 Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. Very welcome to the concluding panel session of the Sixth International Capacity Development Symposium. I would like to welcome you here and I hope that you're also able to participate in different ways. Today we have a panel for you all together. Unfortunately, there are a couple of people who have joined because that's being a minister of water resources and if they can't be called then I'm so happy. So, unfortunately, Dr. Jesper, minister from Sudan, is not able to join us today and also Owen Sanjesuon, host director of the Global Climate Fund, is also not able to join us today because she had to go to the hospital personally, so she had to look after that. We also still expect two more participants to join us and we will introduce them. We would like to welcome very much Mr. Henk Ofink, who is the employee of the Netherlands on the issue of water. Very welcome, Henk. I would like to welcome Dr. Sina Sriniglasen, who is a senior researcher in Bangalore, in India. Very welcome. I would like to welcome Dr. Silver Mugisha, who is managing the rest of the national water supervision appropriation. I would like to welcome Brito, who is the regional director of the United States of UNESCO and as you can see, all around the world. So I hope that with this quite nice international setup we are also able, you, to provide something also on the issues that we have discussed at the moment. I am sitting here with Gheorgh, who is my co-director today, and on my right hand side is there is the reporter of the day, but also and what I want to do is to ask you to explain very briefly those who are following the live screen, how they can interact. Yes, hello everyone and thanks for joining. So if anyone wants to ask any questions during the session, you can go to the page you came from when you followed the link and at the bottom of this page there is a chat feed. You can ask your questions there and our moderator will ask them to our panel members and in doing so please use the following format, type Q, then the name of the panelist you would like to ask your question to, and your question. So that's it and thank you again. Okay, thank you very much Jasper and well, okay, Tom Konello also joined us in the panel. Tom is the chief of the water sector group of teaching departments and I'm just going to put this in Tokyo. So what I wanted to do today with the panel is to go over a little bit the outcomes of the symposium that are reflected within the 2020 DEFTA agenda for action, action agenda that's trying to develop and to provide a way in how further improve the knowledge capacity for the water sector. We think that's also one of the outcomes of this course is that if we want to, for example, control number six, we need to discuss in a different way how we can do that. One of the ways to do that is to strengthen capacity development. So that's one of the before I move to the panel, I would like to ask Mr. Helen, if you could brief overview of what is in the DEFTA agenda until now. The DEFTA agenda is a different department. So the panel is the people who participated in the symposium are owners of the agenda, but also the panel of public that are listening in can contribute and we can still take that up also later on. Thank you very much, Eddie. As I say, the symposium I think has always been a little bit of a mix between octaking of what we know about capacity development, but also a little bit of a meeting of the community itself and to discuss in action in practice what should be done next. So this is also why this document is not a conference but an agenda for action and maybe it's also a little bit of homework for ourselves and participating organizations. As was mentioned before, this is a document that has been built during the conference, but that cannot be created still. So there is a lot of time to comment on it. And also thank you very much for everybody who in the survey and some people have substantive I just do a short check. Can you hear Eleanor Well? The sound is very bad, but I would ask everybody to mute. Also our friends from Asia, Africa and the rest, because it seems that there's a disturbance in the sound. Can you mute? So it's on the bottom left of your screen. I cannot do it from here for you, unfortunately. Then in terms of the content of the agenda, I should mention that the key connecting themes that we have collected from the discussions, most of them are really not new. These are topics that we have been discussing for a long time, which maybe is also a good thing because that means our agenda is evolving, but we don't have to throw out everything that we have been doing for the past decades and start fresh. But as always, there are different flavors, different aspects that are highlighted in different stages of the discussion. I'd like to point three of them to kind of have been as strong, let's say, sense in also how things were discussed. The first thing I would like to pick out is the question of complexity and wickedness and the need for integration in the water area, which again is a very longstanding topic, the call to integrate different aspects to include all sorts of groups in water related decision making. But the sense that came out of the discussion is that maybe there was a past when this was a little bit of a kind of an appeal and an ideal and right now with water related disasters piling up with the lessons of the COVID-19 crisis and also with a hard-nosed calculation that maybe the destruction of natural infrastructure is faster than the build-up of human infrastructure, that integration is actually really a matter of survival. And if the current status quo and silo thinking is becoming, I think, lethal was a term that Hank used at some point, which also makes the question, how we bring systems thinking into practice becomes a very more pragmatic question. The second point that I would like to pick out of the different rich discussions is related to the impact of particular capacity development activities and the enabling factors that turn knowledge into the solutions in particular institutional embedding and how it can be achieved to the human side of practices and how it is also included in training and investments often mentioned. But this is also connected to the question of the kind of the downside of efficiency and this mentality to say what gets measured, gets managed. Because a lot of the things that we do in capacity development are complicated, they are long-term and they are very hard to measure. And so there is always the choice to do the things that are easy to measure or to actually pick up the challenge and find out how we can measure the complicated stuff. And maybe I can be a little bit flippant and summarize some of the discussions as can we please finally, after 20 years, get on with finding out how to measure the hard stuff and get away from the head pounds. And finally, the last topic, I think it was very strong was also the sense of the moment, the global pandemic that is still ongoing. And there is this global crisis maybe so disruptive that it is also a chance to disrupt the business as usual. We have incredible resources mobilized. How can we now say, okay, let's not mobilize it to recreate something that does not work? Where should these mobilized resources go to create a new status quo? So maybe also in the practical recommendations that I think will be on the focus of the discussion, can we point certain directions where we say we should shift allocation and funding and attention and effort to really bring also capacity development to a new trajectory? Yes. Thank you, Ellen. What I would like to do now is there's a key, sorry, I'm playing around a little bit here. But what I would like to do is I would like to ask the panelists actually to give a short reflection and not only what Ellen just said now, but also on the agenda that you may have read. Maybe for the public, the question that I posed the panelists in there is could you say something about the conclusions and recommendations of the 2020 Delta agenda? And then in the form, are they significant, implementable, consist with policies, innovative and complete, but then especially for your region of the world? So try to keep it close to yourself. And we're quite interested to that. And I will give you the floor one by one, but I would like to start with Ms. Tannick Ovi, the special envoy for the Netherlands on water. Then what I would like to ask him as well is if he could maybe also reflect a little bit on how, for example, the EU water agenda is also colliding maybe and may strengthen actually the agenda we're developing here or the other way around. Thank you for if yours. Thank you, Eddie, Guy and the whole team, Ellen at IHE. I don't want to go too long, but I do want to thank you for organizing this whole symposium. It's been a true trajectory and a pleasure. I said before, it sometimes was complicated to get in or looked complicated, but joining all these conversations, panels was great. So thank you for that. To your point, Eddie, and thanks, Ellen, for listing the three main challenges. This is immediately built on. We had the UN Dessa, UN water organized with a lot of our member states event last Friday at the UN virtually on water in the context of the decade of action. And of course, the COVID situation was front and center of all the debates, not only as a focus of where we should put our attention, but also as a mechanism to your third point, Ellen, to shy away from investing in stupid infrastructure that's going to make us more vulnerable and in that sense, lethal. I see four challenges in the current situation also coming from the debate is that we need immediate relief around the world. But relief actions are by definition band-aid and they create deep cuts into the existing programs and budgets and undermine the continuity, consistency, and therefore sustainable development. So the aid is immediately stopping existing programs or pausing them in the most positive sense. There's an opportunity, link these existing programs we already have in the place in the most vulnerable places and link them to COVID relief. Second, knowing that there's an economic downturn and the GDP of GDPs around the world are falling down. That means that ODA aid and other budgets domestic investments will drop. At the same time, we know there's a massive amount of economic stimulus packages being prepared from the public and sector multilaterals. I advise