IWRA’s 1st Islands Water Congress: When the Stars Align

By: Francesco Sindico, ISC Co-Chair of the Congress and Professor of International Environmental Law at the University of Strathclyde Law School, Glasgow, Scotland, UK, and ? óluva Eidesgaard, ISC Co-Chair of the Congress and Geologist at the Faroese Geological Survey, Tórshavn, Faroe Islands

Sometimes the stars just align, and you can’t but smile. There was a lot of smiling at IWRA’s 1st Islands Water Congress in the Faroe Islands from 4 to 6 September 2024. We planned the Congress for a long time, with first talks going as far back as 2019. We met in person for the first time in December 2022 followed by a visit to the Faroe Islands in May 2023, and an official presentation of IWRA’s 1st Islands Water Congress in September 2023 at IWRA’s XVIII World Water Congress in Beijing, China. With so many years of work, the pressure and expectations were high. We are delighted that all went well, some could say surprisingly smoothly, with both the logistics and substance of the Congress surpassing expectations.

Participants arrived in the Faroe Islands on Monday 2nd September, and on Tuesday the 3rd, many of them joined the technical and cultural field trips. Having field trips the day before the start of the Congress was spot on, allowing participants to get to know each other whilst enjoying stunning locations with spectacular weather, which lasted throughout all the days of the Congress and the weekend after!

The Congress may have established a record of consecutive sunny and warm (from a Faroese perspective) days. On Wednesday and Thursday, the Congress concluded with fun and relaxed events at Tórshavn’s historic M?llers Pakkhús and the National Museum, respectively. Again, organising Congress receptions and dinners in beautiful, interesting, but not overly formal environments helped strengthen the bonds that were developed during the days of the event. It was almost not surprising that on the last day, participants found themselves together, nearly without planning, enjoying live music in a cool brewery in the capital city of Tórshavn.

Creating an enjoyable environment in which participants from all corners of the world can easily meet each other is not secondary, since a key goal of any Congress is to bring people together.

However, the vision of IWRA’s 1st Islands Water Congress was to bring islanders and non-islanders together to boost action and bring forward concrete positive steps in the sustainable management of freshwater on islands. In other words, we were keen to leave a legacy and contribute to impacts both in the Faroe Islands and beyond.

We can say that, also in this respect, the Congress has been a success, with legacy and impact having both a policy and societal dimension.

The Congress concluded on Friday 6th September with the governments of the Faroe Islands and Prince Edward Island signing a Memorandum of Understanding establishing the Tórshavn Dialogue on Sustainable Freshwater Management on Islands (MoU). The Parties to the MoU will contribute to ongoing international processes related to freshwater resources relevant both directly or indirectly to islands; they will exchange good practices and identify concrete actions and possible investments for the management of sustainable freshwater on islands. It was encouraging to see the interest in the MoU by many other islands present at the event.

On the last day of the Congress, we organised a special session in which participants coming from islands all over the world discussed key elements related to the regulation of freshwater on their island. This was not an isolated session, but rather was linked to a process to develop a Congress Policy Report aimed at identifying good practices in the regulation of freshwater management on islands. Regulation was the topic that the Faroe Islands had identified as being a challenge on their island.

We will now work over the next few months to come up with a Congress Policy Report focused on regulation that will have both a global island relevance and audience, but also a strong Faroese focus.

And this leads us nicely to the third key impact and legacy of the event, which takes us to the Faroe Islands themselves. The vision of the Congress Series is to co-develop the focus and topic of the event with the host island nation, in this case the Faroe Islands. Through a consultative process led by the Faroese Geological Survey, water regulation was identified as the topic that was of particular interest to the Faroe Islands community. The Faroese legal landscape for freshwater resources is rather fragmented with a regime that includes a combination of both recent and outdated laws and regulation. The Congress has been useful to the Faroe Islands by providing easier access to examples from other islands and other nations, which are now being analysed by a national task force. That task force met with members of the IWRA’s 1st Islands Water Congress International Scientific Committee on Wednesday 4th September at the Faroese Geological Survey. As a result, the Congress facilitated pushing forward a focus on water regulations in the Faroe Islands in a way that would not have been possible without the Congress or as a purely online event.

