The urgent need for innovation in water

Rhys Herriott is a Senior Programme Manager at Challenge Works, where he works on the Ofwat Innovation Fund. The views contained in this blog are his own.

Last week, I was part of a team attending the International Water Association’s World Water Congress in Toronto. This event brought together 2500 water professionals and policymakers from around the world to explore some of the most pressing challenges facing the water sector. 

It was abundantly clear that the water challenges we face are not localised challenges – Saroj Jumar Jah, the Global Director for the World Bank’s Water Global Practice, shared that parts of Africa are only set to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) relating to water by the year 2112. Further, he felt that unlocking progress on water SDGs was critical to making progress on all other SDGs – without access to water, it’s impossible to reduce poverty, hunger or illness. Despite this, the World Bank sees governments around the world consistently underinvesting in water.

Addressing these global, interconnected and accelerating challenges will require a step-change in ambition, and for us to find entirely new ways to collaborate across sectors and borders.

Unpredictable challenges require flexibility

Traditionally, water planning has been based on (relatively) confident assumptions about climate, population, and the toolbox of solutions available. However, this is no longer the case. Climate change is driving greater variability in extreme water events (droughts, or floods); while, more optimistically, rapid technological advancement can provide previously unforeseen opportunities.

In Australia, Melbourne Water is considering how to recognise the value of ‘having options’ in their business planning. But this investment in flexibility is not free. Importantly, they’re also investing in engaging with their customers to ensure that bill payers understand the need for flexibility (and the associated costs), and have a say in how those options are developed.

Decision makers will increasingly need to consider how adaptability can be built into their plans to provide the flexibility and resilience needed to respond to unexpected threats, or capitalise on the latest opportunities.

In England & Wales, the Ofwat Innovation Fund is providing a mechanism for de-risking new options, by funding collaborative innovation which could not ordinarily be pursued within business-as-usual operations. However, for the time being, this programme is relatively unique in the world, and there is still more to be done to ensure that demonstrated ideas can be taken up by the sector. 

Seeing the bigger picture

Responding to rapidly evolving challenges will also require us to overhaul how we make decisions about water management, and who is in the room when they’re made. Water is foundational to everything we do – that means everyone should have a stake in their water, and how challenges are managed. 

But it also means that the benefits of water innovation are widespread, and can yield much greater value when developed collaboratively. Henk Ovink, currently leading the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, was clear that investing in ‘water challenges’ provides more than just ‘water benefits’ and can yield benefits for all SDGs. Investing in water can create jobs in agriculture and ecotourism, restore and protect biodiversity (for example, the Seagrass Seeds of Recovery project, funded by the Ofwat Innovation Fund), and yield social returns, providing important spaces for recreation (as well as well-documented benefits for mental health).

These wider benefits are often poorly understood by bill payers, who understandably want their bills to be as low as possible – this in turn puts pressure on decision makers to seek out the cheapest option, rather than the most valuable. 

Embracing a nature-based approach

The need for a more value-led approach was well illustrated by the week’s discussion of ‘nature-based solutions’ – a suite of approaches to managing water and environmental challenges using natural landscapes, instead of concrete and steel. 

Last week saw more discussion of nature-based solutions than any previous congress. Much of the conversation showcased the versatility of nature-based approaches to addressing water challenges – from the use of vertical gardens to help process and recycle urban greywater, to blue-green roofs which capture and store rainwater (reducing both water use, and stormwater runoff).

But there was also a lot of discussion of the barriers to implementing nature-based solutions at scale:

• They can be more expensive to create and maintain, often requiring specialist expertise; 
• They typically require more space than traditional infrastructure – which is particularly a challenge in urban contexts; and
• Their performance can vary over time and in different conditions, creating uncertainty for regulators and customers.

These challenges aren’t insurmountable, but they need us to approach investment decisions in a new way:

• A nature-based approach may not seem like the most cost-effective way to reduce stormwater overflows – but what if the value of the biodiversity gains and social amenity were factored in? 
• Water utilities’ existing supply chains may not have the necessary expertise – but what if they engaged with local councils and third sector organisations?
• Nature-based approaches may provide uncertainty to customers and regulators – but what if customers were brought on the journey, with all impacted regulators and planners?

In the UK, Anglian Water has funded the creation of ‘treatment wetlands’ on the River Ingol, whereby pre-treated wastewater is allowed to slowly flow through newly constructed wetlands. They worked with the Norfolk Rivers Trust and the Environment Agency to establish these wetlands, and early results have shown improvements in water quality, and reductions in both carbon and costs, and they intend to expand this approach over the next five years.

What’s next?

Around the world, the challenge of managing water – whether in the context of floods, or droughts, or just maintaining supply through ageing and imperfect infrastructure – is becoming increasingly complex. Although promising innovations are emerging, we cannot assume that these will become available when we need them, and for the people who need them most. 

It’s vital that we recognise the urgency of water innovation, and bring policymakers, customers and innovators (from within and outside the water sector) together to find new ways to address these challenges. If you’d like to help us to make this happen, please get in touch.