MDBs and private sector. So bouncing back from this crisis and the word resiliency can really be our best effort and then most vulnerable sectors and places globally demand our first attention. So then only then this crisis can be a turning point and investing in the weakest link becomes a lever for needed development. Third, COVID relief and response is reactive and it is responding to a crisis we're in or responding to a crisis we just overcome. It's often single focused and it's not deployed or developed from the SDGs, the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement perspective. And again here, Water brings this opportunity to look across the SDGs and this was in all contributions last Friday, but also in the symposium, connecting short-term and urgent response and recovery to long-term sustainability demands this capacity, this enabling environment, this ownership, public and private. But there's an opportunity now so we can make the connection between what we do now in the context of COVID relief and response in this perspective of the 2030 Agenda that's a real opportunity. It's also a choice and it does mean that we shy away from vested interests that are vested in the past and continue on our efforts to look to the future last. COVID response and recovery is fast. We hear the word speed, it has to happen now and that is a big challenge because in the mix with it being aimed at economic recovery and jobs, jobs, jobs, it means we take off the shelf ready-made projects and those off the shelf ready projects are stupid infrastructure projects and they really make the world more vulnerable as we see and there is not yet a pipeline of sustainable catalytic interventions and this is also putting a spotlight or a magnifying glass not only on the disasters and the crisis we face but also on the weak enabling environment, the weak capacity, public and private and the weaker coalitions and partnerships we have because in the midst of this crisis and in the opportunity for economic recovery if the only thing we fall back on is the existing off the shelf stupid infrastructure projects we just lost it and we just lost the momentum so there is an urgent need and call for this SDG proof pipeline of projects an integrated inclusive and sustainable approach for action in a global coalition multilateral world. Well you know that I as a water employee of course stand with the water agenda and the complexity is critically important we have to understand these interdependencies. WASH is a first line of defense but also a first line of recovery it's bridging the gap on gender on youth on health on security in all those places where it's weakest link but we lag behind with billions of people lacking access to safe drinking water sanitation and hygiene and second water is a connector across the 2030 agenda making those linkages the man's capacity so investing in an enabling environment is investing in the right projects if we invest the millions in the people that suffer most but also can bring relief then we can invest in a pipeline of sustainable projects so it's the people and the projects that go hand in hand and capacity that is needed for that. I stop here there's more to say of course but I look forward to the further discussion. Okay thank you very much Hank and I think you also managed to bring the four challenges together in one nice sentence in the end so look forward to come back to that later on. I would like to pass on the words to Dr. Fina Srinivasan who is Senior Research Fellow at Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment in Bangalore, India. Fina the floor is yours. Thank you thank you Eddie and also for the opportunity to be part of this panel. I think firstly it was a really interesting set of discussions and panel discussions last week very very large number of high quality and new ideas and I looked through the DELF agenda and I think there's a lot of exciting material there so really look forward to seeing how that gets taken forward. So I'll start with COVID-19 and the new normal because everybody's kind of talking about how do we get to a new normal and I think as several have said and you Eddie said yourself that we need to get away from this disease of gigantism I think that's been shown to be a problem and that you know in the context of climate change is just going to be an even bigger problem. So I saw in one of the talks and I might have been Hank Owings about this concept of rebuild by design and I think that's a nice idea to say if we're going to rebuild the new normal how do we do that intentionally how do we design intentionally and I think that involves a few different pieces one of them is to be able to explicitly disbandle whatever the structure is that is currently perpetuating this disease of stupid infrastructure projects or gigantism or however you want to put it. So how do we think about what we are going to do to be able to dismantle that structure. The second is I really like what Ellen just said about doing what counts instead of doing what's easily counted and I think that if we want one of the biggest problems and the reasons why we have stupid infrastructure projects is in you know we have a large engineering infrastructure both in terms of the educational and university and the way we train engineers as well as the consultancy firms and so on that know how to model and build and design big infrastructure. What we don't have is good standards and so on that can do the more difficult stuff that involves you know the mixture of green and gray infrastructure and so on and I think one of the problems is until we develop those standards and we were able to count success in those more new approaches I think that's going to be difficult and I think investing in that so that then we are able to systematically incorporate this new rebuild and this new form of design that's really going to be important. I heard Eddie Morris talk about systemic thinking I think that's absolutely important because the minute you but the minute you move away from structures to thinking about systems you start seeing unintended consequences feedbacks how the entire system is going to evolve in response to any investments that are made and so on and that becomes really important but that requires a whole different generation of engineers and and what sector professionals that are able to firstly think in a systemic way but then also act in a systemic way and one thing that I think could be strengthened a little further in the Delta Delta agenda it did come up in several of the panel discussions and talks is this idea of collaborative leadership or partnerships or coalition several speakers referred to it and so to move away from thinking about only individual leadership but also group and collaborative leadership because I think often we think about systemic thinking as only an intellectual exercise we draw the diagrams and you know I knew I know it's a new fashion to be able to do that and sometimes we're able to do that on paper but when it comes to putting four people in a room together to agree on almost anything becomes impossible so I think what does it take to make systemic acting important is also important so those are the three things I want to say about the new normal I wanted to just commend the the group on putting together a few specific points which I think are debatures in the new normal one of them I was delighted to see the focus on quality over quantity in capacity building this is something we encountered all the time in India where we find that people lack basic thinking skills and unless you equip individuals to be able to think you're not going to get at any of that contextual problem solving or contextual design that we all think is really important. The second thing is of course the recognition that organizations are comprised of individuals and so a lot of the capacity building and the mindset change began begins with people so a lot of focus on leadership skills and soft skills I was really happy to see that and I think that's an extremely important part of capacity building which tends to be historically has been counting people and then on very technical capacity building programs finally I was really delighted to see the specific emphasis on leadership training for both women and youth as well as for water sector professionals and civil society as well those I think are important constituents all of those and have historically been neglected but anything that we can do to put tools and capacity in the hands of the most vulnerable I think ultimately they are the best agents for their own change and the best advocates for themselves and I think whatever we can do to capacitate all of those particularly weak sectors is going to be ultimately lead to a better solution. So I think I'll stop my remarks there but thank you again and look forward to for the discussion. Thank you Fina I think I appreciate that you gave a quite nice summary actually on a number of topics that we have been discussing and I already heard a couple of things that I think we should also start to implement at IG so we'll come back to that later on since we should do I would like to move to the to the next speaker and the next speaker is Dr. Silva Gisha he's the managing director of the Uganda National Water and Sewage Corporation and I already had some discussions with Dr. Silva when I was visiting him and I know he has some very clear ideas also about what could be a next development there so I'm very interested to hear from you the floor is yours Dr. Silva and your mic is on me thank you oh thank you very much can you hear me very well oh thank you very much and I think I'm happy to see the faces I'm familiar with Professor Alex is there the professor who was my professor when I was doing my master's at UNESCO IHE I'm happy to see you even you Eddie I remember the good times we had here in Kampara and congratulations for this successful symposium we definitely do appreciate and do thank you for the good work you have done to come up to this point COVID-19 of course has come as a big big disruption in the way we do our business here but at the same time it has also helped us to see the world in a different way to look at the way we do things and maybe by the time we get out of this we shall be better persons better people in the way we think and in the way we handle water challenges I want to address myself to your specific question and I must say I've read through the agenda and I find most