 Welcome everyone to our webinar on finding robust solutions for water and food security in the face of COVID. I am Marisa Escobar, the water program director at SEIUS in our office in Davis, California. A little bit of screen orientation. You can double click and toggle between videos on the slides and you should be able to have access to the Q&A and chat functions that I see some of you are already using right now at the bottom of the page. This is one of many SEI webinars on the COVID theme and potentially one of the most important ones given the relevance of water as the essential factor in keeping safe conditions for the recovery from the pandemic. We have a packed agenda with five wonderful speakers located in Ecuador, Morocco, Boston and California and Sweden as well and a diverse set of people from five different nationalities. So many things are happening in the world now that it makes us wish that it all stops and that we can think. When we are talking about water, we really can stop in particular because this is an essential element for everyone to access in this pandemic. So let me start by recognizing that water management can be very abstract sometimes. So how does it happen? It really happens through people working at government institutions like ministries of the environment or regional water authorities or water utilities or community-based organizations who need to continuously be making decisions about water use and allocations. These decisions range from operations to construction to infrastructure to conservation to providing water access to remote sites. NUSHA from our panel calls these the rainbow of options. But when something like COVID happens, how can water managers make decisions now and continue to find reliable solutions? What we have seen is that first, what they have to deal with is the emergency and underlying those emergency actions is the fact that in the past it was not possible to find the robust solutions that could precisely help them plan for uncertain circumstances like the one we are meeting in. We at SEI have been doing for the past ten years a promotion of a mixed approach that combines three factors. First, engaging with actors in making decisions and this is important because water systems are complex and they require a set of stakeholders to be involved so they can identify and plan for robust solutions from the rainbow of options. Second, using data and information to connect the scales from the community level to the state level and beyond as many local decisions are influenced by global processes. And third, communicating this information in transparent ways so water utilities and government institutions can use it to make decisions. We have used these three steps to identify options that can make water systems resilient. Our panelists will provide examples of how this has been possible or not under the crime pandemic situation looking at what has happened so far and looking to the near and midterm future where we have an opportunity to mobilize recovery funds that will help water managers and the whole water community identify and implement robust and resilient solutions. I encourage you all to ask questions as people are talking on the Q&A window at the bottom of our screen. We have Jack Siever helping with the technology behind the screens and now I leave you with our senior scientist Annette Schubert-Lee who will moderate the panel Annette welcome. The floor is yours. Thank you Marisa. I'm really thrilled to have this opportunity to share our thoughts, learn from our panelists and in particular to learn from those of you who are joining us today. I'm just going to run through some quick logistics so each of our five panelists will speak from five to eight minutes. Some will slide some without and then this will be followed by a half hour discussion that will largely be driven by the questions and comments that you give. So at the bottom of your screen you should see a little area that says Q&A. If you click on that it would open up and please give us feedback throughout the conversation. One of my colleagues Brian will be curating those questions and comments and will feed those into the discussion we'll have with the full panel. So I'd like to introduce our first panelist. Honored to collaborate with Professor Lassen Kenny who is based in Morocco. I would just quickly say I've gotten to know him through a collaboration funded by Swedish CEDA in collaboration with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. It's looking at water sustainability and in our role in particular is around water energy food nexus in Jordan and Morocco. So with that I'd like to hand over to Professor Kenny. Thank you. Okay thank you Annette. Thank you for having me today. All this is a very important web about these issues related to COVID-19. I was asked to present briefly what we can learn from the Moroccan experience in dealing with water issues for security in the face of COVID-19 and I have only very few minutes I'll be very brief. I think Morocco as a Mediterranean North African country has been facing severe ground for many many years and this has pushed public authorities in Morocco and also in other countries to acquire some kind of proactive behavior toward crisis be it from drought pandemics and others and that is very important. So I'll try to cover the topics by lying down a few answers and trying to answer three questions. First one is how efficient is our current water food policy in the face of pandemics. Second question will be related to the production and distribution systems. How efficient is it and how can we improve it for the futures and the last one will be about the consumer behavior which is very important. I think consumers have also responsibility on improving the system. So these are the three questions I will cover quickly and these are the three questions I think the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted in different ways a different magnitude and for each of these questions I think we have some good lessons to draw in the futures. So first one next slide Jack would be about water policy. I think when it comes to water policies countries like Morocco where water shortage as I said is a structural chronic constraints it seems that a long investment in building strong water infrastructure nationwide to support irrigation agriculture system is a strategic choice that has to be reinforced from the futures. This has proven to be a very efficient so I think on this point Morocco is a good example. The country has launched 60-70 years ago a very aggressive national program on building dams, conveyor irrigation networks all over the countries and as I said this has to be very coefficient quite efficient in ensuring food security at least for some product like fruit, vegetables, meat and milk. In fact during the confinement we in Morocco here have experienced no shortage of whatsoever for fruit, vegetables, oil or sugar in Morocco. This is not unfortunately it's not the case for other product like cereals, legumes, pulses that are essential for proteins and for these products Morocco and many other African countries are not African countries are relying on import most of the most of the time so they are relying on virtual water. Is this a right policy? I think the pandemic crisis tells us that's not so sure. In fact once the whole international trade system is shut down food security for these kind of products became questionable so this is kind of I think strategic orientation we have to rethink for the futures. Then we can go to the production and distribution systems. I think we have some very critical questions to ask ourselves and that has been confirmed with the pandemic crisis. The first one is related to the risks of losing some food security potential simply because of pollution and we do have some water loss because of pesticide residues, because of nitrite residues, sometimes salinity so and on that issue I think we need to reinforce the sustainable cropping system for the futures. This is an unavoidable for a robust system in the futures and for the quality issues we have also this brackish water issues. Many countries are producing billions of tons of water waste water that are wasted that are not used. Although we do have now the appropriate technology appropriate system to treat these waters and make use of it I think for the future we need to consider non-conventional water to be integrated in our modeling and I'm going to simply remind something which I've read recently. Some researchers have raised the questions of having coronavirus traces in wastewater and some laboratories are suggesting to use wastewater for tracing COVID-19 in some municipalities which is good but it should not be an obstacle of using this wastewater for the users, for different uses particularly for some specific