Joint action towards knowledge managementDr. Inga Jacobs [ingaj@wrc.org.za]Executive Manager: Business Development, Marketing & CommunicationWater Research Commission

18 March 2013

Second NEPAD SANWATCE e-Conference on Knowledge Management in the Southern African water sector

18th-22nd March

Key water challenges

Increasing water scarcity and water stressGrowing population and accelerating demandInefficiencies in water allocationSpatial and temporal availabilityWe use renewal resources at a much higher rate than what is sustainableLack safe water and adequate waste water managementPollutionClimate change

Hum ResCapacityShortfall

Technological

Knowledge

Technical

Management

And we still live in a world where:

2.6 billion people lack adequate sanitationRoughly 800 million people lack safe drinking

waterOne billion people go to bed hungry3 billion people are undernourished60% of ecosystem services are deteriorating One billion people are obeseBetween 30 – 50% food produced is wasted

In order to address our current

challenges we need to both do

different things as well as do the

things we currently do differently.

R Mershalkar, former DG CSIR India

Key questions we have to ask ourselves

What is the impact of our research? How do others perceive the impact?

How do we go about measuring impact?

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German

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France

Spain

Australi

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Japan

Netherl

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South Korea

Taiw

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Switz

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Greece

South Afri

ca

Belgium

Swed

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2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

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10530

3619

2779 27542486 2348

2097 2027 20241796 1655

1340 1286979 914

751 726 707 677 650 598

Country

Num

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SA’s water research is ranked 19th in the world

Researchersnot being

heard

Economy andSociety not

Being served

The Knowledge Chasm

Building transdisciplinary capacity (what and why)

Multiplicity of actors, perceptions, interests and power disparities (who)

Multiplicity of scale (how)

The nature of collaboration

• Traditionally, the technical and scientific communities have been called on to respond to the concerns of the water sector.

• Emerging challenges and complexities are demanding more integrated levels of ingenuity and expertise from a diverse set of backgrounds.

Building Transdiscplinary Capacity

Multiplicity of actors, perceptions, interests and power disparities

Recommended conceptualization of the

main actors in the policy-making process

• Tendency to prioritise the hydrological basin as the primary unit of analysis but this notion is broadening in scope to include the unique socio-political and socio-economic communities they have formed: from the watershed-to the problemshed-to the virtual basin-to the social basin.

• Changing definition of international river basins – encompassing “lived in” social spaces i.e. The sum of social practices and discourses that exist within the biophysical space.

The multiplicity of scale

• Basins are part of an increasingly complex landscape of policies, trading relations and sectoral demands.

• This institutional complexity presents challenges but also opportunities for the water sector to increasingly integrate with other sectors in terms of decision-making in agriculture, energy, industry and urban development in particular.

Bringing Water onto the Regional Integration Agenda

Summary

• There is a need to address important resource questions in an integrated manner. Challenge is to move from policy to action.

• One size does not fit all.• Need to interrogate both institutional

hardware and software.• Pressures on the resource will be huge, but

this will also present an opportunity to harness water effectively in support of economic growth and development.