It was especially exciting to have seen first-hand both the Faroese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Industry and Trade and the Faroese Minister for Environment signalling their support for the ongoing process and for a possible new more modern water law.

One of the key lessons of the Congress was the process for working closely with the host island nation to identify a topic of interest, and then collaborating in a country driven way to leverage data and information for that specific topic, in this case a national review of water laws and regulations in the Faroe Islands. The Congress Policy Report will have a section focused on the Faroe Islands that will feed into the ongoing process around regulating freshwater and a section highlighting good practices from a wide range of islands collected from inputs submitted by Congress participants, before, during and after the event. IWRA plans to publish this report in early 2025 and we are keen to share it widely to Congress attendees, Faroese stakeholders, and to relevant international contacts and networks.

Lastly, the Faroe Islands have been successful in using the Congress to raise awareness about freshwater on their islands. This is not an easy task considering that, similarly to other islands and non-islands in the Nordic region, there is a perception of abundance of water.

During the Congress on Thursday 5th September, a morning-long side event on Water in the Faroe Islands was organised (and held in the Faroese language) and attended by 60 people from throughout the Faroe Islands.

At that event, participants agreed that a Faroese Water Forum will be created to allow different stakeholders working and interested in ensuring the availability of freshwater resources to get together periodically and collaborate on freshwater management in the Faroe Islands.

Freshwater was also a key topic of the Tórshavn environment week in 2024 and schools across the islands will soon start exploring freshwater resources for projects with their pupils. All of this is a very important local legacy of the IWRA’s 1st Islands Water Congress.

Summarising, the event has led directly and indirectly to:

• A Memorandum of Understanding between the governments of the Faroe Islands and Prince Edward Island Establishing the Tórshavn Dialogue on Sustainable Freshwater Management on Islands
• A possible new water law in the Faroe Islands
• A Congress Policy Report focused on regulation with sections on the Faroe Islands and on other islands around the world
• A Water International and Islands Studies Journal Special issue on Freshwater and islands
• Raising awareness of freshwater management on islands

A lot more work needs to happen for this legacy and impact to continue, but we are delighted that IWRA’s 1st Islands Water Congress has been the platform where such important activities and initiatives have been launched.

IWRA is keen to continue working with the Faroe Islands to ensure that impact happens in the field of regulation. IWRA is equally excited to work with future hosts of the IWRA Islands Water Congress Series with the same vision characterised by legacy and impact.

The Congress was also, as one would expect, a hub of knowledge with an amazing number of high-level presentations, both from our distinguished keynote speakers as well as from the participants who contributed to 15 regular sessions and 5 special sessions, and 4 creative showcases.

What was truly remarkable was the Congress’ multidisciplinary and global profile. Presentations ranged from technical topics linked to geology and engineering to other disciplines more closely affiliated to social sciences, such as law, economics and sociology. There was space for everyone at the Congress.

Whilst participants spoke (literally) different languages, it was the focus and care for islands and freshwater that brought them together.

The amazing keynote speakers added a spark of magic to the group of participants raising the bar in terms of quality and passion.

On the first day, Andrias Klein Gregoriussen, Meteorologist at the Faroese Meteorological Office, and Ronald Roopnarine, Senior Lecturer at the University of the West Indies, brought to the Congress the Faroese local context and a stellar introduction to the Caribbean reality, respectively, both in the context of the ongoing climate emergency.

On Thursday, all participants were in for a treat. Keynote speakers Kamanamaikalani Beamer, Professor, University of Hawai?i, Mānoa, and Milika Sobey, Senior Technical Adviser-Coastal Ecosystems for GIZ Pacific, had travelled from literally the other side of the world (Hawai’i and Fiji) and did not disappoint. Under the rubric of “Freshwater Culture and Narratives,” Kamanamaikalani brought to life the rich history of Hawai’i and its people in the context of freshwater management. Rarely have we seen somebody speaking of the public trust doctrine interwoven with history, music and culture in such a clear and passionate way.