crops. So these quality questions are very important. Then we have I think three good lessons from trade, marketing and supply chains perspectives. As we experience here in Morocco I think in other countries the fact to let the small farmers get into short supply chain and sell the product directly to the consumer was a very good option and farmers were very happy because they gained their money and consumers were very happy because they get fresh fruit at low price and so it's basically a win-win situation thanks to the social networking here. So I think social networking combined to a short supply chain would be something to consider for the future. Likewise for international trade and export for many many years farmers have been asking to freeze the process of administrative exchange of data exchange of document exchange particularly of phytosanitary certificates. So well during the pandemic this has been done for three weeks within three weeks and this is something people were waiting for it for many many years. So I think that kind of positive impact of the COVID-19 pandemics on the on the value chain process. So all of these questions I think are telling us that of course we have listened to take and let me finish with one more comment that is related to the consumer questions here. I think right in the beginning when the COVID-19 broke up all over the world a medical expert were telling us that one of the best way to fight virus is to improve immunity system immunity systems and we know that this is linked to nutrition and it states what we think what we are eating and what kind of diet we are having and we have also nutritionists that have been telling us that some diets like the Mediterranean diet are very good for our health because they improve the immunity systems. Well the good news is these kind of diet have also the lowest water footprint which means by shifting from a let's say a kind of American eating diet based on what we have in mind to kind of Mediterranean diet one can save like 25% of the daily concentrations of water that's basically 1500 liters per day. So I think this is a very smart way to mix business with pleasure as we say. So water footprint is very important to consider in the future also in evaluating the water management issues and my last word would be about the complexity of these issues. It is very complex as Marisa said in the beginning and because it is very complex we cannot rely on simple solutions. I think one way to tackle these questions would be to rely on the nexus approach that's what something we are working on FAE, FAO, SAE and other international bodies are working on it but the health control and the health dimension is not integrated in this nexus. So I think the COVID-19 story here is telling us to absolutely integrate the health questions into the nexus approach. So that's that's what I have to say and I would like to end up with just one last comment. I think the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that people and communities that are used to face crisis they did manage to have some proactive actions and people and communities that are not used to face crisis they had more problem in dealing with the coronavirus. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you. Thank you Lassa and that was really interesting. I love some of the points that you made that I hope we can pick up in the in the Q&A around the positive and negative impacts of COVID. There's a way it's the this crisis has mobilized us in ways we hadn't known we'd be able to do. This point around virtual water and consumer behavior I think is also one of these issues that are really important for us to consider. You know do we move towards do countries make decisions to move towards food self-sufficiency? Is that the answer for this? Or do we continue thinking in terms of virtual water and efficient production? The last comment you made is actually a fantastic transition to our next panelist in terms of the work that SEI has been doing in linking water planning or basin scale planning with water and sanitation and health. And so with that I'd like to introduce my colleague Laura Forney. You'll hear about some work she's doing in Bolivia but my work with her is it's connected to some extent in a USAID funded sustainable water partnership in Cambodia where she's done very similar sort of works work to what you'll hear in this CETA funded project in Bolivia. So with that could I ask Laura to share some thoughts with us. Thank you Annette. It's a great pleasure to be here with such a wonderful group of colleagues and with a lot of our water community around the world. I'm here to talk about Latin America, water and COVID-19. As you can see in the graph Latin America is the new epicenter of COVID-19 and based on the latest articles from the New York Times and the economies the situation is not going to, it's only going to get worse. You can see in the graph there's some countries that are having some exponential growth in the number of cases and some are maintaining the number of cases in a constant trend but none of them are really going down. The region is facing many challenges in the prevention response of COVID-19 because of many reasons from different leadership styles to large number of people working in the open sector which makes it really hard to stay at home and fit your family to the number of lungs in the large cities which is difficult to contain the spread of the virus on conditions. With great economic and social inequalities and with limited financial capital to sustain the economy and its people. Today we're going to talk about the interlinkages of COVID-19 and water which are many and water is a vital resource. It's intrinsically connected to our consistent economic activities and our livelihood and we're here today about these linkages from our panel members on various topics and various parts of the world. We may need another webinar. I think there's too many connections that we need to explore but today I'm going to discuss covenant in water and social inequalities in the context of Latin America. I'm very sad to say that I think any gains achieved in the region and the reduction of poverty and inequality may have been raised with the pandemic. The realities is that some people are facing Latin America are heartbreaking in particular in the most vulnerable parts of Latin America. The truth is that the reduction of inequality has been a major challenge in the region and unfortunately it's having strong connections with the degradation of our environment and ecosystem. I think that's why the environmental policies around the protection of environment can also work in tandem with poverty reduction efforts and they should be linked to contributing to sustainability and people's well-being. So I'd like to share about our project that we have under a project called Bolivia Watch and it's about Tupisa, a watershed located in Bolivia in the south part of Bolivia, limited with Argentina and Chile. Poverty levels in this region in Tupisa are high. People are often migrating to other parts in the search for better income and they go to other large cities in Bolivia but they also go to Argentina and Chile for work and mainly the type of work is informal in the informal sector. With the pandemic most of the people are staying at home finding ways to sustain their families. We know that staying at home is not the same for everybody. In our project we did a survey and the results show that 30% of the rural households lack access to water in their homes and the water they get from their rivers not only unsafe for drinking but also polluted from mining upstream and human waste. The main economic activities in Tupisa are agriculture, mining and tourism. As the number of tourists are reduced to zero and as migration is not an option anymore, agricultural mining are the two main options and most of the growers are small landholders with less than a hectare of land and that allows them to secure food for the family and support the local markets. However, agriculture is not the main source of income. Mining is in the survey we found that 60% of the households indicated that they have worked in mining in the last 12 months but that number changes in various main of the based on the relative prices of metals. When mining provides better income more than our culture many men fund the need to work in mining. This is an industry that in Tupisa is polluting the rivers and they threaten ecosystems affecting their cultural yield when they irrigate the crops and the health of many community members including children who drink that water. Mining has stopped in the initial spread of the virus but in May they have returns to normal operations. So the main challenge here is how can we find robust solutions that can provide income for disadvantaged communities