 Thank you Well, good morning and Thank you for the introduction Bo and I'm delighted to be here. I don't often Get to come to come to Sweden, but I have actually been to Gothenburg a few times previously. I like to get straight into it because Karin runs a very tight ship So I want to perhaps use the time allocated that I have as much as I can and I want to talk about this whole notion of Enhancing livability One of the key themes of this conference was about water for an attractive city enhancing livability and I want to impress upon you that Creating an attractive city is Important for livability, but it's not the only thing In fact, if we were to just create an attractive city We would have let ourselves down in terms of what is it that we need to do to promote livability and There is a changing An emerging role For a lot of us whether it's in the water utility or in the cities But mainly in the utility there is progressively a shift from us managing water for life To managing water for livability and this makes complete sense in terms of how Many utilities what utilities were set up to provide the basic essential for life clean water safe sanitation flood protection But as a community and a city grow the aspirations of your community is Much more than the basic essentials and you find that a lot of utilities are now needing to shift It's role and is focused to actually address this issue of water for livability But what is livability and I think suffice to say that Livability means so many different things to you and I Livability for someone in a developing world is quite different from the concept of livability for us in Sweden or in Australia The social technical research that we've done tries and rationalize that and try and perhaps help frame The role of water management in delivering livability and perhaps the best way to do that is that The whole concept of livability and the concept the continuum of water for life to water for livability is in fact a continuum The very foundation to livability has got to be about delivering the basic Existence needs delivering water for life But once you get past that point you find that often there is a much less Quantifiable dimension of what defines livability for the community Water for recreation for culture Culture connection social cohesion attractiveness and beauty comfort ecological health of our water becomes important and Of course, there's even a higher level of livability is about growth our identity We talk about how we are proud to be living in the city of Gothenburg. Why we talk about the Governance and the intergenerational equity and The whole question of sustainability They're all part of the identity that we have in relation to our city and to live ability and This is how in the CRC for water sensitive city in Australia that we try to frame how water management Interplay With the aspirations of livability in our community. I attended a conference Some three months ago in in Stanford University With a bunch of scientists that are working almost in a peril universe to to where we work they were interested in the whole question of natural capital and conservation of natural capital and Protecting the ecosystem services that natural capital Provides us and they put they were particularly interested in inviting me to to attend that conference and present to the conference on the notion of how the city actually start to reinvent themselves in delivering natural capital it was in fact quite Quite an out there concept for many of the people working in natural capital big systems of conservation and It really dawn on me then one of the reasons why we work in peril universe is that Cities have in the past evolved with a total disregard for natural capital In fact, you find that quite often cities as they develop One of the first things they do is to remove any resemblance of natural capital within their footprint The removal of any arable land the removal of any of those systems That we now are working so hard to recreate Fundamentally you find that if you drill down deeper, you will see the symptoms of that in terms of health cities continuing to be urbanized we tend to look at Creating diverting our waterway converting them to drains Why do we convert them to drain so that they become receiving waters to discharge our pollution? We have to some degree as city planners and city builders failed in Recognizing the value of nature We have failed to apply innovation to enable the coexistence of Nature and the urban footprint and it's no wonder that now we see the symptoms of that failure in terms of pollution in our waterway and It's no wonder that many of the affluent cities of the world are spending many millions of dollars to try and recreate that sense of natural Back into our city My travels around the world tells me that many of that attempt Even though well-meaning Runs the real risk of greenwashing the whole issue We run the real risk of creating what we think is natural beauty But it's still devoid of the ecosystem services that we have destroyed typical examples of again a symptom of the type of Damage that we do in a city. These are data from China about the increasing rate of Areas and natural waterways and lakes that are now undergoing eutrophication So the concept then is that we actually do have the knowledge research proof of concepts to actually think about re-establishing ecosystem services within our urban environment But how do we do that and how do we think about? prioritizing what is it that we want to re-establish and I like to perhaps reflect on perhaps four of the key challenges that we face in the urban environment in terms of Challenges to urban livability and then start to talk about some of the issues that some of the techniques and innovation We can have to deliver ecosystem services to address those issues. I Think we are but it's clear That we are facing more all our cities are facing significant challenges in terms of water extremes Vulnerability in our cities are manifested in everything that we see whether it is drought or whether it is floods We see them all the time the predictions are That there will be more intensities both in terms of droughts and floods in our cities We also see as we've seen if you heard previously the notion that there is a growing Urbanization of our city as more and more people live in city that urbanization introduces Increasing urban density it actually increases a challenge, but for where I see it also provides the opportunity Because it is now the time when many cities are reinventing themselves There are many cities are going to renew whereby if we are smart We can actually capture the renew cycles of city to introduce ecosystem services back into the cities Another challenge is about degrading environment as you can see that the pressure of urbanization if it is business as usual will continue to stretch and Perhaps exceed the capacity of ecosystem services of the surrounding environments around our city It's quite ironic. We built a city. We destroy all its natural capital Rely on the ecosystem services of our surrounding natural environment and then we stretch that limit and push that beyond its capacity and Emerging issue in cities in Australia particularly is the notion of urban heat If we find that the data and predictions of increasing heat wave conditions in Australian cities Beginning to push the notion that this is going to be the single most significant factor in affecting the mortality and the morbidity of Australian population in cities How do we actually think about water management that is able to cool the city To a able to accommodate the fact that there will be increasing heat wave days ahead and How do we address those four issues? Together concurrently in the way we plan our cities one of the things that we all realize is that we only work in a City as a whole it is a melting pot of all these issues and There's only one set of solutions for the whole city and therefore it better