SEI at World Water Week 2011 in Stockholm

Written by Marion Davis

Friday, 19 August 2011 00:44

SEI is a co-sponsor and convenor of several events at this year’s conference, being held in Stockholm on August 21-27.

World Water Week, organised and hosted by the Stockholm International Water Institute since 1991, is a major annual conference geared to building understanding of key water-related issues around the world.

This year’s theme is “Water in an Urbanising World”, a look at the implications of changing consumption patterns, deepening inequalities, and growing vulnerabilities associated with rapid urbanisation. Already, more than half the world’s population lives in cities, and 95 per cent of the global population increase between now and 2050 will be in urban areas.

Seminars
SEI is convenor of the Wednesday’s seminar “Understanding the Opportunities for Entrepreneurs in Getting Sustainable Services to the Poor”, which will feature recent work by SEI and others and explore the different markets and incentives for sanitation entrepreneurs from Bolivia, Ghana, Malawi and Uganda.

On Thursday, SEI is co-hosting the seminar “Knowledge and Capacity Development in Water, Sanitation and Environmental Management”, which will look at lessons from several projects around the world. Among the speakers will be SEI’s Madeleine Fogde, director of the EcoSanRes Programme, and SEI’s Arno Rosemarin, a researcher in EcoSanRes.

Also on Thursday, SEI is co-hosting the side event “Can Urban Sanitation be Sustainable? Sustainable Sanitation Alliance Learning”.

Views from our U.S. water experts
Marisa Escobar, a researcher in the SEI-U.S. Water Group, will present a case study about climate threats to salmon in California and the implications for hydropower generation as part of a seminar on Monday, “Water and Climate in Focus: Enabling Effective Action: Adaptation across Political, Social, and Institutional Boundaries.”

David Purkey, director of the SEI-U.S. Water Group, will speak Thursday at the seminar “Science and Tools for Freshwater Conservation in an Urbanising World”, focusing on SEI’s powerful WEAP (Water Evaluation And Planning) system, which is used by water analysts in both governmental and NGO settings around the world.

In addition, Johan Kuylenstierna, director of SEI’s Stockholm Centre, will be the moderator Wednesday of the UN-Water Seminar: “World Water Day 2012 – Water and Food Security: Call for Solutions”, and of the Stockholm Water Prize Laureates Seminar on Thursday, “Coping with Catastrophic Changes – Building Long-term Resilience”.

Also at the conference, the United Nations Environment Programme and the International Water Management Institute are releasing a new report, An Ecosystems Approach to Water and Food Security (external link, PDF), which includes work by SEI-York research fellow Jennie Barron. The report calls for a radical overhaul of agriculture to create farms which enhance rather than degrade the world’s ecosystems, and argues that such an approach would more successfully feed the world than current agricultural practices.

Visit our website all week for news updates from the conference, or follow us on Twitter at @seiresearch. To learn more about World Water Week, visit the conference website. For a complete programme, click here.