without negatively impacting our water ecosystem and ecosystem services that water provides. One thing that is evident from this pandemic is that existing inequalities unfortunately are going to increase and causing in addition increasing negative impacts to the water and ecosystem. In particular in areas with limited access to water with limited access to land to capital and with weak institutions. Commit 19 is showing the importance of reducing those inequalities. So in this project in Tupisa and Sparta Bolivia Watch we continue working with our local partners and with our colleagues to combine information of the survey and more like socially based and and qualitative based information with the technical base with results and the water modeling that we do to identify the hotspots and the vulnerable regions and inform actions that are robust in this very uncertain future but can also contribute to the reduction of poverty and social inequalities and improve the well-being of people living within those watersheds. So thank you very much and I look forward to the questions in the discussion section. Thank you Laura. That was an excellent presentation but heartbreaking all the same. As we know globally the COVID-19 has exacerbated existing inequalities that have disproportionately affected the most vulnerable people. On the other hand I think it's made us aware of the interdependence we have that we're we all interact with each other and the hope is indeed that we find these robust investments that address the inequities and poverty that we see around the world. I'd like to turn to our next speaker another colleague from the Stockholm Environment Institute based in Stockholm Kim Anderson who's involved with us also in the CETA funded project in Bolivia but really has global experience around sustainable sanitation and reuse of water. So if I could hand over to you Kim and just to everybody please keep the questions coming and comments. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you Annette. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm honored to join the nice set of colleagues. So I will try to make the connections with the wash the water sanitation hygiene systems and talk about how if we kind of hire our ambitions maybe we can also build stronger and have more resilience to future pandemics and other other crises. So so you slightly see some of the talking points that I want to make. If we start with the first one more on the more general wash and and the deficiency I guess no one has missed like the the the messages about hand washing and how important that is to to contribute to stop virus spreading between between people and we have heard a lot of things that we we need to wash our hands with soap more than more than 20 seconds and then carefully wash under running water but this this sounds easily enough but if we consider what what Lara said for Bolivia for example in that that case or if we look at the global situation where three billion people still lack the basic hand washing facilities then we know that this basic protection measure is not really accessible for 40 percent of the human population so that's that's really a kind of a crisis situation I would say. There is also some emerging evidence that virus may present in feces even after up to a month after that you have had respiratory symptoms of of the disease. So this immense lack of sanitation services toilet households without toilets is also a potential factor for for and source for spreading but of course the lack of toilets is also more of a private thing that where people have to leave their homes to to go to public toilets or out in the in the bush to do their their needs and of course if you're affected by disease and then have to to look for where to go that's that can be a real nightmare of course. If we look at the next bullet need for integrated inclusive wash I think there is also risk with having a lot of focus on hand washing and I think indirectly that can have focus on focusing on water supply and we have seen in the past looking at a project experience where there have been a really narrow focus and investment in water supply in communities we have actually seen kind of almost like negative health impacts afterwards because then you start to people start to use more water so it's if it's not accompanied by with sanitation and and kind of the social awareness of water culture how to handle it you can actually create more problem with stagnating water contaminations in in your communities and the figure shows here that we actually need to have all these wash components together to have a real impact if we just go for water quantity for example or water and water quality we can reach maybe 30 30% reduction in diarrhea for example while even high hygiene promotion could actually give give us more if we we know the basic of hygiene so but what we really need is to promote this integration so not not only do water supply for example go go further and here it's also really important to look at inclusiveness we have vulnerable groups we have seen this during the the covid pandemic where where elderly for example are extremely vulnerable at the same time if we look at wash and sanitation projects when we have revisited some of the some major wash programs in Africa for example we've seen that it's often these groups also that maybe don't take the steps to use these installations there are some cultural or other acceptance barriers that that make them not use them so we see them continue with open defecation for example so we really need to prioritize that the installations the infrastructure is it's adapted to their needs but but also that there are actually behavior campaigns linked to to this this type of interventions so they actually reach and kind of convince these vulnerable populations as well another part is the potential for doing more when it comes to resource management linked to the wash system with the wash system we have water coming into the system but we have also everything we eat in the end it will end up in in our waste streams so this is a kind of untapped potential from a resilient perspective when it comes to water use there we can do things having more efficient low water flushing toilets for example or we can make sure that we treat and reuse water that's been used locally irrigation in agriculture for example so there is one one part and of course then we can strengthen resilience towards different events disruptive disruptive events for example droughts but the reuse of nutrients organic matter in our our waste streams are also a way to strengthen for example sufficiency when it comes to agricultural production food security and the link to nutrition of course that Kenny was talking about this is of course important we have seen studies that we have done potential of Africa when it comes to the nutrient content in human excreta we've seen that if we look at the total amount of nutrients in that material compared to all the fertilizer that is consumed in sub-Saharan Africa the amount is quite equal so actually if we were able to reuse this material safely we could actually double the amount of fertilizers and of course that could have a really big impact on food security and similar for for energy if we can recover the organic waste streams in in in link to our hosts also in in our communities there's a lot we can do making biofuel and support that energy supply system but last point is is that we can also expand beyond wash we at the CI we have been working with kind of an intervention method where we actually look at risks outside of the kind of the the wash that the human hygiene but also looking at other risk factors in communities when it comes to to animal husbandry of course the greater waste management to avoid vector spreading for example so there we have a assessment method where we can identify these risks and manage them so and of course this is really relevant for COVID as well considering how it was initiated with the links to wild animals for example so it's important with that link as well so that's one of the tools that we have cleaning green can can help doing this assessment we have other other tools and one when it comes to inclusiveness in in decisions and I mean design for example of wash system the empowerment wash index IWI tool we tool a rebound that is to look at the values of resource recovery in urban urban areas for example we believe a watch that Laura was talking about there we are kind of developing a new tool looking at the wash wash flow links to to weep and water basin management which which things I think will have can have a big impact to to look at these these issues of resilience strengthen its resilience and also this supply of food energy etc so I think I I stopped there thanks a lot yeah thank you Kim that was fascinating