of the conclusions and recommendations very significant consistent with policies especially here the policies we have here innovative and implementable as far as I'm concerned here in the African region but I want to give about three three comments as the footnote to both the the the challenges and the recommendations you make and one is the need to underline the role of adaptive leadership we need to put particular emphasis on adaptive leadership that focuses on creating incentives to surface issues and conflicts I think this is should be a work we as leaders how would we continuously surface issues problems and conflicts and how can we I think as the water practitioners we cannot run away from confronting brutal facts about water challenges we face there are definitely very serious issues and COVID-19 has has exposed us I think even more capacity development efforts of the future must be premised on a hard reality that solutions to water problems are non-linear solutions to water problems are non-linear they require mobilization of the right on the compatible mindsets and clearly for me especially here in Uganda the best incentive for continuous improvement is to work on the assumption that there are more unknowns than knowns about what needs to be done to achieve the SDGs if you assume that you you now know things then of course it will stop your thinking capacity so for me I think we would work on the premises that there are more knowns and we work very hard to discover some of these things secondly we need to appreciate the fact that different regions are at different development levels capacity development efforts must live with the reality that different regions are at different distances from the best productivity possibility frontier definitely the western world is very very different from Africa it is very different from Asia it is very different from America and so on so forth consequently capacity development efforts need to be tailored to local context and I think this issue came out very very clearly in the challenges and recommendations that are being made here we must emphasize local ownership for effective change management the goal of capacity development there are for all to be geared towards next practice every company must work towards the next better practice rather than the best practice and there's a big difference here if we focus on next practice even those companies which are saying they are doing well they will definitely be looking for ways of doing better but if you focus on best practice there is a possibility that you can deceive yourself that you have reached there so every company must be looking for ways of doing better and lastly we need to align capacity development efforts and here I am going to be a bit unfair to you because it will be touching the way you handle your things in IHE there the current capacity development segment of research and learning is heavily distracted by misaligned objectives of participants the students you have there whose inherent target is generally capacity development rather personal career development the participants you have here you have there if you ask most of them they are not only looking at achievement of Sdgs they are looking at how they can get to degrees and go home and get a better paycheck and I can tell you the this mindset can be quite disruptive in championing efforts towards achievement of Sdgs there's a need for closer collaboration between the world of work and the training institution like IHE so that there is increased emphasis on practical skills and competencies advanced research efforts like what you do there leading to PhDs are good in that they sharpen skills of learning how to learn when you get a PhD you definitely you get better training in learning how to learn and ask right questions it also helps you to develop that skill but there is a need to tailor to tailor those kind of researchers so that they can yield knowledge products that inspire adaptive thinking in the world of work most often these PhDs are really irrelevant to the world of work in different countries you might get somebody from Africa doing a PhD in in in in in Europe about disarmation for example why when there is no disarmation in in Africa so these researchers are good in as far as they sharpen our skills to learn how to learn to think critically but I think the knowledge products that come out need to be a source of inspiration for the water sector in a place like Africa I think I want to stop here and I would be happy to continue interacting thank you very much thank you very much I think that was an quite inspiring talk that you gave I also think with some things to think about and I think there are some challenges that you also put on the plate here that we need to think about how we can pick them up so thank you very much for that I would like to pass on to the next speaker and the next speaker is Dr Lydia Brito Dr Brito is the regional director of Latin America for UNESCO and she's sitting in Montevideo the floor is yours thank you very much and good morning to everybody or good night it's really a pleasure to be here and thanks for for inviting me to to be part of the several panels and now it is concluding panel my heart is with IHE for many many decades and this is good to see that you continue to be in the upfront of discussing discussing difficult issues thank you again also for for bringing this agenda this depth agenda for for action uh I I think it it makes us think what are we doing what can we do better and and what is missing in all all our programs uh to say that the discussions and I think my my previous panelists have already introduced some of the topics I wanted to put forward but I think that the fact that is a living document is quite important and I liked very much the the three points uh the talent put forward because I think that they are in my view uh basillers for any any plan of action in capacity building and production of knowledge uh so allow me to to bring because our office here is a science office it's about science uh and the first point I would like to to put forward Eddie is that I believe that on the on the depth action agenda for action we should put knowledge production in a stronger way because if we want to transform we need knowledge to transform we can transform just the sake of transformation we need knowledge to transform and and this was said by the last speaker it has to be knowledge that is relevant to the situations and the contexts where we are doing the transformation so I would say that we need also to call in this agenda to for more resources in knowledge production everywhere in the world and in making the interactions of capacity building as an opportunity to really create new knowledge uh the second point that I think it's it's already captured by the agenda but would be refined is the issue related to leadership so it's more than knowing how to build big dams or big infrastructure it's also to understand and to lead and to mobilize the energies that you need in order to solve the problems that you are facing and I think this crisis has shown us uh how how much we need that leadership how much do we need the ability to to really mobilize the wheels and the capacities and the energy of people in order to solve very complete problems and in this case the lack of water for millions of people uh and I think that's that's another point that I think the agenda is already covering but should be go further in my view in again linking leadership to the ability to mobilize knowledge and to create the space to produce knowledge uh the third point that the talent mentioned and in our panel was also discussed uh was the issue of integration and that brings back to what Vina said about how do we train our engineers how do we train our water managers and practitioners the being able to see the bigger picture in order to take decisions you know in a strategic way means that you have to have education systems that really brings different aspects of development to maybe a much more narrow field of engineering uh and and I think this discussion and I remember when I was in the board of IAG we used to have this discussion we need to have uh more than just engineering skills uh in the in our in our alumni and even in our uh professors and our researchers uh and and I think this is part of of the changes that I think Yang was speaking about uh that when you look to the agenda 23rd agenda it's it's an agenda that you can separate uh whatever you do it will impact positively or negatively in one or another development goal uh and to be able to see development in that integrated way uh and at the same time uh the connections that you can get from investing uh in some of the aspects of the agenda is a positive way to to to go beyond what you you are able to achieve so far in development so integration of of capacity building programs integration of policies uh integration of science and looking at science much more in a trans disciplinary way uh will definitely help uh to to push a very important agenda for capacity building worldwide uh and and finally uh just to to to to wrap up this first intervention uh I also would say that uh when you look to to the proposed agenda uh there is something that I really really uh commend you and is how to start co-designing solutions the fact that you are proposing that communities are involved that you know managers at different levels are are involved that governments and civil society are involved the fact that you are talking about and I think Vina uh also spoke about it when she spoke about relations partnerships I think this is a a transformative point uh cooperation among actors is fundamental but more than that we need co-designing solutions uh in because it will make them more relevant more impactful they will make them sustainable and I think most of all it will build trust it will build common purpose it will build also the resilience that I think it was anchor also that mentioned uh so so I think this is a very strong point uh that you brought to the agenda and and I hope it will stay there and definitely committed to advance on that because that's what we are trying to do here in our region thank you very much thank you uh Lydia and uh again I think uh also you mentioned a couple things I found it quite nice that you also linked it up to some of the earlier speakers so thank you for that I'll come back to that also later on um I would like to go to our next panel member