This content was originally published on The Resilience Shift website. The Resilience Shift, a 5-year programme supported by Lloyd’s Register Foundation and hosted by Arup, transitioned at the end of 2021 to become Resilience Rising. You can read more about The Resilience Shift’s journey and the transition to Resilience Rising here.
At this year’s World Urban Forum, The Resilience Shift will be partnering to share a platform with the Water as Leverage for Resilient Cities Asia programme, initiated by the Netherlands government, to talk about this and other innovative solutions to the challenges of urban water resilience including the City Water Resilience Approach.
See event flyer for World Urban Forum Side Event on 12 February 2020
So what is Water as Leverage? We asked them to tell us more about their international collaborative approach for local climate adaptation action, and related work in India, Indonesia and Bangladesh.
The story started with the urgency and notion that the climate crisis is a water crisis. Climate change induced floods, droughts, pollution, famine, disease and conflict are all related to water, and combined with rapid and unplanned urbanization can result in not only catastrophic events, but threats to life and livelihoods on Earth.
According to Henk Ovink, Special Envoy for International Water Affairs of the Netherlands and co-founder of Water as Leverage: “Worldwide, water is the connecting challenge, the number one global risk and the opportunity for transformative and sustainable impact and comprehensive cultural change. Therefore we need to start understanding the challenges and identify the opportunities that will help build resilient cities through a systematic approach, in all its complexities.’
In order to better plan and organize around water in cities, Water as Leverage for Resilient Cities Asia (WaL) is an inaugural effort to bridge innovative financing, inclusive design, and government collaboration in the development and implementation of projects that mitigate the impacts and adapt to the effects of climate change.
Dennis van Peppen, Lead Water Programmes at Netherlands Enterprise Agency, said, “Safeguarding the water we have in the supplies we need is a formidable task. But it also an opportunity: an opportunity to use water as leverage to improve our ecosystems, grow our economies, boost agricultural efficiencies, and tackle inequity.”
International financial institutions as well as local, regional, and national governments, local communities, NGOs, and private sector firms, were involved in the embryonic stages of the programme, contributing to multidisciplinary teams’ initial analyses of systemic risks and unique opportunities in three cities in Asia.
Chennai (India), Semarang (Indonesia), and Khulna (Bangladesh) have provided a fertile testing ground for sowing the seeds of WaL that aims to balance long-term comprehensive urban planning with short-term innovative transformations and ambitious climate adaptation and mitigation plans with bankable projects that set a precedent for integrative design, financing, and governance in Asian cities that can be scaled up and replicated in regions worldwide.
Over the coming year, in partnership with the Global Center on Adaptation’s Year of Action, and alongside other innovative approaches such as the City Water Resilience Approach, WaL will mobilise political, technical and financial support to start the implementation of these innovative, climate-resilient and scalable solutions.
Water as Leverage are partnering with The Resilience Shift to host the World Urban Forum Side Event Session:
Climate Action: Accelerating Urban Water Resilience in Asia, Africa and beyond: two approaches in theory and in practice: Water as Leverage / City Water Resilience Approach
Date: Wednesday 12 February 2020
Time: 12.30-13.30 (local time)
Location: Hall 2, Room Number 1
Session information including panellists
More about the City Water Resilience Approach
For more information on Water as Leverage: please follow us on twitter @waterasleverage or visit our website: www.waterasleverage.org
All photography by Cynthia van Eck provided by Water as Leverage.