I mean I my hope is that you'll finally could one good thing come out of this pandemic would be we absolutely raise the ambitions we actually provide water and sanitation for every human being so I would hope we could see that happen but I'm also fascinated by the history conceiving the potential of wastewater in particular first of all of course integrated approaches integrated not only around water and sanitation but integrated into how we understand watersheds and risk and I think this ties in with what Lassen introduced in his talk around the potential for wastewater as a resource as read as opposed to something we want to get rid of that it can increase water food and energy security and make us more resilient and with that I'd like to introduce our next panelist Marta Escavaria who has we've been sort of honored to to get to know and in particular around her co-design of water funds around the globe so Marta I'd like to hand over to you thank you so much thank you to Stockholm Environment Institute Marisa for inviting me to be here and to the great panelists that are giving me some moments to make some comments I'll be speaking as a practitioner basically what I can access in terms of robust decision makers as an outsider I'm not government I am not necessarily civil society since we are a private company but we do have a mission in terms of conserving landscapes for conservation and in particular for sources of water I think that the nexus then whichever you're more interested in but in general puts the discussion at another level globally in terms of understanding the linkages the trade-offs that we make and get away from the sectoral point view that we have and it is particularly complex in the water sector which has been a sector that is highly sectoral so I think some of the elements that were highlighted by the different speakers we have seen that COVID has highlighted the importance of food sovereignty wherever we are and sort of thinking about what that means what is that equation in terms of food production as well as the nutrition that it brings as well as the water that it uses to be able to provide and at a level it has highlighted the importance of our wash mandate I think wherever we go water continues to be a basic human right that we need to ensure and as highlighted by Laura unfortunately Latin America we still have a long ways to go not only is it important because of the sanitary crisis but in general we know that it is the cheapest investment that governments can make to improve livelihoods and to improve their competitiveness as an economy so I think that's really important to bring to the forefront since my comments need to be brief in terms of time I just want to highlight that for all of us who are here today maybe as practitioners maybe as researchers maybe as government representatives robust decision makers are even more important considering the COVID crisis as well as our climate change challenge which is very much alive and despite you know what the focus of our attention has been in the last two months we know that the risks are serious especially because of the information that's coming out from big data about 2020 being the hottest year yet so having said that the importance of using these robust decision makers making systems the most in the most effective way is a real challenge for all of us and I think it speaks to all of us personally to think of practical ways to make that information meaningful most countries whether you're in the US at the state level or maybe in you know whichever country you may be there have been centralized coordinating entities for the crisis and I think that is an incredible opportunity if we are strategic to move away from the sectorial perspective and to bring an integrated approach a holistic approach to the information when we talk about the nexus which is a wonderful concept concept and conceptually very powerful it is hard to to make it operational so that's where I think working with the centralized emergency centers and bringing to the forefront what water can mean as a you know like as a unifying element I think that is real and that is important to find the civil lining of all these possibilities so having said that I find that we need to make sure that the decision makers are working not only you know multi sector level but also multi levels right in terms of central government regional governments local governments community level and then finally reiterating how we can base our decisions in terms of science and I think that's something that we're seeing countries like the United States struggling with something that we thought was already accepted decisions have to be based on science but somehow the politization of decision making has led to this ideological you know application lens right on on the science so it's not only did we see it with the climate crisis now we're seeing it with the covid crisis but if we can overcome this and I think at least from my perspective in Latin America we have seen despite the tragedy the centralized entities trying to make sure that they're basing their decisions on science on the evidence on the information and that's where I think we can contribute to make sure that robust decision makers can take us to a better place so thank you all for the opportunity to speak to you today thank you Martha that's a really interesting perspective that you bring I mean we're what we really need are sort of robust decisions that are based on science which doesn't seem to be happening at all in the country I'm located in right now to not lose sight of the very serious risks we face and have faced and will continue to face in an escalating way around climate change but I feel like you're trying to give us a hopeful message here we are seeing more coordination happening across sectors than we've seen in a very long time and and some prop promise I think around people starting to understand and appreciate the role of science in decision making so with that I'd like to introduce our final speaker Nusha Ajami who is from my perspective what I would call a scholar practitioner you know someone who's a scholar at Stanford University been deeply immersed in water policy in California including the water energy nexus so Nusha I'm handing over to you thank you Annette I really appreciate it and I appreciate being part of this process I'm part of this panel lots of great presentations I try to not fully reiterate a lot of things my colleagues mentioned but I'll walk you through some of the challenges people or California is facing in face of this pandemic I guess the first part of this since we are on a water food and COVID-19 panel is the disrupted water and food supply chain in California I can't you know highlighting the fact that a commuter population has has sort of diminished or reduced so we don't have a lot of people who move from location to location to go to work during the day so the water use in some of those communities have decreased because of the change in population they they're behind population and the water use in other communities increased because people are working from home which has its own financial and financial implications for some of the water agencies to manage our resource also the food chain a food supply chain has been disrupted which again partly because the schools are closed restaurants are closed commuter population again some of these campuses large campuses we have for example in the Bay Area such as Google's and Facebook's and and other working locations that people go to and have lunches and dinners or buy local food locally during the day and those have been sort of eliminated which means that some of the farming community that depend on selling their supplies to those those consumers have been impacted significantly and then also it has a lot of again since this is a very interconnected system has a lot of water implications as well another piece of this is the focus on the disadvantaged communities because obviously access to clean water has been highlighted in or sort of even had received a lot more focus during this pandemic because hand washing is such a core part of preventing COVID-19 and it's spread and unfortunately in California we have a majority like a big community about million or over a million people who do not have access to clean water either due to lack of water or lack of high quality water and and this situation has not necessarily improved during this process and even though our new governor has put a lot of focus on improving access to clean water then the challenges right now we are but first of all we faced this pandemic very quickly and there wasn't enough time to fix some of the issues that we have and then also because of the financial implications of COVID-19 the challenge of investing in some of these communities