Johan Kuylenstierna on ‘making the connections’

Johan L. Kuylenstierna is moderating and participating in several events at World Water Week. In this interview, he draws on SEI’s work and on his own insights and experience to identify key challenges of the ‘nexus’ – and how SEI can help policy-makers tackle them.

Q: SEI has framed its message for World Water Week as ‘water connects the dots’. What does that mean, and what do you think SEI brings to this conference?
A: I think SEI is quite well suited to address exactly what World Water Week is about this year. There is an interconnectedness between water, food, energy and many other aspects – climate change, urban development, to name two. There are other organizations with more specialized knowledge of water; the strength we bring is that we place water in the context of development and the environment – water connects the challenges we face with regard to food security, energy security and development.

Q: How well do policy-makers understand these linkages?
A: When we talk with policymakers and people in other sectors, such as those focused on urban development, energy or agriculture, water is clearly on their agenda. This is something they understand, that water is a key resource in development. What is lacking is a sense of how to balance competing demands and conflicts between sectors use water.

Q: How do you strike that balance?
A: You can do that by fostering interaction between them, joint planning, and more efficient resource planning. That is what we are still lacking today. It is one thing to understand that there is a problem. Being able to address it is completely different. Then you also have short-term vs. long-term goals. That’s where the conflict is. It’s not lack of understanding, but lack of capacity to deal with it that is the problem.

Q: Why do you think it’s difficult?
A: In many developing countries, it comes from the fact that there is such a strong focus on rapid development. There is a massive demand for rapid development, so you look for quick solutions. And then you put aside any long-term sustainability issues: ‘We will cope with that along the way’. In developed countries, meanwhile, there are challenges in changing consumption patterns. This is not unique to water. It is very difficult to change behaviours. But on both sides, mostly it’s pure economics.

Q: How do you change the economic picture?
A: One of the most important aspects is how you value water, and the fact that often water is seen as a free resource. With other natural resources, there is some kind of market that still ensures some kind of efficiency: when demand increases, prices increase, and that puts pressure on industry or on development to become more efficient. But with water this is often lacking, because water is still undervalued.

It’s important to realize that when we talk about water as a market, we’re not talking about the provision of drinking water, to guarantee that to all people. That’s a small fraction of global water consumption. Agriculture takes 70% of the water; industry takes 20%. Shouldn’t they pay for it? Why should large-scale commercial farming be subsidized when it comes to water resources?

Q: Are there specific discussions at World Water Week that you’re looking forward to?
A: Yes, I think the discussion related to how you can actually bring together the very different pressures on water resources, in particular from energy and food production – that dialogue is particularly interesting. How can you not just increase efficiency, but also plan together rather than independently? Another interesting topic is trans-boundary planning. Can the increasing pressure on water resources foster more collaboration among riparian states? There’s a political dimension there and a security dimension. We will have people representing some of the major river basins of the world – the Nile, the Mekong. It will be very interesting to see whether pressure on water resources can increase not only conflict but also collaboration between states.

Q: What are your goals for SEI at World Water Week?
A: I hope that we will prove ourselves to be a very credible knowledge partner when it comes to dealing with the whole nexus perspective – that we have the right competences and capacity to really support governments and other organizations. It would also be good to engage new users of our tools – if, for example, new countries or other partners learned about the WEAP-LEAK linkage and said, ‘This is something that we really need, that we want to test and try’. That would be fantastic.

And World Water Week also provides valuable inputs: What are the major research questions out there? What are governments asking for? Where are the knowledge gaps? Where do we need more capacity, and how might that influence how we shape our work? So it’s not just for us to demonstrate what we can do, but it is also equally important for us to get a better understanding of the key challenges.

Read more about SEI at World Water Week 2012 »