Kabat has been invited by the National Committee and the Science and Technology Process Commission for the 7th World Water Forum to provide a keynote speech during the Opening of the Science and Technology Process at the 7th World Water Forum. His speech will explore how to build a consensus on the essential roles of science and technology in tackling global water challenges.

Kabat will also represent IIASA on the mid-morning panel on fostering innovation and take part in the CEO Innovation Panel Dinner concluding the opening day.

Organizational Structure of the 7th World Water Forum, Korea 2015

The National Committee is composed by 22 governmental and 39 public committee

members. It is established by a special act to support the 2015 World Water Forum in its successful preparation and implementation. It is supported by the Secretariat.

The Science and Technology Process as part of four commissions, has been newly introduced to the 7thWorld Water Forum, emphasizing the importance of the infuse of science and technology in water issues. This process aims for participants to share ideas and applicable plans for implementation of solutions, regarding water-related technologies and information. Furthermore, three special programs are composed under the Science and Technology Process: White Paper, CEO Innovation Panel, and the World Water Challenge, in order to draw a more wide range of audience.

Graph: Structure of 7th WWF

Source: http://www.worldwatercouncil.org

Description:

No single water-related issue can be resolved without considering regional characteristics.

With this keynote, the Regional Process of the 7th World Water Forum is built on the outcomes and outputs of the 6th Forum and it has tried to ensure a proper balance between priority issues identified at the regional level and the overall framework for the 7th Forum.

Especially, Interregional Session has been newly introduced to share experience and know-hows with Regions where similar water issues are in common. With this Interregional Session, wide range of discussions among various participants with diverse perspective of opinions were conducted to fulfill the main Forum’s core value, “Implementation“.

In the Regional Process Opening Session, the preparation process of the Regional Process of the 7th World Water Forum, introduction to the Interregional Session, inputs to the Implementation Roadmap and plans for post activities will be introduced respectively.

Description:

Addressing the challenges of water and food security is a priority issue the Americas, the Arab Region, the Asia Pacific, Eastern Africa and the Economically Water Insecure Region.

Common challenges related to economic or physical water scarcity, water productivity in agriculture and throughout the food chain, sustainability of ecosystems and the necessary adoption of a water-energy-food nexus approach are identified. While specific priorities and responses reflect the regions’ and sub-regions’ diverse climate, natural resources, demographics, socio-economic development dynamics, agricultural policies, farming systems, irrigation and related policies and investments and regulatory frameworks, regions can also build on and benefit from shared knowledge, exchanges of experience, innovative approaches and inter-regional cooperation.

In this 1 1/2 days Inter-Regional day on Water and Food, regional actors will, in regional slots, present overviews of their local challenges, threats and opportunities related to water and food security and the Nexus, and discuss solutions, recommendations and priority actions to address them in their respective regions and sub-regions. These dialogues will be enriched by exchanges with participants from all regions. Panels and plenary discussions will further explore differences and commonalities and the potential for inter-regional initiatives.
In this Opening Plenary, the overall programme and objectives of the Inter-Regional Day and of the 5 Regional Slots will be presented.

Description:

Growing populations and economies, changing diets, and urbanization are placing new demands on water security. Coupled with climate change, more and more countries and regions are facing water insecurity. For Economically Water Insecure (EWI) regions, the pressing need for comprehensive solutions in the face of limited economic resources is a dire concern.

The water-food-energy nexus is a valuable approach to understand the challenges and address them. First, agriculture is the largest water use and under increasing pressure to improve productivity while land use is changing rapidly and along with rural socioeconomic conditions. Second, energy and industrial development, the key growth drivers of many economies, are intrinsically linked to water and its security. The energy sector cannot continue to grow without significant consideration for sustainable water resources. Addressing the issues and trade-offs, requires a multi-dimensional approach coupled with integration of stakeholders in problem solving.

This session focuses on the challenges and possible solutions to achieve water, food and energy security in water insecure regions due to limited economic resources. Outcomes include lessons and possible pathways to a sustainable and secure water future.

Description:

Energy supports water treatment and distribution, while water supports the production of energy such as hydropower and cooling of thermal power plants. Other sectors such as the extractives industry and food production require both energy and water. As populations increase and the climate becomes increasingly unpredictable, the demands on these finite resources threaten to push the limits of what the environment can sustain.

Governments, civil society as well as the private sector recognize that a longer-term view on managing water is needed, which means understanding the strategic and economic value of this limited resource. Good policies and incentives help to move towards more efficient, cost-effective and sustainable provision of water and energy services. The public sector can create an attractive enabling environment which mitigates risk and provides incentives for cross-sectoral collaboration, ensures participation and consideration of different interests, including maintaining a healthy environment; and the private sector needs to bring forward innovative approaches including financing mechanisms such as venture capital funds, eco-compensation and public-private partnerships.

