Remember the line in the 60s song by Paul Simon about how a “man sees what he wants to see, and disregards the rest”? There was quite a lot of that in last week’s (somewhat macho) Stockholm trade fair and congress centre, during World Water Week 2011 – an event so well-practised that it induced one younger, 30-something (man) participant to dismiss it as “so 70s”.
True, the once-innovative format was the now safe one of “endless streams of … magazines” (Paul Simon, again), plus main events and seminars; of “side” events lacking any of the sparkle of being off-centre; a déjà-vu, somewhat passé, radical chic video studio; an exhibition of more repetitive boasts than actual solutions; a formal conference newspaper that was kept miles away from any journalist’s flair, eyes or ears … Do we have the time, and the will, to transform this event into something already worthy of the 2020’s? Or should we, as our brave pioneering peers once did so many years ago in a place called Stockholm, work our way towards another, new, platform for change? Surely being ahead of our time is better than being true to our past, in a world which has, after 15,000 years of technology, innovation and utility, delivered safe water to a minority of our people.
Urban-rural divide sometimes unhelpful
The Week’s urban focus seems to have been a pretext for the topic of household (and community) water treatment and safe storage to be left off much of its agenda, probably perceived, and wrongly so, as a rural-only issue. Was it also a pretext for most major, and most minor, players in HCWTS to stay away, thereby unconsciously confirming the fiction that we are only rural? Do neither parties see that water quality is more an issue of wealth, affordability and technology access than one of geography? Are we all prisoners of our own perceptions of the ‘other’?
To whom are we, both parties, doing justice when a major meeting of the water world ignores the cruel fact that HCWTS is the only viable choice for some 30% of poor urban populations whose water comes from backyard wells, not to mention for the financially better-off whose taps open onto diseased water grids? As long as safe piped water occupies the pages of promises and the pipelines of planners more than the last miles and metres of actual delivery, HCWTS is a key part of the agenda.
Extending awareness, expanding platforms
For 300in6, Stockholm was more an opportunity to extend awareness of HCWTS to new audiences and colleagues than to deepen cooperation with familiar contacts – although the too few who were with us were most welcome in our ever-busy stand and meetings. This freshness led to a change in our presence – more investment in developing bilateral contacts, especially in information partnerships, social impact capital and booster platform promotion, and three times more meetings than originally planned.
One of our meetings focused on how to tweak financial strategies into being part of booster platforms. Here the word ‘boost’ is all about factoring in new techniques, new forces and new levers, and not, repeat not, just doing more of the same, not just pumping more air into the tyre on the wheel we have already re-invented. Our closing meeting was a catch-up for interested parties in measuring, and mentoring, our progress since our creation almost 1,000 days ago in Istanbul. And, especially symbolically, sandwiched in between was a busy working session on the HCWTS Yearbook. There, potential data providers raised many useful points about data reliability, on the enforceability of standards, on how to interface with existing monitoring mechanisms which sometimes scrape the edge of what we represent and serve the growing HCWTS communities. Committed they were, and commit they did.
The Yearbook stands up, the stand ups the interest
By raising the credibility and visibility of such communities, the Yearbook is set, with proper stewardship, to be a key asset in promoting HCWTS in both new and familiar spaces. Was Stockholm, as a space, new or familiar to 300in6, and vice versa? We found new friends in familiar places, but using new terms which we should heed. We re-found long-time friends, happy to see our growing stand and presence. One common observation of old and new friends alike was how noticeable our stand was, with its nickname “One-Stop Shop for Solutions”. It was the only one with an objective display of working technologies (machines) and solutions to the problems which were being mentioned, or not, in the Powerpointed meeting rooms all around the exhibition space.
No wonder that our many visitors included virtually all the Directors of Ministries, and field practitioners, from Africa, Asia and Latin America who came to Stockholm seeking solutions.