and I appreciate that you already picked up the advice to bring in the youth a little bit more in the capacity development I think you're starting at a really young age now but I would very much appreciate Tom's presence here Tom Panela is the chief water sector group of the Asian Development Bank and I think you're in Tokyo at the moment so very welcome and I would like to give the floor to you Tom yeah thanks uh Adi and Guy and uh yeah and Kyoto actually but kind of COVID refugees actually from the Philippines and with that multitasking as you can see so um anyway but I appreciate uh the opportunity to be here I also really appreciate uh the symposium and the talks and what you were trying to achieve because I think uh when it comes to capacity development it is as all of us know one of the most important things that we can engage in professionally to bring about sustainable change um but you know the years I've worked in development I consistently ask myself what is capacity development how do we achieve it how do we know we're achieving it and I think forcing us to ask these questions are a good thing a couple of things from the agenda and I think it's quite important and it was touched on is um you know how do you know you're looking at forward solutions not while you're teaching best practice you're teaching best practice for today not for tomorrow but I think as said in different ways uh effective capacity development leave somebody with the ability um to understand and frame their own challenges um and then come up with solutions to address those challenges within their particular context now PhD education is one way to do that but also um training and peer-to-peer learning is you know other ways to do this um and I'll talk a little bit about that to uh so I think this idea of capacity is as training to do a set of you know wrote things to achieve water sector outcomes is a bit limited and again we need to focus on knowledge and critical thinking um I would uh this also comes to I wanted to talk a little bit about the systems approach I think that's absolutely essential that we um don't design dumb infrastructure or brittle solutions that ignore possible interconnections with um upstream downstream basin uh urban all these types of interactions and I know um at ADB we've been doing a lot trying to have more integrated projects we have a new strategy that focuses on integrated outcomes achieving this is difficult but at least having that mindset is extremely important um we just finished a very or we have an ongoing program with the PRC on Yangtze River Belt program where we have infrastructure investment but um you know explicit in that is policy reform uh working with the government to develop new policies as well as reforming institutions so you're um have a vision of where you want to be and capacity development is just one component of that you know as a MDB obviously um infrastructure development is part of that but um in this particular plan restoring and protecting ecosystems payment for ecosystem services green industrial development there's a we're putting about two billion dollars into this but it's a a set of investments for environment for water supply wastewater and it's a more holistic integrated approach and as I said fundamental to this is working with the client on creating a vision and I think this was also mentioned co-development is critical working with your client to to see where you want to be um and putting tools together to get their capacity development is one thing um the other important thing is getting away from numbers I think it's critically important that if you're uh you need to have a vision and objective and I think performance metrics are incredibly important um as a way to measure outcomes uh to try and get you away from accounting type of mentality when it comes to training um and uh even numbers of masters and students is try to if you can't measure directly come up with proxies but at least look at outcomes in the broader picture versus um a numerical type of training approach or approach to cast capacity development um and just uh one or two other things we do a lot of uh twinning arrangements with adb where we'll have uh operators from you know quote more advanced countries coming to less advanced countries to uh be in residence and work with them in terms of problem solving improving systems but you know we did analysis we've probably done this 50 times and actually the people coming from advanced countries going to less developed countries in quotes however you want to define that actually get as much out of it or as the the people in the less developed countries because they're put in challenging situations that they're not used to and forced to learn to do things uh differently that they weren't doing so I think a lot of that is um important to capacity development is and again this kind of gets to the adaptive management that was measured and um that's a difficult thing to teach but um doing it in situ uh is perhaps uh one way that that can be done um and then finance I should speak to that there were some very good sessions on that you know finance was seen to bring kind of a rigor to capacity development that quite often uh I think it's been seen in the donor world as grant finance kind of thrown at a problem with hastily or poorly designed um projects that you know send people to training for a week somewhere and um it doesn't really achieve much but you know I think we really it forces us to quantify what is the value of that capacity development and I think this again gets to performance metrics how can we measure that because for us as a development bank we're making loans and even if it's project by project um we need to convince clients that it's worth borrowing for capacity development and um again we need some uh material to convince them that this is a worthwhile investment which I think we all recognize that it is um and also on finance finally there was a lot of discussion about blended finance new financial structures and I think um it was mentioned too that the training has to be real world so um we need training programs for water finance um and a whole set of institutions that interact with the water sector um to come up with creative solutions it's not I think it's everybody says just about engineering equations it's about finance it's about energy sector it's about a lot of different things and again the systems integrated approach even beyond the water sector is critical to solving our problems I'll stop there thank you okay thank you Tom I think it's also nice and of course there's also a little bit expected from you to make the link with the financial part of it which is a quite important part as well and to see how investments are put put on the boards and if changes are happening I think it's also quite interesting to see what was mentioned also before by one of the speakers how investments may change also due to the coronavirus economy and what what that may mean for the water sector and we are able to get our as a water sector but I think we also need the other sectors to steer it in the direction that we think is a sustainable development of the world in in in in gross but also the different locations in general um I picked up a couple of things here where I think there are quite nice connections between all of you I'm sorry to say that Dr one week Gutierry the director of water development the sanitation of African Development Bank has technical problems so we're not able to connect her to say that the panel so apologies for that what I wanted to do is I would like to ask you just in a few questions but I first would like to give the possibility to the panelists if you have something you want to say as a reaction to one of the other members of the panel said and please raise your hands and I will give you the floor so while you may think about that one I have one thing that I wanted to ask a little bit that is related to how can you assure that you get let's call it an integrated or sustainable capacity development of the whole country or of the region in a way that is maybe a little bit away from what Tom mentioned as the one day or one week type of short courses that are often related to a certain project or a certain investment that's done so how can we bring that together and how can we make sure that we get a consistent development instead of say short pieces where sometimes they fit into the bigger picture but sometimes they do not and maybe related to that a little bit is an issue that also came up is how can you unlearn people so how can you make sure that if somewhere people have learned maybe a strategy that later on we discovered is not maybe the best one how can you make sure that those people are also engaged so that we make sure that they learn the right things that we think is important so that would be one starting up a question there and maybe if I may ask Fina to give a short reaction to that one and I have two quick responses for how I think we can do do better I think that we all discussed you know this quality over quantity idea and how do we just not reduce people go have them go to a one week training program and then come out you know and and feel like that's done the job I think that there are a number of speakers in the symposium itself and I've forgotten all of the people that mentioned I know Lan Pritchett and he both mentioned this in their talk this idea of changing our pedagogy of the training programs to learning centered pedagogy and I think that a number of them basically showed that people's capacity gets built when they do stuff differently and not when they're told to do stuff differently and I think there's quite a big difference so there's one thing which is to just tell people all of the different things and the other is to actually make them do something differently and I think whether you want to call it practicum based or project based or exercise based or assignment based but basically having them live the new the new paradigm is really important now one of my observations from training programs both from we did a number of interviews with civil society organizations as well as our training programs for state engineers I found that the technology the role of technology is sometimes underestimated in the extent to which it can change people's mindsets because technology can be very disruptive I'll give you a really quick example when we did the training program for state engineers a lot of