An Exhortation To The Global Water Sector

By Julie King

An interview with Henk Ovink, Special Envoy for International Water Affairs and co-host of the United Nations 2023 Water Conference for the Kingdom of the Netherlands

This Q&A article is part of a series of interviews from the 2022 Stockholm World Water Week with executives from different areas of the water sector. One of these interviews comes in the form of a direct challenge to the water sector to step up, to see the gravity of solving water challenges as an opportunity to reinvent the sector as the leading collaborator, facilitator, and partner across all sectors to reshape the way we do business so we can build the sustainable future we all want — or not. It is a choice.

Henk, thank you for taking the time to do this interview and to preface the urgency and challenges behind the upcoming UN 2023 Water Conference in March.

As we know, the water sector is very conservative. How are you motivating this same group to make this conference successful in catalyzing the transformative change required to mitigate water challenges in the face of climate change?

The water sector is a safe space, comfortable, and perhaps too comfortable to really step up and deal with the challenges facing it. Is it fit for the future? Or better said, is it fit to prepare us for the future? Both in professional capacity, education, institutional capacity, as well as when we look at gender and age. The sector lags behind and we know there will be many jobs to fill. But in the current state, is it attractive for new generations to join and help change the sector from within? And can the water sector reach out, open up and connect, immerse itself in the world? More or less as water itself is immersed in everything: life and livelihood. And if we can, the water sector can change the world. Water has that connective and catalytic capacity. But we have to unlock it, through a giant leap into the future and the world.

When I first attended Stockholm World Water Week in 2015, the topic was ‘Water for Development’. It was very much “developing countries” talking about community engagement, water security, and the idea of getting different partners together to take a holistic approach to solving water issues, of collaborating instead of working individually. At the 2022 Conference, the same comments were being made by the Las Vegas and Southern California water districts. This is a big shift.

The Global North is lagging behind, for many reasons, but also because the water sector has been lazy, too comfortable. The real innovation is happening in the Global South, possibly with some contributions from the North. The water sector in the North finds comfort in a safe space, funding pilots and small-scale projects. But that is not what transition is about; this is not the partnership approach we need to radically change course.

Unlike the South, in the North our current societal contract is based on the past, with outdated economic models and short-term gains, profits for the haves, no added value for have-nots. The water sector must become aware, and can and needs to decide about this lock-in. It needs a total reset. We must gain long-term value-adds for a sustainable future. This is not a blame-and-shame game. But water is connected to everything, and the opportunity water brings must enable us to act, not shy away from it. It’s not about the money, it’s just not the right dynamics. Water security means societal, environmental, and economic security. In a way, the global COVID-19 pandemic was a lost opportunity to do this, a campaign we never capitalized on.

How can the water sector play a role in bringing together private and public actors? The sector has the skillset, the knowledge base. How can it work more effectively together and with project developer, project coordinator, funder, government bodies, as well as with NGOs? How can the sector more effectively integrate the critical environmental and social issues into performance requirements and monitoring projects to achieve those benefits?

The water sector writ large — governments, business, academia, NGOs, and more — must look at the future and play a leadership role, pick up the baton, and lead across all sectors. It must work across all in society and bring on young people, inclusive and innovative approaches and technologies. The water sector comes from society; it is grounded in the communities. Lobbying from the sector must be holistic in its perspective and radically inclusive in its approach in order to shape a just society, shape the new economy, and protect, value, and expand our environment. We must take the approach that includes the whole of society.

This is a choice to be made by the water sector.

It means stepping up and taking the opportunity to put water front and center, with its critical capacity to create a healthy environment, to frame projects to help mitigate the risks on climate, build resiliency, work towards food security, energy security, and to work across other sectors. But this means we must reinvent ourselves and become far more attractive for the whole workforce, for students, for the youth, and those other potential partner sectors by playing a critical role for them.

It includes R&D. It’s about innovation, yes. But it’s also about implementation, capacity building, the enabling environment, strengthening the institutions as much as the infrastructure in these partnerships within public and private entities.

To lead means the water sector must get out of its box that we find ourselves very comfortable in and move into these other sectors and provide them with the proposals to collaborate. We as the water sector are their best opportunity for energy security, we are their opportunity for agricultural and food security. We are their opportunity for a better healthy environment for jobs, for innovation, for the young and the experienced. But that means we have to go beyond what is asked of us, which too often is nothing more than fixing the failures of the past. We must move to setting the agenda for the future with all. And that is not the “responsibility” of the water sector alone. It is an opportunity.

I’m not saying this is easy. But it is an opportunity, technically, to bring your innovations to other sectors where water is used, knock on their doors, and say, ‘Hey, as a water sector partner, I’m your enabler. Water is part of your sector, so I’m part of your sector. I’m not your competitor, I’m your partner.’

So this is also an easy way in. But it’s hard because it requires more steps. But once you’re in, and you find yourself in that conversation, you can help spur and catalyze water security across so many of the other challenges we face in society, in education, research, innovation, finance, policy, at the political level. As the water sector, we can say we are going to forge and even provoke these partnerships and strengthen these cross-sector coalitions, and we’re not going to leave it with just doing pilots. We are going to really focus on building pipelines and a long-term approach.

But this is our choice. There is so much we can do. It’s not that there is a lack of opportunities, nor a lack of funders of opportunities. There is also an abundance of opportunities to fix the failures of the past. So it’s a double challenge. The water sector must make sure it finds the way forward by asking the right questions, instead of falling back on answers from the past. The questions and answers must be about how to create the sustainable, inclusive, and resilient future we all need.

So, going into the UN 2023 Water Conference in March, where are we now?

We are all morally obliged to leave this planet in a better state than how we got it. And right now, we’re doing just the opposite, including everyone in the water sector, 99% of us. There are amazing people and amazing organizations, but it’s not adding up. Now is an opportunity to really say, ‘let’s pick ourselves up and put ourselves in the context of the future that we all want.’ Water is the enabler for that. But we haven’t positioned ourselves — yet — as the enabler. We are still too much on the supply side, on supplying answers to questions of the past and not on provoking the questions that will put us in this better future. Now is the time to leapfrog ahead and join the future together.

Henk Ovink is Special Envoy for International Water Affairs for the Kingdom of the Netherlands. He is spearheading on behalf of the Kingdom of the Netherlands the co-hosting responsibilities for the UN 2023 Water Conference along with the Government of Tajikistan. Henk is an Honorary Lecturer at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

Julie King, author is a senior consultant in digital water technologies and is an experienced organizer, developer, and coordinator of international commercial projects with business, academic, NGOs, new tech, and international organization partners. She is a long-time contributor to Water Online on issues about digital water tech, sustainability and the environment, and international development and financing.