is going to be real and we have to find alternative ways to find money to improve access to clean water in California another piece of this again sort of moving along that line is the infrastructure health and safety so again starting from this advantage community I mentioned lack of access to clean water and or water for daily use because we have as I said state budget has been you know we restarted this year with surplus in our state budget now we are sort of in a deficit and which means that some of the financial allocation to investing in water in so many different ways is under question right now if we can do it or not and also the you know unfortunately water has not yet made it to any of the stimulus packages that the federal government have been passing which is actually a sort of a it's sad to see since water is an essential resource and none of us can live without it unfortunately it's a hidden resource and not and not much focus is given to it at any given time and another piece of it is as I said then you know this shift in commuter population and the fact that people are using less water in some communities and more water in others has been impacting the financial health of utilities which ultimately means that they might not be able to invest or reinvest in their infrastructure or actually maintain and operate their system to its highest quality and also and not be you know there might be probably there will be a lot more different maintenance at this time because of this financial impact and also you know some of you might know people have been using a lot of flush flushable wipes in in different parts of the US and in California actually during the COVID-19 we saw an increase in doing in use of those kind of wipes which actually caused a lot of infrastructure damage and clogging which caused a big big outcry of help by the water utility community trying to get people to stop using those wipes and stop flushing them after another piece of it was because the supply chain in the toilet paper industry was impacted people were using a lot of different things and they were flushing it down the toilet which impacted the water pipes waste water pipes which ultimately impacted the infrastructure system as a whole you know I can go on and on about the challenges that California has been facing because of the COVID-19 and our water resources but I figured maybe I focused on a little bit about the opportunities that we have right now because of this crisis I would say a lot of it is actually along the same line my colleagues just mentioned in in their last four talks but I guess one thing is rethinking the value chain or supply chain process maybe we have to focus more on the demand-oriented investments rather than supply-oriented investments and actually thinking about how we can make sure there is enough diversity in the way we have in our system that would not make it break for one pandemic or one crisis after another and that's basically building resiliency in the system and I think diversification is definitely part of it either is a diversification of you know customer groups that we are providing resource to or a diversification of assets and financial tools another piece is actually food waste it has a lot of water implications and water footprint of food waste is significant so as other environmental footprints and I think this this pandemic has highlighted this issue more and maybe after we go back to our the so whatever form of normalcy we may experience after this we need to rethink how we use food and how we have to be more mindful of this not wasting a lot of food and resources and my colleagues mentioned about holistic approaches to issues I think the nexuses are great I think health water energy food all these pieces need to be within it and I think after every crisis after every crisis we realize this nexus is broader than every all these different elements we have considered so for a while we always focused on water energy then it's became water energy on food and now we're realizing water energy food and health are all very interconnected I guess this is highlighting the importance of integrated and broad perspective on how we manage our resources as a whole and how we engage society as part of this process and and as part of that I would say you know the collaborative governance is a very very important piece of this because we really do want to break these silos for example in the water sector we have you know Lassen and Kim talked about recycling and reuse and closing the water loop and trying to reuse water as many times as we can for various purposes and I think one of the one of the problems with that is we have all these siloed groups like you have people who provide water to us people who provide who take the waste waste water away people who manage storm water and none of these people are connected to each other or they work together so these are breaking these silos as one example has been extremely important in sort of creating this circular economy around water and creating more reuse and focusing on reuse more and I think the same thing applies to water energy and the same thing applies to water energy and food and health and sort of trying to these break these silos and create more collaborative governance at various scales at federal local regional scales and trying to create more cooperation across different different resource groups is very very important and with that I'll hand it back to Annette and look forward to the rest of the conversation. Thank you Nusia that was fascinating it's it's helpful to get the perspective of California in contrast to some of the other work that's been discussed that in fact it's there's some strong similarities you could see coming from Morocco, Bolivia, the sort of global picture Latin America as a whole and it does seem like there's a theme that's come up this this is an opportunity in terms of breaking down some of those barriers between sectors and across scales as Marta pointed out as well so thank you for those insights and yes please rethinking our supply chains and with this like I we're going to switch over to our Q&A session which is going to be led by my colleague Brian Joyce I've had the honor of working with Brian on the first project that I mentioned it's funded by CEDA in collaboration with the FAO that LaSense is involved with as well as USCID funded project the Sustainable Water Partnership in the Mara River in Kenya and Tanzania so with that I'd like to hand over to you Brian and then if all of our panelists could turn their their video on that would be great thank you great thank you Annette so I have been actively monitoring the the questions that have been coming in and we've got quite a lot of them some great questions so thank you everybody for submitting those I'm going to do my best just to try to cover the range of them that we got and I guess I'd like to start by just focusing on some of the questions that we got pertaining to the the planning processes and how we address robustness and resiliency and are inclusive of of all the stakeholders and so we we got quite a few questions coming in around the the issues in Morocco so the first question to Dr. Kenny is around water or water management in in dry countries or countries that have harsh climates and what are some strategies for improving food security and reducing the water footprint at same time thank you Brian well I think in in countries where water shortage is is a big issues we have different ways to deal with it and with regard to reducing footprint on the crops and one way I think is to invest on the water use efficiency technology and we do have now a plenty of you know ways techniques technologies to improve water consumption water use efficiency and or to use again water productivity water productivity issues as a whole and I think I think a lot of countries have made very good progress on this aspect let me give you just one one one example again using data from from Morocco uh 20 years ago or 25 years ago to produce one kilogram of oranges people used to use 600 liter then we goes into drip irrigation we reduce these needs by like let's say 30 40 percent so we went down to from 600 to 300 then using drip inigations is not enough we still have to manage it correctly how do we manage it correctly if we use integrate climatic data evapotranspiration data and meteorological stations all right we use it that we reduce it by again 20 percent and then more recently not only that people have been using some very sophisticated monitoring system to to to to manage the irrigation and then we reduce it down to 180 to 200 liters per kilo so within 25 years we came from 600 liters to down to 180 200 and that's that's that's one example I think for the future now we have even better solution using all these drone technologies