be integrated it better cut across the whole range of different state play stakeholders and it better address in Synergy all the different challenges that the city faces and Bearing ecosystem services in cities and towns. I believe it's the way to do it. How do you do that? I introduce to you the concept of biomimicry in fact It is not a new concept in fact a lot of things we do whether it is true a mechanical or true nature-based systems We try to mimic the natural processes of nature Some of the city Ecosystem services we expect our city have are perhaps listed in here and some of the achievements that we have as particularly in Australian cities Is how do we introduce? nature-based systems to deliver such ecosystem as Ecosystem services as water quality improvement The management of stormwater as a resource buffering aquatic ecosystems from the effect of catchment urbanization flood mitigation now This is this is an interesting concept whereby if we start to think about open space and green spaces in our city as Some of those natural systems that deliver ecosystem services We should also start to think about how they ought to be connected with corridors that provide safe passage for floodwaters Provide safety tension in the same system and in that note You can then start to think about how by having connections and corridors and pockets of open space That we can actually start to influence the microclimate of our city start to introduce mitigations from urban heat and ultimately Create the type of biodiversity corridors into our cities How do you do biomimicry and I'll give an example of some of the work that we've been doing for the past 15 years Understanding the processes of wetland as a good example Looking at running through experiments both in laboratory and not in the field to understand and quantify the different processes that we hope to promote in Those wetland systems through that understanding we learn how to scale and we learn how to scale wetland processes into Compact units that ultimately we can embed into the urban environment, which I will show you images of later on We also undertake research to look at the whole notion of percolation to soil When water percolates to soil there is actually a natural process of cleansing in addition to the detention What is the combination of plants and soil that allows us to deliver that water quality? all of that We are now able to capture into how we can progressively embed ecosystem services Into our cities for example building wetlands in our city is now a reality in many of us We can actually look at systems whereby those systems Allows us to treat water in the city the green walls that we built are also filters for water for our grey water That ultimately could be reused to flush toilets within the building Our roads are now equipped with bio filters and and and bio retention systems In many of our cities that allows them to become kidneys in our city in the cleansing of water We can see systems such as this at different scales in our cities that now serve the function of purifying Stormwater perhaps not to drinking standard but available for us to use as an alternative source of water If you couple that with policy and write urban design concepts you find that we can capture the renewal cycle of cities and Ultimately transform a city into what we call a water-sensitive city a city that has over time embedded ecosystem services And it goes without saying that the way we manage urban influence Urban water in fact influence many of those systems the questions that we have is We now really need to understand and recognize the public realm the public spaces in our city as Essential elements not just for it to look pretty But for all of them to have embedded in it Ecosystem services I call them ecological landscapes and that our knowledge of That traditional value of open space really now needs to be boosted By an understanding of the ecological functioning of that such that we can deliver to that space water management microclimate influence Facilitation of carbon sinks and maybe even the introduction of productive landscapes in our city What is then the role of water utilities of the future? How does some of the water utilities find yourself needing to reinvent yourself or Transitioning your operation to actually capture that really wide spectrum of water servicing and it's difficult. I Have to say that you find that many of the Explorations and many of the challenges we face here is not entirely in the domain of the water utility in fact The best water utility that is able to transform itself is actually the water utility that's associated with local government There are some water utilities that are part of a city and why is that the case? Because apart from providing water services the taps and the toilet services Many of the other services are community aspirations that are at this point in time not well captured by our economic system Many of our economic systems do not capture the what we call what we refer to as the non market value of water management and Therefore many utilities do not have the legal obligation to actually start to think about trading off Community benefits in a whole bunch of other things related to livability With the business of delivering water and sewage services In fact, there are some utilities many utilities in Australia do not even have a flood protection function and Therefore water management harvesting of water is not seen as delivering beneficial outcome to flood protection because they're not even in the same remit of the organizations and why do I think that local municipality that has a Responsibility of water management has the best opportunity to move forward because Fundamentally they are accountable to the community They respond to the aspirations of the community. They make decisions on investments that links water services with the aspirations of livability This is also a Next track from some work done again in Australia the water services association of Australia that actually talks about the notion that utilities of the future the first thing you need to understand is Utilities of the future needs to collaborate Because they do not own all the problems. They are not the stakeholders, but yet the services they deliver Can actually have an influence on both state government aspirations as well as local government and community aspirations So if there is one underlying theme for utilities of the future is for them to be able to capture the economic value of Delivering services to the community beyond Taps and toilets what we refer to as a non-market Economic value Secondly is to be able to find a way to Collaborate with other stakeholders whereby they some of those aspirations are now driving a lot of the water management agenda So in summary when we start with the notion of water for attractive city Enhancing livability. I want to impress upon you is that there are a lot of investment Spent by cities particularly on delivering an attractive city It is not the same as delivering livability Unless we actually start to understand and capture those ecosystem services and Re-embedding a lot of the natural capital back into a city whereby Attractiveness is not just superficial it needs to have depth and the depth is about the ecological services Biomimicry and the work that we've done is now able to not just understand how natural system work But actually to have the innovation To capture and deliver that into better urban design better landscape architecture better building architecture And I reinforce this message by basically saying that as the city becomes denser The public spaces in the city needs to be much more multifunctional Not only does it need to create the space for a denser community It needs to now embed those ecological functions in the public spaces to ensure that the city Actually has a much stronger chance of being sustainable and resilient On that note, I'd like to thank you for listening. Thank you