This was a tough act to follow, but Milika was equally impressive. She transported all the participants to her island in Fiji and talked us through the history of Fiji Water (the international company) and how its activities are critically connected to land, people and culture.

On the last day we mixed things up a little bit and instead of a long, formal presentation, we organised a fireside chat with James Ellsmoor, CEO of Island Innovation, in which we reflected on questions of scale, finance and the learnings from his own work in renewable energy and how they could be applied in the context of freshwater management.

The Congress then invited Bj?rn Holm, Manager of Tórshavn’s municipal waterworks, and Mary Trudeau of Envirings Inc. and IWRA, to provide participants with a comparison of the operations of a municipal water service on an island city (Tórshavn) with one in a continental setting (Ottawa in Canada).This showed that, in some cases, the challenges are not that different, but it also highlighted differences in scale and place. ?

The last plenary session saw a fascinating set of presentations by Tráin P. Nónklett, Historian at the Faroe Islands University, Manuel Sapiano, CEO of the Malta Energy and Water Agency, and Steven Myers, Minister of Environment, Energy, and Climate Action, Prince Edward Island, on the history and reality of freshwater in the Faroe Islands, Malta, and Prince Edward Island, respectively. The presentations were followed by a discussion between Ingelín Str?m, Faroese Minister of the Environment, Steven Myers, and Manuel Sapiano. Together they discussed environmental and socio-economic challenges and opportunities linked to freshwater resources, the water-energy nexus and the role of legislation in freshwater management.

Despite its long-term, impactful vision, the Congress remains a traditional series with presentations, slides, and papers. IWRA will soon make the Congress proceedings—many of which are incredibly rich and informative—available through its membership platform. To access these proceedings, we invite you to sign up for IWRA membership. Finally, two special issues of the Water International and Island Studies Journals are being planned, bringing together a selected number of papers from the Congress. We are confident that many other papers will be published by participants between now and the next edition of the Congress, which will also stem from ideas and presentations at the event.

Music and creativity were also present throughout the event adding an additional special touch to an already rich programme. In the opening ceremony, we had Faroese Maria Ronnisdóttir á Heygum and Leo Lávík singing a beautiful Norwegian song and then Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah in Faroese.

Music was also central during Thursday’s keynote with both Kamanamaikalani Beamer and Milika Sobey connecting with participants through songs from Hawai’i (played by Kamanamaikalani himself) and from Fiji

Participants also enjoyed a walk to a nearby waterfall led by James Bonner, University of Strathclyde, one of the participants, and an intriguing piece in the closing ceremony curated by ISC Member, Laurie Brinklow, that literally brought together water from different participants’ islands, as well as music, poetry and video.

Overall, this was a great first edition of the IWRA Islands Water Congress Series. IWRA is delighted to have received a great deal of interest for the second edition in 2026 and looks forward to start working with another host island as soon as possible. Francesco will stay on as Co-Chair over the next four years for the 2nd and 3rd edition. This will give the continuity and thread that a Congress series requires to be successful.

Lastly, beyond the impact and legacy, which undoubtedly the Congress has left and will continue to deliver, the images that we will keep in our minds are those of islanders meeting other islanders for the first time. To see and hear participants from Fiji learn about Greenland, and delegates from the Caribbean interacting with colleagues from Iceland and Ireland, is invaluable and goes beyond the scope of freshwater.

We all learn and grow by engaging with others, and it is only by connecting with people from or related to Hawai’i, Fiji, Maldives, Seychelles, Nyosi Island in Madagascar, Malta, Balearic and Canary Island, Azores, Cape Verde, Faroe Islands, Ireland, Orkney Islands, Iceland, Prince Edward Island and others (our most sincere apologies if we missed you), that we start to better understand islands and their unique and common freshwater challenges and opportunities.

A toast (skál) to IWRA’s 1st Islands Water Congress as we look forward to the 2nd edition with smiles on our faces!