Category: News

Virtual event 30th March

The Center for Mediterranean Integration (CMI) invites you to attend a high-level webinar on “Enhancing Mediterranean Integration“.

The CMI published a report “Enhancing Mediterranean Integration” which examines the various dimensions of Mediterranean integration in today’s context and provides policy recommendations for enhancing Mediterranean integration, beyond trade agreements.

The CMI Regional Knowledge Series will provide an in-depth presentation of the topic and associate renowned academic scientists and researchers to discuss the report’s findings, and exchange thoughts on the multiple dimensions of regional integration in the Mediterranean. The Regional Knowledge Series will consist of several webinars organized throughout 2021 each in partnership with a key Mediterranean partner and will culminate in a face-to-face or hybrid event, to be held later in 2021.

The first webinar on March 30^th, 2021 will provide an overview of the current economic situation in the Mediterranean basin, and will propose several axes of discussion, including the form or forms Mediterranean integration could take; the structural obstacles that could thwart strong regional integration and economic development; and the possibility of developing an approach that directly involves essential actors of the North and the South Mediterranean.

• Simultaneous interpretation in French and English will be provided.
• The agenda and speakers’ bios for the first event are available here

To register click here

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScf22LjXoAcCSHugTiVGvjEFeX66q1AX9dKU-X9VBlkrP8oYQ/viewform

To read more, please click on the link below

https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000375724

The current status of water resources highlights the need for improved water resources management. Recognizing, measuring and expressing water’s worth, and incorporating it into decision-making, are fundamental to achieving sustainable and equitable water resources management and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Those who control how water is valued control how it is used. Values are a central aspect of power and equity in water resources governance. The failure to fully value water in all its different uses is considered a root cause, or a symptom, of the political neglect of water and its mismanagement. All too often, the value of water, or its full suite of multiple values, is not prominent in decision-making at all.

Whilst the term ‘value’ and the process of ‘valuation’ are well defined, there are several different views and perspectives of what ‘value’ specifically means to various user groups and stakeholders. There are also different methods for calculating value and different metrics to express it.

Differences in the way water is valued occur not only between stakeholder groups but are widespread within them. These divergent perspectives on water value and the best ways to calculate and express it, coupled with limited knowledge of the actual resource, present a challenging landscape for rapid improvements in valuing water. It is, for example, futile to attempt to quantitatively compare the value of water for domestic use, the human right to water, customary or religious beliefs, and the value of maintaining flows to preserve biodiversity. None of these should be sacrificed for the sake of achieving consistent valuation methodologies.

Traditional economic accounting, often a key means of informing policy decisions, tends to limit water values to the way that most other products are valued – using the recorded price or costs of water when economic transactions occur. However, in the case of water, there is no clear relationship between its price and its value. Where water is priced, meaning consumers are charged for using it, the price often reflects attempts for cost recovery and not value delivered. Yet, regarding valuation, economics remains a highly relevant, powerful and influential science, even though its application needs to be made more comprehensive.

Nevertheless, the different values of water need to be reconciled, and the trade-offs between them resolved and incorporated into systematic and inclusive planning and decision-making processes. The way forward, therefore, will be to further develop common approaches to valuation where feasible, but also to prioritize improved approaches to compare, contrast and merge different values, and to incorporate fair and equitable conclusions into improved policy and planning.

The 2021 edition of the United Nations World Water Development Report (UN WWDR 2021) entitled ‘Valuing Water ’ groups current methodologies and approaches to the valuation of water into five interrelated perspectives: valuing water sources, in situ water resources and ecosystems; valuing water infrastructure for water storage, use, reuse or supply augmentation; valuing water services, mainly drinking water, sanitation and related human health aspects; valuing water as an input to production and socio-economic activity, such as food and agriculture, energy and industry, business and employment; and other sociocultural values of water, including recreational, cultural and spiritual attributes. These are complemented with experiences from different global regions; opportunities to reconcile multiple values of water through more integrated and holistic approaches to governance; approaches to financing; and methods to address knowledge, research and capacity needs.