the time when we talked about IWRM and so on and I think that's very important because just the concept that you can question and these other ideas exist if that's all they got out of it that's still useful but I found that people's eyes lit up when we taught them O.D.K like Open Data Kit or we showed them QGIS and suddenly they could see that they could do certain things on Google Earth for example or they were able to use their smartphones to collect spatial data in some way and bring it into a QGIS platform which is open so it seems very trivial but I think and I kind of referred to this idea if you can put tools into people's hands which then empower them or to have capacities that they never had before I think that can be useful so I think we should really think about the role of technology and at least in India even in villages people do have smartphones today so I do think we're not talking about as big a digital divide as perhaps existed or maybe a decade ago so a similar argument with civil society organizations we've heard the same thing which is we still do watershed development for example with paper and pencil and maps and sometimes it takes us 90% of the project time is just to gather this map of the field and again you know with the kind of technology we have which is all open source and readily available it seems like it should be really easy to cut that time down significantly but I think that we haven't kind of explored the extent to which that can happen so I'm not sure that's the answer you were expecting but that's what I thought I would give you as my quick reflection. Thank you Vina and maybe if I can relate that a little bit Dr. Silfer you're an engineer by training and you're also guiding actually or needing a quite technical utility but I know that you also need other skills that were also mentioned here partly sometimes when you need a new change you're also depending on an investment coming for example from African development or coming from a national ministry type of funding organization is what would you need actually or do you see in need how you can arrange it in such a way that the capacity development that's then maybe part of that project fits in your long-term strategy and what would that long-term strategy look like for you as a utility company? Well thank you very you are okay so so this is something that is currently being done that every time we work with the development partner to implement a project there is a deliberate need to put a capacity development component now the problem that we often get is that such capacity first of all I want to thank you for defining what capacity development is because the definition really shows that capacity development is holistic you are not only looking at training individuals you are looking at enabling structures you are looking at even training the societies we are working with training even the politicians so the problem that we get is that we the development partners tend to dictate of course sometimes sorry for my colleague from Asian Development Bank they tend to dictate on what should be done and what normally happens is that you come up with solutions that they are meant to please the donors but they are actually not going to solve the problems that you have I also liked the measures of a successful capacity development program that it should move away it should not only be limited by the quantitative methods it should also look at the quantitative methods to try to try and rate the quantitative outcomes now that means if you are going to gauge whether a capacity development program has been successful you need to somehow ask the beneficiary communities you also need to ask the politicians who are also part of these engagements we have with development partners so for me I think we need to have an all-encompassing approach that like you said the national order can create sufficient incentives for overall or holistic improvement of the sector that is bought in by the politicians that is also satisfies the beneficiaries who are getting the services and I think that is that is something that does not have the answers now and and and it is a question of of collaborating it is a question of debating those issues it cannot be an issue of the development partner coming and say there's this money you have to use it for this for obvious obvious problems like reducing non-revenue water when you have not worked on the mindsets you come with the whole set of tools you put them there nobody is even appreciating how useful they are and what happens is the project ends and and and the tools you have put in place are not are not helpful so I think we need to work on the tools but work on the reception or they accept the factors we need to use to develop a successful capacity development program okay Eddie so first thank you very much maybe I could ask Lidia knowing that you have been sitting also before in a position as a minister which which partly are then also guiding say projects like what Dr. Silva was mentioning do you see a different way or other ideas for you that may help to facilitate actually development like Dr. Silva was trying to put on the table very much it's been so long that I don't remember much but that's I think what was brought is that you have to have ownership of the projects and you have to as a country as a organization as a community you have to own that project from from from the conceptual phase and by doing so you are already capacitating people I think we don't give enough weight to the first thinking why are we doing this and how can we do it together that in itself is a it's a moment to to build capacity and if you allow me Eddie even to unlearn a few things because it's in that phase of conceptualizing that you can unlearn things and to learn new things and and I think that's the first the first point that we need to to to put forward and if you allow me to to go back more into a personal uh experience not so much my organization uh when I was minister indeed and we were designing diet education strategy and and policies for my country we were negotiating with the world bank and I remember saying we will do the studies uh and they said but you don't have capacity I said if I don't have capacity to do a study then I don't have capacity to implement a project so we will do the studies and then based on the those studies that we did then we can see the negotiate and it was a learning process and I think that gave us the possibility to overcome impositions and and we are talking about the time where the bank was not even interested in higher education they were much more uh investing much more in primary primary education not even secondary but what gave us the possibility uh by doing the studies ourselves was first of all learning and going into depth and understanding gaps of knowledge and capacity that we had in the in the system but it also gave us dishonorship because we did that in consultation with uh the universities with government institutions with uh even the society we had the open uh discussions what does it mean to have higher education in your province in your city what kind of degrees you need and so on and so on uh and uh and I think that empowered us to negotiate what we needed uh because we knew the situation we knew what we needed and we knew what we aspired and that changed a lot the way you negotiate then with the with financial partners be them you know multilateral organizations banks or or even at the local level uh I think the second the second point and and I think it was mentioned uh by the the doctor uh is the long-term vision on capacity building when you build a project that has to be one of your main results you need to finish that program that project with a much higher level of capacity and with a much higher quality in the capacity building process independently if you are a utility or if you are a university or if you are a research institution or if you are a firm of of of engineers any interaction any action should be a learning opportunity and also because is by doing like Veena said is also the opportunity to learn you don't learn if you don't test it wrong well you will learn when you see that whatever you are bringing to the table is not working and then you say oh I need to change I need to know more maybe this is not working maybe this is not useful at this moment so the doing it's important so for me uh and I try to apply it uh everywhere I am I am it's always a learning experience being with you guys here for me is a learning experience and maybe even an learning experience because you guys may shake me in some of my convictions uh on capacity building so I would put these two points uh Eddie I don't know if I answer your question I think you not only answered but you also added some issues there so I think that I think you very much that what I would like to do before I come to Tom and Hank and also Guy would like to add something I would like actually to give the floor to to Ellen uh so she should give us a brief summary on what is coming in through the chat these are mostly questions yes we have time to answer them already um let's let's just you can bring some of the questions to the floor that you think are quite interesting and then we can see if the panel members are interested to pick them up um all right so what we have in the discussion I think uh both in the panel and in the comments this topic of leadership seems to be one of the of the common you know aspect that is mostly jump on um not just what leadership is but also um who should be part of leadership development and leadership training for example uh Alebinda Bolonga mentions that the the integration of community leaders in capacity development could be um quite quite relevant for transformative change and um in this regard is for example also one question uh for Mr Mugisha um related to when leadership training should take place um for example Manania mentions that the average age of students at IHE is about 30 years old and then is this the right time to talk about leadership development and develop leadership skills or is this actually a time where young people young professionals should concentrate on career development and while leadership might be something that is actually something that evolves um through a lifelong learning um also a question also related to not leadership but in in this case who leads a question for Lydia Brito um when we talk about leadership in capacity development I think