Leap-frogging to water sensitive cities in developing nations

From the CEO

This week, as we celebrate World Water Day on Friday 22nd March, I was in Vina del Mar, Chile attending the Latin America Water Week as part of the Australian Commission delegation. The proceedings of the conference are very much on challenges in developing countries. Some sobering statistics from the United Nations are worth reiterating: that 1.9Billion people in the world do not have access to treated water for drinking and up to 3.4Billion people access water of questionable or non-uniform quality for drinking. 80% of the world’s wastewater is discharged without adequate treatment.

Ready access to reliable water supplies and toilets and associated treatment remain key objectives of the United Nation with integrated water resource management now an emerging priority global goal. A key catch cry at this conference is that green growth must be inclusive growth (to foster social equity). I got to introduce the concept of water sensitive cities to a largely Latin American audience.

It is worthwhile reiterating that many urban water strategies to meet emerging challenges in developed countries are often encumbered by ‘path-dependent lock-in’ owing to institutional legacy limiting the range of acceptable solutions/interventions to those that would fit into the existing institutional paradigm. We have seen many solutions directed at simply improving the efficiency of the urban water system. Path-dependant lock-in is attributed to an overly bias weight given to the ‘sunk cost’ associated with the legacy of past decisions. Yet in so doing, we limit the diversity of solutions that are so important in facilitating future resilience of our water system to future climatic extremes.

Developing countries, where infrastructure and institutions are not well established, are more flexible and conducive to contemporary urban water solutions. It is often for this reason that cities in developing countries are well-placed to leap-frog directly to a water sensitive city rather than the organic evolution of urban water infrastructure and institution we see in many cities in developed countries. Many of the financial investment in transforming cities in developed countries to more sustainable, resilient water sensitive cities can in fact be avoided in creating water sensitive cities in developing countries. This is on the proviso that international aid programs do not inadvertently impost developed-world traditional thinking, planning and design of water systems onto these countries.

Professor Tony Wong
CEO