To read more, please click on the link below

https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000375724

In March 2023, the United Nations is due to hold a “rare” conference on water. Gérard Payen urges the international community to overcome its inertia and make this summit a historic event, during which important political decisions will be taken and an annual agenda will be set to achieve Goal 6 of the 2030 SDGs.

Governments discuss freshwater at such a large number of international events that their work is now fragmented, scattered across disparate events, with no guiding principles and very little coordination. This results in confusion for the governments themselves, as well as for most other stakeholders in the international community. UN-Water does its best to ensure technical coordination, but the political coordination of various water-related activities remains to be defined. All these events are nonetheless useful forums for developing knowledge and preparing future decisions. For example, the World Water Forums in Mexico (2006) and Istanbul (2009) paved the way for the human right to safe drinking water to be recognized in 2010, while the Marseille Forum (2012) and the Budapest Summit (2013) led to the adoption of a specific Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) on water in 2015.

In March 2023, the United Nations will hold an International Water Conference. It will be jointly presided by Tajikistan and the Netherlands, and will be attended by all governments. This will be a major event since only UN summits can give rise to global political decisions that countries consider binding and that benefit from long-term operational monitoring. The many intergovernmental meetings held in parallel to UN efforts may yield useful conclusions, but in the absence of institutional follow-up mechanisms, these findings generally do not progress very far. Within the United Nations, most of the meetings devoted to water are organized by UN agencies or Secretariats for international treaties that specialize in a particular field, only covering certain water issues. An international conference on all freshwater issues (all types of water as well as sanitation) is therefore a very rare event at the UN. Water issues are multiplying and becoming increasingly interrelated with every passing year. They underpin the vast majority of SDGs, making the 2023 conference a very rare opportunity to take useful collective decisions to improve the global organization on water issues.

The SDGs: A Coherent Vision

In 2015, a revolution took place. The adoption of the SDGs was the first time that governments had taken all the major water issues into consideration within a global program. Prior to that, collective goals only existed for drinking water and access to toilets. In 2015, this very patchy perspective was filled out with supplementary targets for water resources management, pollution and wastewater management, water ecosystems, flooding, public participation, water in schools, adaptation to climate change, urban planning, etc. In short, a complete vision on water issues was born. Twenty SDG targets are directly related to water. That’s great news! But unfortunately, nothing much has changed since 2015 in intergovernmental circles. It is as if the silos of the past have taken over again. In 2018, at the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), governments discussed water for three hours but took no new decisions. Worse still, during their first SDG Summit in October 2019, they boasted about their progress on access to safe drinking water, in stark contrast with global statistics predicting that the 2030 target for universal access to drinking water will not be reached until the 23rd century at the pace of progress resulting from current policies. Since 2015, no intergovernmental work has been done to acknowledge and rectify the insufficient progress towards water-related SDG targets. This lack of activity on all water issues stems directly from the fact that there is no specific UN political forum for water. Unlike the majority of SDG key topics, which each have their own intergovernmental platform with regular political meetings, water is not so fortunate and, politically speaking, has been left behind. There is a dire need for collective coherence and efficiency, but this is very seldom discussed since many institutional stakeholders, countries and UN agencies see more interest in maintaining the status quo.

A UN Political Summit on Water is Much Too Rare an Event

Some say that the 2023 UN Water Conference will be the first since the Mar-del-Plata conference in 1977. This shows very little regard for the UN Sustainable Development Commission meeting in 2005, which brought together all the world’s governments for two weeks and resulted in a nine-page UN resolution on integrated water resources management, ecosystem preservation, drinking water and sanitation, including the treatment and reuse of wastewater. However, since 2005, the only significant UN resolutions on water have been the inception of the International Year of Sanitation (2008), the recognition of the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation (2010) and the adoption of the SDGs (2015).

The 2023 UN Conference will therefore be one of the very rare events where decisions can be taken on all water issues. This will be an opportunity to make intergovernmental work on water more effective. It will be an opportunity to streamline intergovernmental work, if participants decide to organize an annual UN intergovernmental meeting on all water-related SDG targets, as is the case for the other SDG key topics. This would ensure political coherence between the many disparate existing efforts and enable the organization of efforts to achieve SDG 6 and all the global water-related goals. A decision of this kind cannot be taken in 2023 without active preparation and sufficient anticipation. This will be one of the main issues at stake during the 9th World Water Forum that will take place in Dakar in 2022.