um you mentioned in your initial comments the question of knowledge development um knowledge for capacity development and um Kalita Sam asks who do you see as the main driver for this kind of knowledge development I also have a question on that I don't know if I'm allowed to ask directly you are um just one comment um Thomas in in your comments you were mentioning the the need for business cases for capacity development to convince leaders to invest in capacity development now I have this week I have heard a lot about making business cases for capacity development but the way you phrase this point isn't this also a question of leadership and if the leaders recognize priorities so should that be addressed on the leadership side or do we have to concentrate on the business case? Okay thank you very much Allen and um I don't know what I would like to ask the panel members actually maybe to raise their hands if they want to address one of the questions that were now posed about leadership I think the definition of leadership was also put in the Delft agenda and that's about willingness and ownership and maybe Dr. Silver would you like to start maybe you can unmute your mic yes please can you hear me Eddie okay so thank you very much a question was uh was uh raised to me about leadership I am first of all I'm one person who believes that leadership skills should evolve uh by somebody working and experiencing certain things experiencing challenges I'm not somebody who believes that leadership should be taught at the university but I think what should be taught at at those training institutions is the running a successful enterprise because for me through my experience we've been able to perfect our leadership skills through maybe reading leadership books reading nice case studies of how companies have moved from good to great of working with people of confronting challenges and that's how you perfect leadership and of being able to differentiate between why institutions exist and how to make the how to put in place systems to ensure that the institution achieves its vision and maybe also focus on the shop for our shop for our staff so now the institutions like UNESCO HE they need to really expose some relevant case studies to those students much beyond what is currently being offered so that the role of leadership is aligned there and for me I emphasized adaptive leadership which is leading your your group of employees or your managers to learn how to ask the right questions at the right time and to evolve everybody in finding the solutions so for me that would be my take that let the institutions do a little bit more work in in in in sensitizing these people these with these participants or these students that leadership plays a very very key role without leadership without being able to get the right people in the right places in these institutions you definitely cannot cannot realize much so that would be my take on that Dr. Silver and I would like to actually ask Lidia if a question that was posed to you is also about leadership and capacity development and the question was who you were seeing as the main driver there I'm not 100% sure if you can hear us because it seems as if your image is frozen so I suggest that in that case I pass the floor to Tom if that's possible and Tom the question for you that was coming actually from Alan and that was about the business cases and what what and where capacity development should concentrate on is that on the leadership side or is that on the business case yeah well I think it's obviously a bit of both the I think the business case even if you have enlightened leadership and especially if you have enlightened leadership they have to see the value in what they're investing in in the case of an MDB what they're borrowing for in terms of capacity development however that may be in terms of training I think the other point on capacity technology these days also provides a tremendous opportunity for increasing capacity at lower and lower costs to do more things much more quickly so I think there is leadership there but at the end of the day I also think there this needs to be tracked much better in terms of outcomes and ultimately the the end user or the beneficiary whoever is receiving the service if you know they're not benefiting they're not seeing a change and how their needs are being addressed then the capacity development needs to be questioned and is it really achieving what should be achieved and that's you know having monitoring and feedback loops all part of the capacity development exercise which is both documenting and creating the business case and also putting in place ideally mechanisms for adaptive management on the capacity and at the same time you know having leadership that's willing to do this know that the question on leadership I find interesting is I mean we're talking and I think this seminar rightly points out that it's not just about training individuals it's about culture and institutions that to me that's a much more difficult thing and you know from a development bank we have certain levers in terms of policy lending these types of things but it's often very very difficult to change behavior as you said and you know I don't have the key there and you know a very easy solution is let's create a new institution to do this well it's very easy to create new institutions it's very hard to get rid of ingrained in existing institutions that are used to doing things and having powers so I would pose this you know I've struggled with this how do we go about doing it yeah I think river basin organizations are a great example that you know just create an RBL and everything's going to be solved while it isn't so I guess from my government colleagues you know how can we be more effective working with you with enlightened leadership to get substantive change and how institutions work and then the capacity needed to make them effective so I'm not sure that answered the question and left you with a question as well thanks thank you very much Tom I think at least it partly answered the question and I think that also the question that was posed before how you can come up to an arrangement between the government between the investment banks but also between the clients I think it's quite important one I think that was what Fina said in her creation I think that was also a very important attribution that is there I'm also working at time a little bit so what I would like to ask the panelists to have a short reflection actually and I will come back to you in the second time what I would like to ask you is what am I going to do with the recommendations so in your own organization and also for the global water discourse but before I give the floor to you and maybe you have added things that you want to mention briefly based also on the formal discussions I would like to give the floor to D here on my left side because he had also something he wanted to share with you D the floor is yours thank you very much and I'm really inspired by all the things that you have said today two things that I that have struck me is on one hand we need indeed still engineers who are competent but they also need to be able to do more they have to be adaptive they may have to show some traits of leadership so they have to be more sensitive to to the broader context and to the stakeholders so from civil engineers to civilized engineers if you would like to put it that way but at the same time here we are primarily people working in the water sector there are no university directors except for eddie morse here so the question is how to get the the educators in the sector on board and it's not only the the engineering departments it's also the economics departments and the social sciences departments the ecology science department so we have to think more about how to get these educational actors that obviously play such a big role how to get them on board and also indeed listen to their uh constraints right because you cannot just say we need more um smart engineers or ecologists and then next year they will be there no it's it takes a long time to build curriculum to get the funding to attract prospective students etc so maybe by you know per per region per continent maybe you have to start with a kind of platform uh that our community of practice if you wish where we have leaders in the water sector amongst you and and and the educators the educational systems the ministries of education as well perhaps to to think about this how can we influence the behavior the curricula um and the way we do we do the trainings and the education in such a way that all the nice things that we talk about here can be achieved uh the second element that also was mentioned by many of you is that it's also about learning by doing so on the on the job um and perhaps there i we could also see how we can learn from the corporate sector because in the corporate sector um uh when you look uh uh in in japan at the toe or general electric and in africa definitely there are several companies that are innovative that are well managed that are uh targeted well targeted and they also have knowledge management systems right because in uh in japan was numaka and taki uchi and later peter druger and others these management gurus have talked about how to do knowledge management in your organization and that means also how to help change your organization um and perhaps in the water sector uh we as um as CEOs managing directors um regulators we can we should perhaps also have another type of platform where we engage with uh people in the uh in the corporate sector who can yeah share their lessons on how you can you know make your organization and your sector more innovative and more knowledge driven because water at the end of the day is a knowledge driven business that were two things that I wanted to uh to wanted to share okay thank you uh gi and I think it's uh indeed always quite interesting to see if you can learn from other disciplines and I think that's the same is true for other sectors so I think it's it's quite useful to look around and see how we can use lessons learned um with of course the flexibility that we discussed about how to look at the future where we are not necessarily using best practices but we're really looking at lessons learned where you can use actually the flexibility and the adaptiveness of such a measure to be implemented for the last round what what I would like to ask the the panel members actually