You recently visited the IWA World Water Congress and Exhibition. Based on your experiences there, why is the IWA important?
IWA was a massive event in which 10,000 water professionals and companies from a hundred different countries of the world participated. There were thought leaders who presented research findings as well as decision-makers, business representatives, and development partners. The topics that were discussed were cross-cutting. We discussed not only water consumption but also efficient usage of water, the connection between water and IT, and how to connect this with the finance sector. Altogether, it was the biggest global event about “Big Water”. These kinds of events are essential for us, especially when we are aiming to achieve SDG-6. It is crucial to align all relevant actors.
Many companies displayed products at the conference that can be adopted here in Bangladesh. The conference allowed us to build networks across the globe while at the same time providing us with the opportunity to represent our country as well. It was an amazing and desirable experience for me as a water professional.
Would you tell us about a few products that you thought could be useful for Bangladesh?
I have already started discussions on bringing a product that treats surface water with the help of solar energy to make it drinkable. If we can bring this technology on a large scale, then the operational cost of water treatment would decrease a lot. Think about flood water – so much water all around, but we cannot drink it. Importing this technology at a low cost is a vital thing that I am working on. Another technology I would like to talk about is wastewater treatment technology. We waste water a lot and companies at the conference demonstrated different ways to utilize wastewater.
The theme of the IWA 2022 conference was “water for smart livable cities”. How much has the water sector progressed in terms of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?
According to the SDGs, I would get quality water on my house premises, and everybody would have access to water. If we analyze the data, it seems that 98% of people have access to water but this is not quality water. Less than 10% of the population gets supplied with piped water, nationally. This, in a way, is a great obstacle on our way to attaining the SDGs, because to qualify for the SDG we must have quality water on our house premises, but we do not have it, especially in rural areas. So we have to go a long way on this.
What are some critical issues for the water sector?
In Bangladesh, water is the sector most harmed because of climate change but we are never worried about drinking water. We are more stressed about carbon emissions and think planting trees is the solution to the problem.
The second thing is that the primary users of water are women, be it drinking water or water for hygiene. If there is no drinking water, then the primary victims are women. However, it seems that we are failing to address this.
One big reason for this is that there are few women at the senior or decision-making levels. We have to give them work and build capacity to prepare our women workforce for the future.
At COP27, all countries come together to act toward achieving the world's collective climate goals. What do you think Bangladesh can do to achieve these?
Bangladesh is contributing in a multitude of ways. Our prime minister Sheikh Hasina herself and the negotiators are not only representing Bangladesh but also other vulnerable countries in different forums. They are working to identify our problems. But after the holistic discussions, we get a lot of commitments like climate-vulnerable countries will be given ‘x' million dollars fund, they will get this and that, but these commitments are never realized. We are going, participating, and discussing, but not getting any positive net results.
Water is a central theme at COP27. How are you planning to engage and use this moment to mobilize finance for climate vulnerable areas of Bangladesh?
The Bangladesh government has planned to attend almost 20 sessions at COP27, and many entities will be joining there. We will also participate. We are going to show case studies of what measures people took locally to address climate change and how the measures helped them to survive. Apart from this, we have tried to do another thing - an analysis. On global platforms, what happens is that we often say that climate change is causing deadly extravagant harm to us, but we fail to show any hard evidence and figures or numbers that show climate change cost us this amount this year. So, what we are trying to do is to start small.