Water is a finite resource. With a growing population, an expanding global middle class and a rise in energy and industrial production, the demand for water is reaching new levels. According to the OECD, global demand for freshwat...
When is a water system smart? At a minimum, if it produces an acceptable product while minimizing energy and other resource requirements. It’s a system that should respond rapidly to disturbances and recover quickly after a majo...
As a young wastewater engineer at the Water Supply and Sewerage Company in Korça, the largest city in South-Eastern Albania, I was given my first real opportunity to develop my practical skills as well as the ability to provide s...
Matsue city, Japan, 1 August 2015: “Earthquake alarm!” On 1 August 2015, Japan’s national water day, 32 households in a neighbourhood of Matsue city, near beautiful Lake Shinji, discovered they were without running wa...
The importance of ensuring everyone has access to sustainable clean water, safe sanitation, and is able to practice safe hygiene (or WASH as it is commonly known) is widely accepted. Sustainable Development Goal 6 is the most rece...
It was almost the end of March, and I was ready for the typical complaint from my parents living in Lima, “it is so cold!” they would say, even when March is only the beginning of autumn in Peru. It is not like Peruvians enjoy...
If my academic and professional experience has taught me anything, it is that Noam Chomsky got it right when he said, “We have two choices. We can be pessimistic, give up, and help ensure that the worst will happen. Or we can be...
Cities today face many competing demands. They must ensure enough food and water to sustain growing populations, plan to adapt and mitigate impacts of climate change, and build attractive urban centres. Financing projects in citie...
The Sustainable Development Goals are driving us to ambitious outcomes, one of which is to guarantee access to safe drinking water and sanitation for all. In Buenos Aires, Argentina, achieving universalization of both services mea...
The world is becoming more urban, and so, many reason, the challenge of sustainability will be largely won or lost in cities. A decisive factor for cities inherently in flux to be sustainable will be their adaptive capacity to ret...