Will the 2023 Conference take the decision to institute regular UN political meetings on all water-related SDG targets? If so, the conference will be quite historic. But if we miss this opportunity, the international water community will only have itself to blame for remaining collectively inefficient, for the lack of political attention paid to water and for the slow progress towards water-related SDG targets.

By Gérard Payen – mentor of the 2019-2020 session of the International Executive Master “Water for All”

Water is essential for economic growth, human health, and the environment. Yet governments around the world face significant challenges in managing their water resources effectively. The problems are multiple and complex: billions of people are still without access to safe water and adequate sanitation; competition for water is increasing among the different uses and users; and major investment is required to maintain and improve water infrastructure in OECD and non-OECD countries. This OECD series on water provides policy analysis and guidance on the economic, financial and governance aspects of water resources management. These aspects generally lie at the heart of the water problem and hold the key to unlocking the policy puzzle.

Find out more by clicking on the link belowhttps://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/fr/environment/oecd-studies-on-water_22245081 Enjoy your readind!

https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/fr/environment/etudes-de-l-ocde-sur-l-eau_22246223

On 15 October last, the University of Montpellier, the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation and UNESCO signed a six-year agreement for the establishment of an international centre dedicated to water. A first in France and a great victory for Eric Servat, director of the Mediterranean Institute for Water and the Environment and project leader. Interview with this key figure in the water science community in Montpellier.

The University of Montpellier will host a Unesco international centre dedicated to water. It is called Icireward. What does this acronym stand for?

It was my colleague and friend Olivier Barreteau, director of the UMR G-EAU, who came up with this acronym.  It means “International centre for interdisciplinary research on water system dynamics”. In French it would be translated as “Centre international de recherche interdisciplinaire sur les dynamiques des socio-hydro-systèmes” (International centre for interdisciplinary research on socio-hydro-system dynamics). And this corresponds perfectly to what we are and to our project.

It is a category 2 Unesco Centre. What is the difference with a category 1 Centre?

In concrete terms, it means that we have more autonomy to define our strategic orientations than a category 1 Centre. Moreover, in the field of water sciences, only the Delft Centre in the Netherlands was in category 1, but it too has applied to move to category 2. We will nevertheless have a UNESCO representative on the Strategic Orientation Council and, of course, we will produce the expected reporting every two years. We are working with UNESCO in a climate of shared trust that will enable us to implement our project with serenity.

How many Unesco Centres are dedicated to water in the world?

In total there are about thirty and we are the first in France. The French scientific community, and in particular the Montpellier water science community, has been working with UNESCO for a very long time, so it was logical to formalise these links.

This Unesco Centre brings together fifteen Montpellier laboratories (in the broadest sense since it includes Narbonne and Alès). Large structures that are 100% dedicated to water sciences such as HydroSciences, which I directed for 14 years, but also G-EAU or the Lisah at the Agro – Montpellier Supagro Institute. And then you have all the other laboratories where water is part of the activity.  If we take stock of all this, it represents about 400 scientists and nearly 150 PhD students. When you are able to mobilise so many people, this makes for a large critical mass which is, in the field of water sciences, the largest structured community in France.

In all disciplines?

Yes at HydroSciences you will find physicists, modelers, hydrologists, but also chemists, geochemists and microbiologists. At G-EAU you will find economists, sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists… At Lisah, agronomists, soil scientists… and in the other laboratories geographers, remote sensing specialists, etc… We cover an extremely wide and diverse spectrum of scientific disciplines.

There is also an ancient history of water sciences in Montpellier.

Yes, it is history that makes us have all these skills. Already at the time of the USTL, the University of Sciences and Techniques of Languedoc, there were already laboratories of mathematical hydrology and hydrogeology. In the 1960s, people were working on the source of the Lez like Professor Avias. There were strong competences and all the national organisations working in the field of water were established in Montpellier, the CNRS, the IRD, the CIRAD, the BRGM, the INRAE… This history means that, probably more than elsewhere, we have this capacity to put around the table people who have different and very complementary skills and objects of study.