and all these new technologies so we have plenty of solution technological solution to improve footprints but to link it to the food security issues I think what we we a little bit forget about is the use of local material local genetic resources okay in each country has its own genetic resources that are generally well adapted to their climate that are generally requiring less water so I think in the future we need to combine more technology with genetics and do how now that's one example great thank you thank you for that the next question that we had in for for NUSHA about shift in in priorities if we have shift towards more self-sufficiency in agriculture who will be what are the impacts then for other sectors and who are the potential winners and losers be in that case um so I'm not 100% sure what self-sufficiency in agriculture sort of here refers to but I'll try to sort of address this I'm happy to respond to a follow-up on this but I would say you know agriculture going back to what Lassen was saying I think it's a it's a it's a complicated and fascinating part of our you know part of human beings livelihood you know we we don't in California we don't connect land use with water use so we have all these you know productions on for example orchards that use water all the time they're permanent water users like California doesn't say have a lot of water it's actually a semi-arid area it has a Mediterranean environment and actually is having and you know using permanent crops can impact our water significantly because of that kind of climate so um so some of these lands that are producing for example all these orchards including almond almonds or other um orchards um you know some of that ends up being exported to other countries so do we so like what is that what are our priorities and a lot of these decision makings is a short-term decision-making so if I want to make money within this period I need to you know grow this much this many this much crops and sell it for this much while you know long-term farming these people were generation after generation have been farming they actually do focus on soil health water health to make sure they actually take care of the land to make sure they produce products at a local and are suited for the local need and demand so um so I think a sort of a long answer to I think it's important to focus on efficiency I think it's important to be much more mindful of how we use water but also it is important to focus on small producers that can actually do sustainable farming and can produce resource that is needed and actually connecting this whole land use water use soil health together rather than sort of doing one-off change in land use that can impact significant water um uh footprints and I think that is that is key for California unfortunately that's I think that we have a long way to go before we can connect these pieces together in a more systematic way great thank you um getting getting back to Lassen for a moment um there was some comments about the the energy the water food energy nexus and your point about uh how our diets are also in health is related to the current situation and the question was then how do we integrate these health concerns into uh energy or the water energy food nexus and then what are some policy measures that would improve the the resilience in the sustainability of resources management that's a very good question actually I think I think uh I'm going I'm going to go back to what I think Neuesha or somebody else has already raised the questions of having people talk to each other listen uh in every country we have a uh a national strategy or national program for agricultures and we do have also national strategy and national program for nutrition I have never seen health public authority talking to agricultural people so I think simply by putting together these I think we don't we don't talk to each other that's the question that I'm trying to make here I think people they don't talk to each other and Marta was raising the question of sectoral approach we have for many many years I think this approach has proven to be not efficient anymore and that's why the nexus issue is very important I think we need to talk to each other we in agriculture food people nutrition people medical people I have never few years ago we tried to create a Mediterranean foundation uh when and the basic question was to have agronomist water and medicines and cardiology and people from the mid the health publics talk together we do not talk together it's it's even seen as declos sometimes when you say okay do can we talk together you guys are working on this and this nutrition saying well I mean I mean why should we do we have something to talk about I think the answer is yes the answer is yes and this COVID pandemics really is inviting us to talk to each other to communicate to have a holistic approach and to address every single questions not in very sectoral simple way I think we we we test it and we test this in down here in Agadir let me give you one example and I will finish with that when it comes to the water questions here uh uh uh uh back in 207 what is it 10 years ago or more than that we had a severe ground for like one years or two years and we were about to shut down the whole economy down since and the decision was okay let's sit together and talk for the first time we put around the table all users of kind all kind of waters we end up by making what we call now in front of the contra nap it's also agreement between all the white users then and that was the the first time in Braco and I think now it's expanding everywhere so to make the story short the answer is let's talk less listen and let's talk period thank you for that and on a related note we got a comment in pertaining to what Marta was talking about with linking political and institutional processes that are science based and the the comment more of a comment than a question was about corruption particularly in Latin America being a barrier to to implementation and if you had any thoughts on that well let me just say that column uh Latin America is not the only corrupt place in the world agree you don't have a monopoly on that I think the US has a serious problem going on right now but having said that the issues that you know we say in Spanish that you know the problem of everyone is is a problem for all dummies right now it's not going to solve the situation but the fact is that I do think that the covid exacerbates all the inequalities that we've talked about and it has exacerbated the situation that decision makers both private and public in Latin America have generated under the past sort of era of economic growth but it has generated serious you know mismanagement at many levels at the same time that we have a huge informal sector at all levels you know Latin Americans have an ethical problem that we have to deal with culturally right and that's something that I think as we face covid it makes it even more evident right the governments that decided to invest millions on dollars on roads that access the amazon and now we have you know thousands of communities in the in the amazon that are even more exposed to um health problems because of covid so all these things I think it's definitely um exacerbated I have to say that I want to flip that conversation though I want to say is what are we each each citizen of Latin America or lover of Latin America doing to address the problem I'm really tired of us keep self-flagellating over this you know I just feel like we need to right now just talk about what am I doing in my household that's making sure that there's transparency what am I doing in my community what am I doing in my city what am I and I have specific examples right now we have a serious problem with all the health systems right as they're buying masks and all the equipment to face the sanitary crisis you end up having all that the minister of health did this that the minister of that but then you hear from a private business that says oh yeah I was able to get the cheap Chinese stuff and that's that way I got a cheaper deal you know those are the things it's like oh no the problem is the ministers but I keep doing it in my company so we really need to flip is what are we doing to change the conversation so to close I would just like to um send you all if I can and if SE would be willing a set of principles that we are promoting throughout Latin America saying these are the things that we have to think about right now seven principles for this sustainable development of Latin America that we think and begin to change the conversation the covid is a crisis we cannot waste we need to make this a game changer and I think it can be many people that I think had never come together are coming together and getting away from my ideological uh you know