to really try and focus very briefly a bit on what what um if possible what what would be an action for you based on the agenda and items that we have been discussing that you would like to start up in your organization and uh we are very much looking forward to to learn from you also with the public here okay what can we do because I think this this willingness for people to make a change starts with us and also with you together so with that I would like to ask that I would like to suggest that also Eddie Morse is going to say to tell what his what he will do in his organization to move the agenda forward that that's also I think a very good one uh let me then start by doing that and I hope that inspires you to add something also about your own organization I think there are a couple of things mentioned here one one is that I think that at IG maybe we should rethink a bit how our education philosophy and and with education I don't necessarily only mean the education itself but I think our overall engagement with our partners what was mentioned here is co-creation I think strengthening the collaboration and the co-creation with our partners especially from the global side I think is quite important how to assure that they are an eco partner and contributing actually to what we think is important in capacity development what was mentioned here as well is on the leadership side we think that the meta skills are quite important and we were talking about leadership but we also think for example how to assure that if we develop an education program how can we also learn the people who are visiting here how to teach the same program to their colleagues so how can you speed up and outskill actually the learning side I think that would be quite interesting and we would like to focus on that quite a lot we're quite interested actually to further develop what we were discussing about leadership also related to work and finance and how we can do that in a collaborative way we're looking at engaging with interdisciplinarity transdisciplinarity also within the institution but I think we should also do that with partners I don't think we are big enough by far to have the whole footprint that you would like to have about interdisciplinarity here at IG so I think we should do that together with others and I think that's one invite actually to you not only to the panel members but also to the bigger public please speak up and let us know how we can engage with you and see how we can make this I think need a step forward there I would like to stop and I hope that that is a little bit of inspiration maybe to you as well to see what you can do in your organization and I actually had Tom as the first speaker here but I don't know Tom if we should give you a little bit more time or are you able to join us otherwise I would like to ask you let me let me try somebody's not very happy with the with the panel so I guess one thing I think that was talked about with COVID and not directly is just to improve the communication with the client to see what their needs are and I think we're all learning through events like this that we are taking a leap forward and can get real-time information and have real-time dialogue much more easily than perhaps we thought we could with the tools sitting on our desktop and then also you know pedagogy is going to change how can we use the you know electronic environment to be more effective at reaching people but more importantly in being inclusive and embracing this new digital age which we've been thrust into over the last three months and I think the you know the point about India with cell phone coverage I don't think you know every month the divide narrows for basic access to the net and information and perhaps that's one thing we can do to get information and provide solutions so looking at new medium new new ways of reaching out to our clients and trying to understand them in real time thanks much appreciated you were able to join us and do another role at the same time I think that's that's really great and I would like to pass on the floor to Vina thanks Eddie I think the lessons taken from here for my own organization I really think that for renewed focus on strengthening the hands of the weakest in the community and that includes it could be women engineers it could be community leaders it could be field engineers that are being persecuted in some way but I think that is something that we might really be interested in looking at I wanted to quickly address the question that the audience asked about when should leadership start and I think it's really important the way you define leadership as being much broader than you know people who are heads of organization but leadership as a mindset of taking ownership and being able to participate from a position of strength I think that's really important but if that's our definition of leadership that means we should think of all what a sector professionals as leaders in training because if you wait to see who becomes leaders that's already self-selected and going through the status quo of who's able to make it up the hierarchy in the current system so I think it's important for leadership training to start quickly and then to be focused much more broadly but much more on the weakest and if that's something we can contribute to that's something I'd be really excited about. Thank you very much Fina and I'm sure we'll be in contact about this shared contribution I think that's quite interesting I would like to pass on the floor to Dr. Silver. Thank you very much Eddie I want to begin with you what you can do in IHE to try to to definitely improve on the way I see things moving I I must begin by saying I'm very happy with the way things are moving there because some of us whatever we do with the foundation was IHE but I think you could maybe think about something called engineering practice you need to I know IHE is majoring in engineering institution but I think you need to have some more focus on engineering practice I used to have a friend and I think he is still the professor of engineering practice in his university and what they focus on are things to do with the world of work I know what happens at IHE is really more to do with academic concepts and you have very little time to link that to the practice. One other thing you could do is to try to invest in producing more case studies or know for example companies which have done very well how have they done it so that these some of these reading material becomes an inspiration for people who are in the in the in the world of work to read and see what they can do and and for me I think that would be a very very important area but did you ask me to talk about the what we're going to do at National Water aha so definitely as I said these were very good recommendations and at National Water capacity we've been doing it but I think this definition helps to validate what we are doing we need to look at capacitating our own staff and also start looking at stakeholders we've been doing it but when I looked at the definition it was a vote of confidence in what we are doing that in order for you to have a holistic improvement of the sector you need all the sector players to be to be capacitated secondly at National Water these recommendations start into moving towards being a learning organization I think moving towards being a learning organization creates for you incentives to continue to look for new ideas and once that becomes your objective then you do investments in that area so because you cannot you cannot you cannot really improve your institution if you don't invest in creating new ideas in creating new debates in creating new problems and therefore creating new new solutions so so that is an area which we are going to look at we are also encouraging mindset change towards vocational and emotional intelligence skills we are also emphasizing that staff should focus on attitudinal change rather than just focusing on knowledge rather than just thinking that if you go to UNESCO IHE and you get another degree that's an automatic way you will be promoted in the institution so we are looking at how you can also improve your attitude and there are very many tools you can use through mentoring and coaching and we need to make people we are trying to make people in the organization understand that there is a need for a culture of continuous mentoring and coaching of staff so that we can continuously first of all enlighten people that they need good leadership that we also create we make them understand the fundamentals that are needed for the organization to be successful last day we are also focusing on smart collaborations with other outside partners to act as reservoirs of fresh ideas those people so that we can continuously be inspired to look for new solutions to problems that we are having and that is where we are thinking of companies like UNESCO IHE we know so many things are happening there and I think we should collaborate with you and enhance our capacity to be able to sort of our own problems based on our local context so that's what I would want to say thank you very much Dr. Silver and I think it's also quite nice because we've already been discussing also in this collaboration what you're talking about how we can also make it a regional collaboration and I think that would also be quite interesting to do I would like to pass on the word to Lydia okay good apologies for falling out of the the meeting first of all I like I said I think this was an amazing experience and the learning experience also to see what others are doing and how can we advance UNESCO IHE is a UNESCO water family member so definitely we are going to work together with you on that agenda and I really hope that the collaboration that we have now can be expanded and we can do more things in the in the laceration that we are doing so far although we are already doing a few things but I think there are three points that we are already implementing and experimenting I would say that that are captured in this agenda and that I think the first one is the question of inclusion in particular the inclusion of women of use of indigenous people because they come with solutions and you know that we have here very strong use networks and not just for water and that brings my second aspect we have used networks for water but we have used networks for biodiversity we have used networks for social transformation we have used networks for for many