This is why Montpellier was chosen to host this Centre?

The strength of the water sciences community in Montpellier is its ability to be multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary. This is what makes the difference with other sites in France that do excellent work but do not have this specificity as much. This interdisciplinarity was already at the basis of the Mediterranean Institute for Water and the Environment, the IM2E, and it is this particularity, which is our main asset, that we have transposed in our project to create a Unesco Centre.

It isn’t it difficult to get this whole little world to work together?

We have worked hard to bring this collective to the fore and coordinate the activities of these teams. An IFR, a federative research institute, had laid the first stones of this collective before stopping in 2010. Then we completed this work by creating the IM2E on 1 January 2015, which provided a place for all these players to come together to define collective strategies. And of course there was the creation of the Muse.

And it’s not difficult to get all this little world working together?

We have worked a lot to make this collective emerge and to coordinate the activity of these teams. An IFR, a federative research institute, had laid the first stones of this collective before stopping in 2010. Then we completed this work by creating the IM2E on 1 January 2015, which provided a place for all these players to come together to define collective strategies. And of course there was the creation of the Muse.

What role did the Muse play exactly?

Somewhere the Unesco Centre is a bit like the fruit of the Muse project. Through the Kim Waters, Muse encouraged us to identify actions and projects capable of increasing our attractiveness and visibility internationally. More directly, Muse gave us the financial capacity to set up research projects that typically foreshadowed what projects carried by the UNESCO Centre would be. I’m not sure that without Muse’s help we would have obtained this Centre. There is this confidence, this support that makes us believe in it. And in return, I hope that with this Centre we will make our contribution to perpetuating the Muse project.

What are the broad outlines of the projects you are going to work on now?

When we work with UNESCO, we work with the United Nations and therefore the imperative framework is the Sustainable Development Objectives. SDO 6, of course, which is 100% dedicated to water supply and sanitation issues, and a number of other SDOs as well. There are more than 2 billion people today who have neither access to drinking water nor to reliable sanitation systems, which contributes to making water the main vector of diseases, which is not the least paradox when we know its indispensable necessity.

And do you have specific areas of focus?

We have built this research project around five main axes, ranging from the characterisation of elementary processes to approaches oriented towards the functioning of societies. What we call socio-hydro-systems. So, for example, it is the vulnerability of systems to anthropic pressures, the availability and quality of water resources in relation to climate change. But also work on social dynamics, the trade-offs between, for example, land use and water resource management policies. We make the most of this plurality of scientific skills that characterises Montpellier. This is the challenge we have decided to take up, which is to highlight interdisciplinarity in order to tackle the crucial issues that will emerge in the water field in the years to come.

The Centre is created until 14 October 2026 but after that there is no reason why it should not be renewed. The Centre in Delft has been in existence for about 60 years. 

We imagine that this convention will open many doors for you…

Yes, the international recognition and visibility brought by UNESCO is something very strong that will allow us to ta
ke a step forward. Our objective is to play a significant role in the network of UNESCO Centres and Chairs, what we call the “UNESCO water family”. This gives us the ability to interact with all the other Centres, in Delft in the Netherlands, Lodz in Poland, Dundee in Scotland, the United States or Japan.  This opening will strengthen our networks, offer us exchange prospects through students or scientific stays.

With the South as well?

UNESCO has a very strong impact in the South where it contributes to structuring scientific communities through the international programmes it implements. We already have the IRD and CIRAD networks which are very structured, often longstanding, and here again UNESCO will offer us facilities to develop these networks. A fortiori because several of us are heavily involved in major UNESCO programmes, particularly within the Intergovernmental Hydrological Programme (IHP).

In terms of training, what will this Centre bring?

The question of training is very important for UNESCO. So the idea, as far as we are concerned, is not to create additional training courses but to promote the excellent training courses of the Montpellier site to make them even more attractive than what they already are, whether it be the Master’s degree in Water, Polytech/STE, Isntitut Agro – Montpellier Supagro, AgroParisTech, the Ecole des Mines d’Alès…. And in particular by opening them up even more to students from Southern countries.

