Location: Amsterdam RAI
Session: AIWW Conference Integrated Leaders Forum – round 2 III
Location: Amsterdam RAI Room: E103-E104
Subsession
Table 1- Water supply in informal settlements, SDG and human and social aspects of access to water and sanitation
Informal Settlements in Nairobi City fall within water and sanitation services coverage of Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company. Nevertheless, the utility lacks sufficient investment funds leading to inadequacy of services, poor living standards and disease outbreaks in slums. These conditions attract alternative investments from Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) inform of water and sanitation interventions. However, the interventions are only concentrated in certain (locations of) informal settlements. This research discovered that the uneven distribution of interventions is explained by complexity of environment in the informal settlements which also forces an NGO to claim multiple sources of legitimacy. Therefore, the NGOs have very little influence on the location of the interventions in the informal settlements. Also, inadequacy of funds for investment is only part of the problem in the informal settlement.
Speaker - Duncan Genga, Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company
Table 2- Design Of The Circular Value Chain Around Phosphorus Recovery And Valorisation From The Integrated (nexus) Perspective
Challenge: Current methods fail to provide necessary insights into decision-making processes around a circular economy. Which technologies, customers, partners, startups and markets to engage?
Solution: Organisations collaborated to develop an Integrated Approach, which applies a method from MIT to a context of complex system of circular economy in Amsterdam. We validated it in a conference publication and proceedings by MIT and TUM, as well as workshops with stakeholders of PIB Singapore and students. The outcome is an integrated data-model and a guideline for co-design of circular solutions with evaluation of systemic impacts.
The model shows structure of current metabolism in Amsterdam, and possibilities for interventions for phosphorus recovery & valorisation. The guideline provides a methodology to extend the model with new data and to train non-experts. It is also complementary to current methods.
Speaker - Maxim Amosov, Organic Village
Table 3- Digital revolution in water management as a strategic issue
Implementation of new technologies in the water sector are in general showing conservative adaptation curves. Now the digital transformation is offering a tremendous number of opportunities water utilities are uncertain about how digital technology and personnel development as ageing. This roundtable will provide a platform to discuss both technical as well labor related challenges within utilities.
Questions:
- What adaptation curves are currently seen at utilities. Is it technology or data related challenge?
- How are other utilities dealing with ageing of staff or labor market tension
Speaker - Doeke Schippers, Vitens
Table 6- Addressing challenges of nitrous oxide in water quality
Table 5- How can the world’s top performers support the rest of the water utility sector?
Table 4- Sustainable Port Development in a changing world
Ports facilitate maritime transport, attract heavy industry and require alterations of coastlines and waterways. The impacts of ports are significant and diverse, but so are the opportunities to make a change for the better. Sea level rise and sustainable ambitions are two strong drivers to make use of those opportunities. But how can ports, held tight by vested interests, convert their game to a sustainable future? This roundtable will discuss leading principles for sustainable port development in a changing world.
Table 8- Waterworx programme as a tool for increasing the access to drinking water
Utilities must develop their water services in order to meet SDGs. However besides utility development, money is needed for infrastructure developments. The WaterWorX project aims to be an example of
o a long term operational partnership
o Knowledge transfer
o New ideas, insights, technical solutions
o In Lao PDR for instance we worked on the implementation of a GIS Asset management system, now we are looking into NRW, to improve the operational efficiency and the improvement of Water quality
Table 7- Performance based cooperation for improving utilities
In order to support performance improvement in international cooperation between utilities, it is often beneficial to start with targeted improvement trajectories, like asset management, billing and revenue collection, non-revenue water management, operation and maintenance or information and data management, instead of focusing on high-over and sometimes more abstract topics such as institutional strengthening, governance and strategic planning. In this session, two cases will be presented of performance based improvement trajectories with a clear focus, one in Uganda and one in India. At this roundtable, we will also discuss how this approach can be interesting for financiers, governments, and how the experiences can be transferred and scaled up.
Table 10- Resilient Utilities Framework
Resilience is one of the key challenges facing water management climate adaptation. Utilities will need a comprehensive resilience framework to asses and understand the opportunities for improvement. This framework index, by Arcadis, encourages proactive interventions.
Scan the code below to see your organisational resilience!
Table 9- New Initiatives to Catalyse the Mobilisation of Investment Finance
Investments in water infrastructure can only be sustained if it goes hand in hand with Utility Performance Improvement. Utilities operate and maintain the infrastructure and are therefor critical for the sustainability. Financiers are developing new approaches and new financing instruments to integrate / to blend investment finance and capacity building grants.
The aim of this roundtable is to hear the view and position of Utility and City Leaders on the issue of asset creation through investments financing and utility/city capacity building to improve the performance. Example initiatives will be presented that have utility performance improvement catalyst the mobilisation of investment finance.
The participants of the round table will therefore discuss the following issues:
- What is the importance and added value of linking utility performance improvement and investment finance? And what are the main difference with the current way of financing water infrastructure?
- What would be an effective way to link performance and investment finance. Both from an Utility perspective, as from a Financiers perspective?
- How to blend grants (for performance improvements) and loans (for asset creation) into one financing instrument for Utilities?
- What are other critical incentives in the enabling environment to have a direct link between performance improvement and investment finance?
- What do we think of the Catalyst Fund, as presented by GIZ?