comfort zones getting away from our sectoral comfort zones getting away from our staying at home comfort zones we have to change the conversation and I think this is an opportunity and I think Latin America in terms of the corruption it comes down to the individual and I think that's really important the robust decision making systems can highlight the scope and scale of the problem but it comes down to individual choices that we all need to make globally I think thank you um and we did get some questions in about you know how do we uh not lose lose a track or lose focus in how do we take advantage of uh some of the positive things that are uh that are being motivated by the current crisis and um in particular with respect to to wash and I want to direct this question to to kim then um what are then some of the the historically overlooked uh social impacts and water planning and how do we include those that are most at risk thanks for the questions um yeah that's a very good good question I think there has been if we look at the past maybe with the millennium development goals there has been a big focus on uh supplying access no uh to toilets to water etc but actually seeing how that benefits the communities how that benefits different groups in society vulnerable groups etc has not really been on the agenda I think with the stg's it has improved but I think there is still a big focus on counting counting toilets etc so I think and there's also looking at the monitoring system uh and indicators global indicators etc uh there's not much detail uh it's about gender uh inclusiveness etc what what service they provide so I think there's a lot that we can do there and I think there's an opportunity to raise that that issue um and yeah I think I mean SCI we are involved in in developing some tools to to kind of desegregate the data so we can understand uh how do do the systems promote inclusiveness um but of course it has to become become mainstream in in in all the the stages of of of project implementation and and I guess from from from policies quite quite high up on national agendas for example but but I think there's a big big opportunity and as I mentioned uh before like I think elderly that it's really a if you look at research on elderly it's really a huge gap on on on understanding those those needs and so I think uh that we need to put put stress on that and invest invest in that that side and we see that they they are extremely vulnerable in this this situation for example um and but also to get to them it's also a bit harder so I think we we really need to uh to join forces to to get to that yeah maybe that's a brief answer okay great thank you for that so on a related note I'm going to ask a question to Laura um about the the planning processes and the in the tools that we use in those and as as people will need more water for to meet hygiene needs how do we consider those new water requirements in in water planning thank you Brian um yes I thank everybody for the questions I've been looking and yes another key aspects that that in connection to covenantine and water is how do we secure water for everybody and now that there's you know the need to have water to wash our hands and the the requirements that we had in the model maybe now they're going to be more right and and I would like to say that while coming 19 kind of illuminated on on or highlighted the inequalities having universal access should be the priority always right but this kind of emphasizing that and I think the work that we've been doing um in Bolivia and and it mentioned in Cambodia and trying to incorporate in with this aspect of what are the people that don't have access in their homes that don't have that that universal right and so in terms of scenarios and looking at that in water planning and in web and how we can inform decision uh make around those um those plans is that the the conceptualization of cities and people they need to move out of just being quantity of a number in an object or in a node in the model right we need to disaggregate we need to look at deeper on what parts of that that that community or that city that we're representing don't really have access to water in the homes and what that means in terms of the quantity don't incorporate in the model right but those underestimated because they don't have that access and what are the what are the requirements that that needs to be incorporated in the model now we're coming 19 we need to even increase those requirements and be more explicit in analyzing those so we are disaggregating the standard we model we are looking in refining those aspects to incorporate water access inequalities and and and look at and what that means in terms of requirements and it's all the comments that we're estimating based on data and one of the questions mentioned the challenge of data and and that's why when corp we did surveys one of the questions say okay how did you do the survey now right we were lucky that we did the survey just before the the pandemic and and we want to do that for the other watersheds and and we're trying to innovate and find new ways to to discover what are the needs what are the social aspects that we need to consider in this model so as we're merging these two worlds of the technical and the and the non-technical the qualitative surveys um you know covid is bringing those challenges as well so i'm trying to have a straight answer maybe but i think we're you know we have lots of questions that we're not going to be able to get around to and i just want to be mindful of time and give you all another chance to speak before we adjourn and and as i do i want to ask two questions before some closing thoughts from each of you and which are what are lessons learned from are there things you've heard today that that are lessons from one location that we that may be applied someplace else uh for your in your particular context and the other is how do we sustain positive change post pandemic so with those two questions i will go go in the order that we that you presented before and we'll start with uh dr kenny thank you brian uh i'll start with the questions and i think how the way we can sustain the positive things we talked about today is probably by international cooperation i think international cooperation would be a good thing for the future because uh one single country will not be able to deal with all these very complex issues so international cooperation would be one one thing to sustain the positive thing and again the second point is uh related to what i just said a few minutes ago i think adopting a holistic approach in dealing with these very complex issues that's my that would be my second recommendations and probably the third recommendation to sustain this positive is to look for a uh let's say bottom up kind of approach rather than top down uh decision making process i think uh much of the problems we we have uh when we deal with water issues food security issues uh and the normal conditions and also uh and the crisis and the pandemic crisis is to rely entirely i'm talking about of course some countries not all the countries to rely entirely on the top down decision process and uh end users are not uh i'm not into the loop of the decision process making so i think these these these are few ideas on how to can sustain these positive things but uh i i think i think the covid 19 pandemic is giving a chance to the whole world to reshuffle and rethink its development models and in productivist models models economic models based on growth growth growth growth growth and productions it seems to be seems to be questionable now we need to go back and consider uh social things sort of consideration we need to take ecology and social aspect into into consideration particularly i mean imagine this is a three-month pandemic crisis imagine you're gonna have a six-month longer pandemic with a higher with higher impact what would be the the the just catastrophe if because we if we work you we are using the same tools the same way of thinking the same way with of making decisions that's not going to work so we need to go back integrate ecology social i mean people have been talking about that for many many years we have climatic septic ecologic that now the pandemic is just telling me okay guys stop talking about this question this is serious get to work this is what happened with the pandemic what would happen with the climate change it's going to be even higher impact so we need to stop talking and get to work okay thank you for those thoughts uh and and next let's uh let's go to Laura then you need to unmute sorry uh one keyword that we keep listening is connection right connection with decision makers need to connect not you know being fragmented i think that connections between poverty which is a symptom of inequality and with