And in financial terms, does Unesco provide support?

Unesco has limited funding capacity, but it will probably be easier to find funding by being a Unesco Centre. It is not the same thing, for example, to go and see the big national and international foundations as a “simple” director of the IM2E as it is as the director of a big Unesco Centre. For us, this should change a lot of things.

Women can play a critical role in water resource management. However, getting beyond gender obstacles in water resource management remains difficult. Women in South Asia, particularly in Ganga- Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) basins, play a critical role in providing, managing, and safeguarding water resources. Yet, their participation in water governance is not visible.

Despite the irrefutable relationship between women and water in South Asia, gender considerations are still seen as irrelevant in large-scale water management issues such as dams and hydropower construction projects, river protection embankments, and water trade. Policy decisions are mostly made without women, and as a result, they left to suffer worse consequences compared to men.

But this is changing; as more women across South Asia’s rural and riverine landscapes become better informed about their rights and access to water, they can continue to come forward and participate in the decision-making process.

Sameer Singh – https://asia.oxfam.org/latest/policy-paper/women-and-water-creating-positive-ripples-transboundary-water-governance-south

Sewerage management is more than just ‘flushing it away’ – waste must be contained, treated and disposed of safely. In many countries ageing infrastructure and growing urban populations are creating mounting pressure on systems that in many cases were designed in the early twentieth century. But, in Sri Lanka a joint initiative between the Government, the World Bank and IWMI aimed to formulate a pathway to sustainably improve wastewater treatment and subsequent resource recovery.

According to the UN Joint Monitoring Program, less than three percent of the rural and about 12 percent of Sri Lanka’s urban population is discharging its wastewater from toilets (‘black water’) into sewers. However, we shouldn’t assume this wastewater ends up in sewage treatment plants (STP). In the capital city of Colombo, where 90 percent of the below-ground infrastructure is 100 years old, more than 100,000 cubic meters of untreated sewage are discharged into the ocean through two pipes that extend about 1.5 kilometers into the sea.

However, high costs and the lack of suitable land have stalled the expansion of sewer networks and treatment systems remains limited in the country.

The non-sewered alternative

Country-wide 95 percent of households contain their toilet waste near its origin in below-ground storage tanks. This system is called non-sewered sanitation (NSS) or ‘on-site’ sanitation (OSS), and is especially suitable for low- and mid-income countries where treatment capacities are limited and residents cannot afford high fees to support centralized wastewater collection and treatment systems. OSS systems also have other advantages, as they don’t need the same amount of water to flush excreta through huge pipes, no pumping stations, and significantly less piped infrastructure. It is not uncommon even for apartment complexes in Sri Lanka’s capital city and offices, like IWMI’s to manage toilet waste on-site in this way. The main disadvantage of OSS is that if not maintained properly, it does not work and can cause harm to public health and the aqueous environment through uncontrolled discharge of contaminated wastewater.

In rural Sri Lanka improved latrines are common. Some locally, brick-made tanks don’t match the mandatory dimensions stipulated by Sri Lankan Standards (SLS). They might be cheaper, but they can fill-up too quickly, or leak. While some tanks are so well-constructed that they take many years to fill, others require a service every other year.

Some tanks with multiple chambers allow the liquid part of the wastewater to leave the system via a soakaway or final soakage pit, while the solid parts of the wastewater is separated and stored. If the solids at the bottom fill up, the soakaway can be blocked and wastewater will eventually cause the lid to lift and thus overflow. This often leads to a bad smell, and potential health and environmental hazards.

What happens when the tank is full?

Emptying the sludge is done by special collection services (‘gully-bowsers’) which suck the sludge out of the tanks. These services exist in nearly all communities and are operated by both private and public service providers.