This session explores how institutional arrangements and a process of collaboration can develop joint solutions leading to shared benefits across the water, energy, food sectors. Experiences and examples of reconciling different water uses from the local to transboundary level will be shared.

Description:

Session content

The session will gather stakeholder ideas to develop a set of scenarios “Worlds We Want to See” – alternatives to “Business as Usual” that leads to satisfying basic human needs in harmony with the natural world. This approach, rather than trying to depict different destinations, would concentrate on how to make a transition from “Business as Usual” world to the worlds we want to see. With the focus on transition pathways, difficult tradeoffs would be explored, eventually resulting in the analysis, conclusions and guidelines important for policy makers. We plan to look specifically into unexplored and non-intuitive pathways that may find unexpected win-win solutions to overcome painful tradeoffs. In all cases the pathways will not only describe destination points but also describe how these destination points were reached.

The analyzed pathways will explore types of solutions (intervention options) prioritized by stakeholders, taking into account the types of options they are primarily considering in their regions (and therefore the types of tradeoffs they would like to see further investigated in relation to how it may change regional and global dynamics). Then, the IIASA team can analyze those types of options and the tradeoffs among the options for a variety of pathways.

Purpose and goals:

• Strengthening partnerships with national and international stakeholders (including… non-governmental organizations…) in South- and South-East Asia
• Gaining deeper understanding of the primary water resource development and concerns and priorities in the region.
• Developing sets of possible future pathways leading to the “Worlds we want to see”, basic human needs are satisfied in harmony with the natural world.
• Exploring conflicts and trade-offs that need to be resolved in order to reach water sustainability -  transition from conventional worlds to the worlds we want to see.
• Exploring types of solutions (intervention options), taking into account regional specifics (including types of trade-offs).
• Providing insights into WFaS activities: global water modeling, water scenarios and regional examples.

Description:

Ideas for better science-policy integration (from previous stakeholder meetings)

There is a need for a water policy frameworks for cross-sectoral, integrated, sustainable water resources management. Such frameworks can be used to explore the consequences of various decision-making paths on water sustainability and human development. It should also provide a set of robust strategies, policies, technologies, and solutions to inform multi-sectoral decision-making. It should address the need to establish longer term processes for dealing with water security. Finally it should establish priorities and sequence of steps to follow in order to reach sustainable water management. One of the important components can be rigorous water scenarios/pathways with clear trends and strong evidence to support narrative elements. There is also a need for further capacity building within local and national institutions to utilize the various tools resulting from the water scenarios/pathways work.

Ideas for most important water problems that need immediate attention (from previous stakeholder meetings)

Water governance is one of the most important areas that need improvement. It is clear that better water planning is needed together with stakeholders involvement in this planning. Collaboration is critical for dealing with a variety of water challenges. There is a big need to improve international collaboration on water (in the areas of infrastructures, institutions and economic agreements), transboundary water management and cross-sectoral collaboration around water. New instruments need to be developed, tested and applied in the areas of water allocation, water rights, collection of and access to water data and water pricing.

Improvements in governance have to be matched with improvements in technology. There is a need to explore the potential for water sector of the completely new technologies such as nanotechnology. Water Infrastructure needs to be further developed including infrastructure for water transfers. Water Pollution remains an important (and in many places growing) threat; new pollutants need to be recognized and coped with. Managing water sustainably requires further shift towards demand management. The priority areas to deal with are sustainable groundwater management, urban water management, wastewater management and water use efficiency in agriculture. Ecosystems should also be treated as water users.

On a broader level, water managers increasingly need to cope with climate change impacts, consider and prepare for dealing with social consequences of water crisis in demography (water implications on migration and vice versa), health (new waterborne diseases) and equity (focus on poor nations – so as not to widen the gap even further).

Session content

This session aims to deepen the insight developed during the first SFG meeting and look further into how the collaboration between science and policy can be fostered. Participant will investigate how scientists can increase policy relevance both in the content of their work, methods that they use as well as in types of outcomes that they produce. Additionally, participants will also analyze how policy makers can broaden the input that they use for developing policies to include science based processes, tools and outcomes. As a result it will lead to developing evidence-based practical and flexible set of solutions that can be implemented to tackle pressing water problems.

Purpose and goals

• Bridging the gap between water governance/management/ policy and science communities leading to both better evidenced interventions/solutions and better informed research agendas in water governance/management/policy.
• Gaining deeper understanding of data availability, monitoring mechanisms and types of tools to be used for providing practical and useful policy advice and guidelines.
• Exchanging ideas on stakeholder inclusion mechanisms, structures and authorities (specifically in Asia).
• Providing insights into WFaS activities: global water modeling, water scenarios and regional examples.
• Ensuring project impact, usefulness and relevance as well as usability of its outputs in the region.