rate, India is already water stressed. The severe drought of 2016, which affected more than half the country and saw some of the highest temperatures ever recorded, only served to highlight an already serious problem. Water scarcity affects millions of Indians on a daily basis, negatively impacts both the agricultural and energy sectors, and puts sustainable economic growth at risk.

To prevent this situation becoming the new normal, urgent and coordinated action to address the supply-demand deficit across sectors is required. Greater efficiency in water use, addressing water allocations amongst sectors, and reducing water loss in supply systems, are critical. Often overlooked, however, is the role of wastewater in achieving these goals.

Today, a whopping 70% of India’s wastewater is released untreated, polluting surface and ground water sources, and posing a great risk to public health. The policy prescriptions on safe use of wastewater, effluent and sewerage treatment are in place, but better, more effective implementation is needed on the ground. The rapid growth in urban areas across the country makes this ever more urgent, and calls for concerted efforts to address wastewater management in these towns and cities. A mosaic of centralized and decentralized wastewater treatment systems are needed in both urban and rural areas.

Understanding and visualizing the flow of waste within a city is the first step in an effort to plan and manage waste. Shit Flow Diagrams (SFDs), initiated by the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA), are a powerful visualization of sanitation in urban centres that can help municipalities, planners, public health officials, and citizens to better advocate for improved sanitation, including addressing wastewater and faecal sludge treatment infrastructure.

A quick analysis of SFDs shows that in many cities, especially in low- and middle-income countries, a large proportion of the population depend on on-site sanitation. Whether or not the facilities are emptied, and whether the emptied contents undergo treatment before reuse or disposal, usually presents the main challenge. This highlights the importance of fecal sludge management (FSM), an issue that is climbing up the political agenda in India, but which scores poorly on indices on access to sanitation in the region.

The push to improve sanitation is gathering momentum with the Clean India campaign. As that momentum grows, it is essential that this moves beyond creating infrastructure, or making locations ‘open defecation free’, to also ensuring safe disposal or reuse of the waste generated. The World Health Organization (WHO) has developed a health-based risk assessment tool to better plan and manage this across the entire sanitation service chain.

The Sanitation Safety Planning (SSP) is a critical tool that can be used to plan and manage the safe disposal of wastewater, greywater and excreta. Case studies from around the globe demonstrate successful use of the tool in safely managing sanitation by-products. Using the SSP tool, the WHO has actively collaborated with national organisations to promote better planning and management of sanitation in India.

A pilot project in Devanahalli, Karnataka, resulted in the town administration recognising not only the potential of the existing informal reuse of wastewater and faecal sludge, but also the importance of engaging with the stakeholders responsible for its reuse. In addition, through the use of SSP, Devanahalli attracted funding for the construction of a Faecal Sludge Treatment Plant. This, in turn, has attracted attention from both the government and private sector looking to replicate the success.

Attaining total sanitation coverage within urban and rural areas demands robust recycling and reuse of wastewater. This will require multi-disciplinary engagement and processes that empower a variety of stakeholder groups. The larger question of wastewater governance calls for integrated efforts from across sectors, ranging from urban development, public health, engineering, water resources management, pollution control boards, water quality monitoring, and wetland management, to name just a few.

Crucial to addressing the sanitation challenge is recognising and synergising formal and informal knowledge systems. Only then can we hope to capitalise upon the great opportunities wastewater presents for sustainable development.

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WHO along with IWA is hosting a half-day workshop on Sanitation Safety Planning at the upcoming 4th Faecal Sludge Management Conference in Chennai on 18-23 February, 2017.