There are two big challenges:

1. How do you know when your tank is getting full? Many families rent houses and don’t know where the tanks are, or when they were last emptied. The tank lids are often sealed or hidden under grass. As a result, many tanks are only emptied once they have burst.
2. The number of treatment plants and the number of trucks emptying septic tanks don’t match up. Ideally, there should be designated treatment plants in close vicinity to communities (also to ensure the gulley-browsers have a short turn-around time) where the sludge is safely treated. This is currently not the case. There are so far only 20+ fecal sludge treatment plants in the country, and many are too far away (and thus expensive) for a gully-browser to use, which can result in illegal sludge dumping. In the Colombo area, most sludge is discharged into the sewer system, which leads to ocean contamination.

The existing treatment plants

As part of a World Bank assessment of the present fecal sludge management (FSM) situation in Sri Lanka, IWMI researchers visited all the country’s treatment plants. Small or large, simple or complex, all treatment plants use similar primary (grit removal, sedimentation) and secondary (oxidation or anaerobic digestion) treatment stages. Whereas a number of treatment plants visited are under-dimensioned and overloaded, others are too large and only a fraction of their treatment capacities are utilized.

The good news is that most of the treatment plants operating in Sri Lanka are functioning and resources such as nutrients and organic matter are recovered and recycled (mostly as organic fertilizer). Liquid effluent is discharged after treatment into nearby wetlands, rivers or drains.

So what’s the way forward?

The IWMI supported revision of the National Sanitation Policy flags the importance of FSM and provides an appropriate framework for investments. In order to improve FSM in Sri Lanka, the following activities are recommended to minimize risks to public health and environmental pollution:

• Septic tank census – conduct a survey of septic tanks, advise households on appropriate emptying frequency, and provide estimates of the demand for fecal sludge collection and capacity to do so.
• Identify septic tanks that do not work and that should be repaired or renewed.
• Apply and enforce industrial standards for septic tanks.
• Implement, rehabilitate and renew fecal sludge treatment plants (FSTP) according to the data from the septic tank census.
• Contract qualified public or private service providers on a long-term basis to make FSM services more sustainable.

IWMI together with partners is working across South Asia to identify applied technologies and business models to sustain water and sanitation systems that will help drive progress towards meeting the UN’s SDG 6 for ‘clean water and sanitation for all’. These systems, however, do not have to copy what is common for instance in Europe. To flush sewer systems requires significant amounts of water which many regions and households cannot afford, in particular in areas of water scarcity that is exacerbated by climate change. Find out more in our latest report: Business models for fecal sludge management in India.

Andreas Ulrich – https://www.iwmi.cgiar.org/2020/11/modernizing-wastewater-treatment-in-sri-lanka/

New schedule: 21 to 26 March 2022

The postponement was decided in light of the evolution of the global Covid-19 pandemic, which has slowed down the Forum preparatory process and strained organizations into rescheduling introductory events, and in order to guarantee the best sanitary conditions for stakeholders.

As a reminder, this next Forum, placed under the theme “Water Security for Peace and Development”, will be the first to be held in sub-Saharan Africa. It will provide a platform for professionals and decision-makers to respond to the priority of accelerating and expanding access to water and sanitation for all. In an era marked by Covid-19, the Forum will also help build a resilient world where water is a central element that serves the basic needs of humankind and the planet.

The World Water Council expresses its gratitude and thanks the President of the Republic of Senegal, His Excellency Mr. Macky Sall, for his commitment and continued support for the Forum to be held under the best conditions and to achieve its objectives. This commitment confirms Senegal’s engagement in addressing water issues and making water a source of peace and not conflict.

It is also an opportunity to thank the partners and many organizations from around the world who are mobilized in the Forum preparatory process, especially in the development of the thematic content. Remarkable progress has already been achieved and all of those involved are encouraged to continue their work and participation in making the 9^th World Water Forum a historic success.

This exceptional mobilization will be punctuated in 2021 by numerous preparatory events on all continents to position water at the center of political decisions.

Senegal and the World Water Council are entirely committed, together with their partners, to ensure the Forum of Dakar – including its Heads of State summit – is held and responds to political priorities for the preservation and management of this major, yet threatened, resource.