environmental degradation and and how we need to get out of the different silos that we're analyzing things and for researchers also to connect and and water is the connector on many things and and i love that about water and and one example is is how you know kim and i were you know their model of wash blows and we were connecting trying to make these two models start each other and in light of coming 19th i think it's key and and i think that's we could say one positive thing of of of covid is that these connections they're they're being um emphasized on on on how important they are in the different levels right decisions and researchers and people and the analysis that we do and break out the different fragmentations that that we have and and i think a lot of these lessons that we you know i talked about bolivia martin mentioned different parts of land america but they can be connected to many other watersheds not only land america but in other parts of the world and and i would i would love to hear more and know more of how the water community is trying to make these connections and trying to to to support all these different efforts around covid 19 and and and make sure that when we get out of all this that we know better about the the social inequalities that we know better about the the damages that are happening in the environment and and that we can that we can work better right for our future so thank you thank you laura and kim if you could give us your final some final thoughts yes no i think i think it's it's really like the covid has put some highlights and and light on the need for wash and i think that is that is really good at the same time i as i said i see a bit of risk that we run quick into to solution we we lose the opportunity to do something more integrated we need to take in the time to assess to do what many hear said about the cross sectoral collaboration to think smarter i think it's been really good we have talked about the sustainability of our supply systems reaching me try to reach local sufficiency i think if we do wash smart that can contribute to that in more low more watery efficient equipment for example safe reuse making sure to close the loop locally but also another waste waste flows so i think there's a lot of chances to do that but but still that is acting over the the sector so so so and that will need need time for that dialogue to happen so but i i really hope that we're a bit patient because i think if we can do it right then we will really build strength to the to the future and as been said like in the the next challenge a big challenge that we see the climate and how that will put further stress on on water resources and other other resources so we have a lot to gain to build this these systems and increase local sufficiency around the world so i really hope that we we take the time to do it right this time thanks thank you for that and marta could you give us your thoughts no i would just say that because of the time and we need to be brief i would just say that listening to new isha about california which i think is one of the worst managed water places in the world i was thinking you know being the fifth economy or six economy of the world and and what you've been able to how you face this crisis you know if i think there's a huge learning to be done in the discussion and sort of what's happening at at at centers of thinking like stanford and and the role of of stocco environment is to to bring these these messages to all of us right those places that do not have such resources such capacity we don't have the technology like california does so i think there's a lot of learning to be you know promoted regionally and i think that's my message to all of us we've begun a conversation we need to keep it going um and yeah i do think as laura and and um um dr kenny's mentioned connection and conversations because this nobody has the solution we don't even understand the virus it's going to be with us for a while and in the meantime we have to face the next climate change impact that each community has to face so um and the action is now i don't think there's time to waste we're already late and so to all of us is we need to be empowered we need to do things um and we need to keep moving at least making sure that we do no damage great thank you for that annusia they said um i guess i've just since we talked about universities i'll touch uh on a few things related to that one is we actually really need to have next generation of nexus tankers right now we have people who go through this educational system that's like siloed by itself so it's very difficult for some of these people who come out of these systems to really think provide this broader thinking and i don't think we should get rid of like uh the specific you know uh technical focus degrees for example yes we always need civil engineers and and social scientists and all that but we also need people who can go across easily and go across these uh boundaries um another thing i would say is i think as we are talking this this uh this pandemic really highlighted the importance of local solutions and i think we have to consider as we try to export our knowledge our experience our solutions from location to location you have to actually i think we have to rethink that maybe we should think about how we can incorporate existing local solutions as part of building resiliency you don't want those practices those experiences those long historical knowledge of how to manage water and resource and this and that be lost into our western way of thinking because the reality hasn't worked for so many places and actually has caused more problems than solutions and as Martha said in California even we are suffering from our over-engineered complex system that was built as a you know great idea 50 years ago and now it's falling apart and so that's very important and i think when we are talking about nexus is the challenge is scale scale scale right so how do you sort of put all these pieces together thinking about the scale temporal scale and special special scale and how they kind of connect uh and that is a piece that needs to be focused on um it was such a pleasure to be part of this discussion thank you for having me great well thank you all and with that i'm going to turn it back over to Marisa to to Raleza yeah thank you everyone um i'm gonna just minutes to wrap up and i feel i started this conversation or this panel and this webinar thinking we need some time to think and i feel i feel we just achieved that for the last hour and a half we stopped the world and we're able to just be here be present and reflect on what's happening we have a lot a great audience great questions i love all the questions i wish we had the time to go over them we'll likely do some kind of uh announcement sharing some learning from this webinar later and this is the community that is aware of what's happening and that can raise voices with data information to inform robust decisions i think uh to to to really get it to the to the gist of it i mean really these robust solutions are the ones that include wash climate virtual water that consider corruption because once all the data and information is out there there's no where going back and and and these um decision makers need to make the right decisions that consider demand supply and mainly that it considers this cross sectional uh trans um boundary um and across boundaries and across sectors dialogues that we so much emphasize today and i think there are many challenges i think we are looking to what's working how rapid response is working and how we can extend some of those uh good benefits that are happening and good actions that we are seeing beyond what's this moment we have a window of time to um be um to to motivate action uh these actions to mobilize water sanitation and food security investments that are right and we in this window of time we can move from inaction to action um i just want to say that we are also trying to do this through the water beyond boundaries initiative at sci we have at the we are the initial stage stages of the initiative and we invite you all to collaborate with us on that to share thinking uh the idea here is to make sure that we are not limited to the watershed boundary that we include ecosystems and that we engage all the stakeholders on dialogues that are rich and uh that take us to the next level so with that we keep you informed of any other updates on finding robust solutions in the base in the face of covet we will continue to work with partners and practitioners on this theme and we will continue to keep our audiences updated we will be posting the webinar online so you can go over and share with your networks and thanks for your time and participation and we hope to see you next time have a great rest of the day goodbye