My takeaways from World Water Week 2022

This year I participated for the first time in the Stockholm world water week as an online participant, speaker and co-convener. Even though I was not in Stockholm, I could feel the incredible energy and vibe there. And I've learned so much! It was like drinking water from a hosepipe. Lots of knowledge, lots of developments, lots of innovation, and lots of insights and wisdom shared.

I've only attended the #WWWeek before as an online participant-thanks to Covid 19, which brought the conference online. That was the true blessing in disguise of the pandemic - I could finally have access to the most brilliant minds in the world to learn about the cutting-edge issues and developments in the water sector, or water ecosystem, as some call it.

So what did I learn? What were my key takeaways?

1. We need to break silos! I've heard time and again this - in almost every other session, someone would say that we need to break silos. WASH, IWRM, Climate, Governance, Financing, Health, Environment, Social Sciences, Agriculture, Industries... The problems we face now are extremely complex and interlinked, and they cannot be solved by a single group or discipline - we need to work together with colleagues from other sectors to broaden our perspectives and bring a more holistic view of problems and potential solutions.
2. Science - policy - practice integration. We need to integrate more science, policy and practice - we cannot afford anymore to have these fragmented. We need more science and evidence-based policies;
3. Priorities. We have many many problems and challenges. And as many potential solutions. But we don't have the resources to try everything out or solve all the problems. So we must bring all sectors to the table, including communities and marginalized groups, to agree on our priorities and solutions that are most beneficial to a wide range of stakeholders. This is critical to inform our budget allocations and financing at national and subnational levels.
4. Actionable plans. I heard this countless times at #WWWeek. We are all tired of much talking and writing, promises and commitments, with minimal implementation. We want to see action, we want to see change, we want to see results, and ultimately, we want to see the impact. So let's prioritize concrete actions that will wield the most impact. In cases of uncertainty in science, we can always start with the no-regret and low-hanging fruits first.
5. Better communication. This also came up so often during #WWWeek. Saroj Kumar Jha , Water Global director at the World Bank, said that the World Bank alone produces over 5000 pages of reports every year for every single country they work. And that is only the World Bank! Counting all other reports produced by UN agencies, NGOs, Researchers, Universities, Think tanks, etc. is a lot of information to digest. And this is why we end up having the Science - policy gaps. Politicians that don't read or don't understand science; and Scientists that are disconnected from ground realities. Communities that don't understand science either and are influenced by misinformation. Scientists must communicate in ways that the general public and governments can understand. Governments need to be more transparent about data and policies- and be more accountable to communities. And communities need to be more empowered to hold duty bearers accountable and voice their priorities.
6. Transparency, data for action and accountability. With technological advances, getting information about anything is much easier now than ever. We have powerful tools using remote sensing, cloud services, and others to observe several indicators. However, this does not substitute data from the ground level. We need to use big data and citizen science to better understand various systems and make better decisions informed by sound evidence, data and science. Transparent data also allows for better accountability between multiple stakeholders.
7. Capacity building and enabling environment. The significant gap is still in people's capacity and enabling environment for implementation. We need to look at innovative ways of bridging the capacity gap - business as usual is not good enough - and we have tremendous potential considering the technology available and the vast mass of young people that are very tech-savvy. We need to use more marketing and adequate packaging of messages to improve capacity at various levels and ultimately improve the enabling environment where these people work.

These were some of my key take-home messages - how about you? What did you learn from world water week? Please add to the comments below.