Organisations and individuals from around the world gathered in Stockholm recently for a week-long event to discuss the most pressing water issues facing the planet. Dr Mark Fletcher was there.

Last week I attended World Water Week, a week-long event organised and hosted by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) in Sweden’s capital. The purpose of Stockholm World Water Week (SWWW) is to act as an annual focal point for the most pressing global water issues.

World leaders, water experts, policy-makers, financial advisers, charities and utility organisations gathered in Stockholm to discuss this year’s theme “Water and Waste: Reduce and Reuse”. Together, we explored ways of reducing, and reusing, the world’s water and waste to create a more efficient global water ecosystem.

A recurring theme across the week, and one that I found particularly encouraging, was the role of the circular economy and how to apply circular principles within the context of the water cycle. Words like “reduce”, “reuse”, “recycle”, “regenerate” and “share” headlined presentations, as speakers communicated the need to consider water by-products as resource, not waste.

For example, looking at the water cycle, there are many stages at which we can extract useful resources. As we pump water, kinetic energy is created, which could be harvested and used to generate electricity. There are other stages during the cycle where we could extract heat and recycle chemicals, such as gathering methane from slurry. The less that is wasted, the better.

Take a look at Cologne, Germany. The Celsius City project deploys circular economy ideas, capturing heat from water flushed down drains. It is reducing electricity bills in schools and is thought to produce enough energy to heat around 70 homes – proof that these ideas can work.  

In the UK, utility companies are part of a much broader network across the water cycle, including bodies such as the Environment Agency, Ofwat, and the Drinking Water Inspectorate, as well as those responsible for waterways, drainage, and more. A key part of building a circular economy here will be to encourage dialogue, collaboration and engagement between utility companies and these numerous bodies.

World Water Week showed that other countries are currently much better at this convergence than we are, given the number of key decision-makers represented at the conference. But we’re moving in the right direction, and with the continued application of circular economy language and principles, we’ll get there.

Think beyond the city

If you look at resilience purely at a city level, you risk missing much of what’s going on outside the city boundaries, which could have a profound effect on a city’s water. For example, much of a city’s water could come from a basin or reservoir situated outside the city limits. It could even be shared with a neighbouring region. At World Water Week it became clear that many of our international counterparts are looking at city resilience through the lens of water, and we’re beginning to deploy that thinking here too.

In the UK, Arup worked with Welsh Water to develop a resilience strategy that allowed it to anticipate, adapt, respond to and recover from challenges – both present and future. By identifying around 60 shocks they might face, we developed a best-practice resilience framework that supports and protects a company that delivers water to more than three million people.

With the growth of global urbanisation, it’s this kind of focused yet holistic resilience planning, involving multiple stakeholders and bodies, that will help create truly resilient cities. Utility companies have a key role to play here, since their vision is not limited to an inner-city environment and can be a valuable resource to governments.

Collaboration is key

Across the world, 85 per cent of water is publicly controlled, but in the UK water is private. This puts us in a unique position when it comes to the management of water, and company jurisdiction. Following the extensive floods in Hull in 2007, the Pitt Review criticised certain organisations with responsibility for different parts of the water cycle for attempting to distance themselves from flood damage, stating that they should have instead grouped together.

At SWWW, there was much discussion about the Principles for Water-Wise Cities, a concept launched at the Global Water Summit in Brisbane by the International Water Association. These principles act as a framework for the integrated and collaborative management of water in cities. Such a framework could be deployed here, and enable better collaboration in the prevention of and response to disasters.

Two key principles of the framework really stood out for me. The first, called Basin Connected Cities, states that cities should not just work to their boundaries, but instead to the city catchment area. The second, known as Water-Wise Communities, says that all the actors – including citizens – have a role to play in the management of water.

These principles are commonplace in the coffee shops and meeting rooms of World Water Week. If we moved towards this ideology in the UK, we’d stand ourselves in good stead, should we experience another flood.

The future

There were a number of delegates at the event representing governments and government-led initiatives. Many water partnerships around the world are government funded but in the UK no such funding exists. If we’re truly to be represented on a global level, that needs to change and we need to be present in places like Stockholm, proposing a UK offering.

SWWW was a great opportunity for industry stakeholders to group together, and develop ideas ahead of the more formal COP23, taking place in Bonn in November. It is there where actions are normally decided, and the rubber hits the road for countries, including the UK. So, by increasing our dialogue at events such as SWWW, we can maximise our role in shaping the future of water management, and ultimately, the future of our planet.