UN 2023 WATER CONFERENCE - VIRTUAL SIDE EVENT

UN 2023 WATER CONFERENCE - VIRTUAL SIDE EVENT

Broadcasted on March 20th, 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM EDT

Managing water holistically is of foundational importance to food security, economic development, health, and well-being. Moving towards it requires mobilizing a community representative of the diverse interests in water: appreciating issues beyond siloed interests and not just anticipating trade-offs, but actively managing them.

This narrative is familiar in nearly every watershed in the world and invariably a conundrum. Shaped by the local complexity in hydrology, management, and policy, the path to healthy watersheds for each place will be unique but framed by common challenges, requirements, and aspirations.

In this virtual side event, we opened a space to share lessons learnt from approaches being adopted in different watersheds across the world by diverse actors to foster participatory and collaborative processes that bring multiple stakeholder groups together, focused on attaining agreed targets and objectives. The question really is: what’s your next move?

  • The first step towards mobilization is having a common vision. This panel discussion with explore the concept of a healthy watershed from different perspectives.

  • For this part of the session, we turn to the watersheds and hear experience of how the participatory and collaborative processes could grow in complexity.

  • The final panel of the session opens the questions of what will it take for us to move. And will discuss methods & tools, policy, and structure to create long-term commitment for change.

Program at-a-glance

#Mob4HealthyWatersheds Panel Speakers

PANEL 1: What are healthy watersheds?

Michael McClain is Chair Professor of Ecohydrology at IHE Delft Institute for Water Education in the Netherlands. His interests lie broadly in hydrology and the science and practice of ecohydrology to support integrated water resources management and sustainable development. His current work focuses mainly on assessing and providing the freshwater requirements of aquatic ecosystems. He routinely advises governmental authorities in a science and management context and leads research and development projects in Africa, Asia and South America.

James Dalton, is Director of IUCN's Global Water Programme. He has worked on water management for 20 years in over 25 countries.  He sits on the governance committee of the Hydropower Sustainability Assessment Protocol, the Board of the Alliance for Water Stewardship, the Board of the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation, as a Technical Advisor to the Climate Bonds Initiative, serves on CDP’s Water Security Advisory Council and is a member of the Advisory Board to the Dutch Governments Valuing Water Initiative. 

Kari Vigerstol is the Director of Water Security Science and Innovation for The Nature Conservancy’s global water program, strategically strengthening and advancing science behind the Conservancy’s source water protection and water scarcity strategies. Over the last 20+ years Kari has brought her technical skills and partnership building experience to dozens of watersheds around the world towards protecting water sources and improving water use and management.

Mary Beth Cote-Jenssen is a Sustainability Senior Manager at PepsiCo working to advance progress towards the ambitious pep+ water stewardship targets. Prior to PepsiCo she worked in the international development sector, leading the Partnerships and Development teams at NGO’s Root Capital and Water For People respectively. She began her career at Keurig Green Mountain, Inc. where she managed a portfolio of social and environmental programs and crafted supply chain partnerships to drive impact for value chain actors and coffee farming families around the world.

PANEL 2: A watershed moment?

Derek Vollmer is the senior director for Freshwater Science at Conservation International. Prior to joining CI, he was a doctoral researcher within the Future Cities Laboratory at the Singapore-ETH Centre for Global Environmental Sustainability. He holds a B.A. in Government and International Studies from the University of Notre Dame, a M.S. in Environmental Science and Policy from Johns Hopkins University, and a Ph.D. in Spatial Planning.

Eliza Roberts is the global water lead at Microsoft and is responsible for Microsoft’s Water Positive commitment. In this role, she leads investments in replenishment and water access and sanitation projects across the globe, advises businesses across the company on reducing water use, and advises Microsoft’s $1B Climate Innovation Fund (CIF) in making water-related investments. Eliza has extensive experience in water & agriculture and has led work in these areas at WSP, Ceres & Coca-Cola. Eliza has a BA in Environmental Policy and an MBA from the George Washington University School of Business.

Birhanu Zemadim Birhanu is a Senior Researcher at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) based in Accra, Ghana. He specialized in water and land management with over 15 years of professional and project management experience in Africa and Asia. Dr. Birhanu has been part of the development, implementation and evaluation of multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional donor-funded projects and scientific works related to hydrology, food security, and scaling agricultural water and land management technologies and practices.

Alexis Morgan is WWF’s Global Lead for Water Stewardship. In this role, he helps to lead corporate engagement on freshwater throughout the network and coordinate WWF’s network of over 40 staff working on water stewardship. Over his 20 years at WWF, he has led corporate partnerships, helped to establish the Alliance for Water Stewardship – where he was a member of the board, and also oversees WWF’s Water Risk Filter. He has published extensively on water stewardship, including on the links between water, value and strategy. He holds an MBA in Sustainable Business from York’s Schulich School of Business, and a masters degree in hydrological modelling from the University of Toronto.