March 10-11, 2021 in Singapore

The Premier Forum for Water Leakage and Smart Water Technologies

Welcome to the Asia-Pacific Smart Water Utilities 2021 Exhibition and Conference where global water utilities and network services will meet with water leakage experts and smart water technology providers in Singapore to explore efficient and cost-effective solutions for the water utilities industry.

Water is one of the most valuable resources across the globe and as rapid urbanization has led to the rise in water demand, pressures across the water network caused by climate change and ageing infrastructure have significantly impacted the availability of water. Non-revenue water (NRW) is water that is lost before it reaches end-users, with water leakage being a key contributor of global water loss, currently valued at $40 billion per year, which is now driving the demand for smart technology solutions.

The face of water supply networks is fast changing as operators navigate through the ‘digital water age’ and introduce new technologies across their water networks with advances in IoT and AI for network automation and control to efficiently manage and reduce water leakage. As operators work to meet new regulations and leakage targets, new initiatives towards more efficient water networks have become essential in order to an satisfy an ever-increasing demand for water.

With new developments in smart water technologies and technical know-how, recent advancements in leak detection offer new hope for water companies looking for operational efficiencies under challenging market conditions and to better manage their water networks. The Asia-Pacific Smart Water Utilities 2021 event is set to become the region’s leading exhibition and conference exclusively for water companies and smart water technology experts, to present new solutions for water leakage and how to develop smarter systems across their water networks.

To register: https://www.asia.smart-water-utilities.com/booking

The International Executive Master “Water for All” – OpT, promotion “Gérard PAYEN”, session 2019-2020 held by the AgroParisTech Chair “SUEZ – Management of Urban Water and Sanitation Services” organized its graduation ceremony in mondovision.

At the end of 14 months of training, the 7th graduating class of 37 water and sanitation managers from 12 English-speaking and 9 French-speaking countries graduated in an unprecedented ceremony broadcast in 21 countries at the same time.

This ceremony was punctuated by the presence of the founding members of the Chair: the SUEZ Group, the SUEZ Foundation and the Institute of Life Sciences and Industries of the Environment – AGROPARISTECH, as well as their emblematic mentor Mr. Gérard PAYEN, who has been a defender of access to drinking water for all throughout the world for more than 20 years!

Under the theme: The integration of maintenance and asset management

Date: 15 and 16 December 2020

Anywhere with a good internet connection!

Since its inaugural edition in 2002, the International Operations and Maintenance Conference in the Arab Countries (OMAINTEC) has continued to be the most important professional platform within the Arab region where experts, speakers, decision-makers, academics and specialists in operations and maintenance, facilities management and asset management meet to exchange experiences, enrich knowledge and showcase the latest technologies and developments within the field worldwide.

Under the theme of “The Integration of Maintenance and Asset Management“, the upcoming conference edition will be done virtually for the first time since its inception due to the repercussions inflicted by the COVID 19 pandemic. Through the conference’s virtual event platform, we are glad to offer speakers the chance to share with us their vision on the latest challenges, global trends, innovations and develop new procedures and technologies within the field of operations & maintenance and delegates with the ultimate unique experience virtually reproducing all live OMAINTEC event aspects.

Free registration here: http://omaintec.com/

Under the theme: The integration of maintenance and asset management

Date: 15 and 16 December 2020

Anywhere with a good internet connection!

Since its inaugural edition in 2002, the International Operations and Maintenance Conference in the Arab Countries (OMAINTEC) has continued to be the most important professional platform within the Arab region where experts, speakers, decision-makers, academics and specialists in operations and maintenance, facilities management and asset management meet to exchange experiences, enrich knowledge and showcase the latest technologies and developments within the field worldwide.

Under the theme of “The Integration of Maintenance and Asset Management“, the upcoming conference edition will be done virtually for the first time since its inception due to the repercussions inflicted by the COVID 19 pandemic. Through the conference’s virtual event platform, we are glad to offer speakers the chance to share with us their vision on the latest challenges, global trends, innovations and develop new procedures and technologies within the field of operations & maintenance and delegates with the ultimate unique experience virtually reproducing all live OMAINTEC event aspects.

Free registration here: http://omaintec.com/