other aspects of our work for education culture and so on and what we are experimenting now is bringing these networks together in the code design so interdisciplinarity and multi-dimensional analysis but also the idea of code designing solutions that will in a long run address the many challenges we have in development so I would say that the last three do more things is what we are experimenting here in the region and I say experimenting because I don't think we have the we cannot say we are doing it fully right but I think that's the way to go and I'm very glad that this capture on the on the delft agenda and because that will connect us even strongly so looking forward to a much deeper and interesting and creative collaboration and relationship with the UNESCO IHE an important member of our water family thank you Lidia I do agree that I think the the water family of UNESCO is an important network there that together with the other networks and we are really looking forward how we can work together and bring those networks together as well I would like to go to the last speaker of the panel that's Henk Ofink and I would like to ask him also maybe a little bit on behalf of the Dutch government in general so by this I promote you to our replacement of the king if that's possible to maybe say a few words about what you think could be the next actions for the the Dutch government and how that could fit also within the delft agenda as long as you don't ask me to grow a beard and just a couple of things a lot has been said about leadership and I think a lot of what I will also re-emphasize is really that leadership is definitely about not being alone and leadership does not start when you are 35 or in a position it is leadership can start when you are 7 or 70 so I really think age, gender, background, birth are have nothing to do with leadership the second is that the current crisis is again used a lot as a showcase of a lock-in but we are in so many lock-ins with climate, with conflict, with gender, with youth you can look across the SDGs and the Sustainable Development Goals the 2030 agenda and you'll find a lock-in and every time we focus on the lock-in and try to solve it by taking it apart and coming forward solutions we fail why we forget to make connections across the SDGs across all these interacting crises that are by their connection also opportunities so inclusion gets a far bigger meaning if it is not only about including all empowering women, youth, marginalized community, indigenous peoples but also including their interests, needs and therefore sectors so integration in itself is not a technical mechanism it's also really a social mechanism so I really think that inclusion and integration is two critical parts are not soft versus hard but are part of the same family and understanding that is critically important third that comes has to do with how an IIT is an institute of the how why because you make room and I think it is critically important that we as a world in whatever capacity we are and the Dutch government too is to create room to bypass these lock-ins place where people, interests, organizations from all over the world can come together you can start to of course based on building trust really invest in getting first a deeper understanding of each other and of the challenges we face before jumping to conclusions so making room in literature we in science we call it soft spaces in our urban in a physical context but I refer to them as safe spaces places where you can really come together and this is not to slow down the process of progress but actually by by coming together by bypassing the focus of this specific challenge you face but by bringing people together you can really fast track the development of solutions that are so much needed for people and partnerships it's proven by our researchers, academics, economists that the more you invest in people from the beginning the more you maximize opportunities and the more you focus on the solution and bring that to implementation and the sooner it starts to fall apart a single focus solution never fits a complex problem so investing first in the process of engagement research understanding building capacity a real enabling environment maximizes opportunities and with that on the mid and the longer term these opportunities also have a higher performance so there's proof so we can measure I mean it's not it's not really a soft side of this this is a really part but it has to come together with and I will use the word empathy it has to come together with really reaching out really thinking about all in all places and I think Secretary General Gutierrez was so right this time of this complex of crisis is a time of science and solidarity and I said it in my talk in the midst of science and solidarity is water because it talks to both it is as much social as it is physical it's as much inclusion as it is about integration it's much about empowering as well as about sustainable solutions then investing and that IHG can bring water is special and then you have to question yourselves do you always trust the water ambassador when he says water is special I leave it up to you but I do think it is special because you find it in all our domains you find it in our social domain it's about bridging the gap for gender for youth it's it's directly related to conflict to migration food security health we see it now in the pandemic without a watch you'll immediately see a fallback with you see capacitating impact it's across the climate agenda economic development part of our oceans our rivers our biodiversity loss so water really is an enabler but for becoming an enabler water should not look at water but you should look at all the enabling and connecting environments around it so you have to look at what are from the economy from a social perspective from a gender perspective and not the other way around so making those connections and bridging those gaps is gaps is critically important then where to focus on we all know that the 2030 agenda looks at 2030 and beyond with the Paris Agreement that the long-term comprehensive approach is critically important in capacitating government's private sector investors communities to think from this long term to short-term interventions is continuously critically important for building capacity and I think this is a big challenge now where we only focus on the short term and then perhaps last I would say inspiration and inspiration comes by people comes from youth comes from the groups we least expected from but inspiration also comes with surprises I think in the time of challenges where we are now we don't like surprises I think we should really acknowledge the capacity of surprises more by inviting those guests you would you would least expect on your table the ones that you might least think of including all really means is widening this agenda broadening this scope because only then can we come up with the solutions that are needed now that will make a change that are catalytic and help us get to a future that we want if we focus on the things we know I think we can forget about it then from the Dutch government perspective our development agenda is full of inclusion integration and sustainability the SDGs are our way of handling we of course put a lot of effort now in COVID relief but what with whatever we put on the ground we do make the mix with long-term and short-term and last I really think that the global coalition is definitely needed and I want to applaud the IHE for putting us already together in this coalition I really look forward also to work with you in this leadership part to see how we can build with empathy and inclusion a family of helping inspire others to do better than we did in the past for sure so I really like to be overtaken by next generations in with surprises and better examples and thanks to all the panelists I was really inspired by what a lot what you said and also look forward to engage with you more. Thank you Henk for those inspiring words and I think that what I picked up a couple of things not only from from your words but also from the others one is we are having a window of opportunity so there is is a possibility here also from the investment side but also because there is a willingness for people to make a change and so I think that's quite important and I think looking at surprises and I will try to keep it very short but surprised maybe I can invite you first of all to collaborate with us and I think it's a nice group but I also would like to invite you to become the surprise guest at somebody else's table and what I mean by that is that what was mentioned is we can't do it alone I think just looking at the water sector is not enough and you have to look at other players there you have to look at other sectors I think it would be quite nice if from the water sector side we would reach out and we would sit at other tables to also discuss their problems and their solutions and how from the water sector we can contribute to those solutions and I think in their capacity development can play I think a very big role with that I would like to actually close not this impulsion but actually this concluding panel session because like I said the Delft agenda is a living document also what's on the table within this impulsion is also available to the bigger public there we have received a number of questions and comments through the chat box and what I would like to do we would like to share those questions and comments also with the panelists and I would like to invite them actually to also comment to that or reply to that that can be done after this live session or it can be done by an email exchange so I would like to ask the panelists to please stay within the waiting room for the sort of while while we close off at the live stream and before doing that thanks again to Hank, Silver, Lilia, Vina and I think Tom just dropped out because he had to take care of somebody but I would like to thank Tom as well a pity that some of the other panelists were not able to be here but we will be contact with them and I hope they are also part of this collaboration network that we are setting up I would also like the general public very much for their contributions because that's also quite important to develop that and I would like to thank Guy and Ellen as reporters sitting here to my right and our text host Jasper for all the organizations so thanks very much and I hope to see you all soon again