 Before I start my talk, I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we are celebrating and gathering today, the Jagra and the Terrible People, their connections to land, water and community. I pay respect to elders past, present and emerging. Distinguished guests, fellow delegates, colleagues, in shaping our water futures, as Marianne has indicated, our waterways are very important. So we do need to listen, listen to them a bit more. Even in the development of solutions, we need to be able to target the solutions to what the waterways are trying to tell us, rather than develop solutions for the sake of developing solutions. The other night, I was talking to a colleague, a friend, and a fellow woman water champion, Leith Bully, who wrote this amazing poem about partnerships and water. And I asked Leith then if I could share some excerpts or some parts of that poem with you, especially the ones where she talks about it from the point of view of our waterways. So I'd like to start my talk with that one. While I'm doing that, in the background, there'll be a number of photos, amazing photos of different waterways. These photographs have been submitted to the Global Change Institute as part of our competition to basically portray the use and the characteristics of water. So that will be showing in the background. So I might start that now. So Leith's poem goes like this. Six disconnected people looking at their dying river. Excuse me. While governments made promises, conducting endless meetings, single issues, confusing policies and processes by the mile, politics is served, but will the river smile. Each person possessed a piece of wisdom, none prepared to share, for trust was lost and self-interest reigned supreme. The curry's face was one of sadness. She saw timeless knowledge lost forever. She felt the river crying as land and people disconnected. So the mighty river sighed and died. It died from people's lack of trust and precious knowledge left to rust. Just think of how it might have been if only they had found a way to share their wisdom and work together to save their precious river. Thank you very much, Leith. And Leith is in the audience at the moment. So these are the credits for the photographers who have very kindly given us the photographs. So colleagues, there really is a requirement for us to have a paradigm shift on how we view our waterways. We have, all of us would have seen in the past, we looked at our waterways as sources of water. We have to. They basically provide us with a water for household, water for industry and water for the community. In some rivers, unfortunately, they're treated as sewers. It's the easiest way to discharge waste. You dump the waste, they go out. Solution, diffusion is the solution to pollution. Cities love to build around rivers. We love in some cities and Brisbane is one, Singapore, for example, Malaysia, we love living on the rivers. So we've actually now started to look at rivers as lifestyle. We like recreational activities along the river. We enjoy basically just looking at the different components of the river. But the challenge for us here today is really looking at rivers for future generation. We need to conserve and preserve and protect our rivers for not just us, but for our children and the future generation. As such, we need to really, on top of just looking at rivers as services or provision of services for us, we really need to look more at the impacts that we are putting on our rivers. We need to look at physical solutions. We've talked a lot about this, as well as enabling solutions, such as governance, such as financial mechanisms, such as community ownership. But we also need to be more strategic about rivers, not just reactive, because as we know, it takes overnight to basically destroy a river, but it will take a long time to restore a river. So with that, on Monday, John Thwaite, our keynote speaker, actually provided us with one of the levers or opportunities to actually help us protect and restore our waterways, the Sustainable Development Goals. And we've talked a lot about that, specifically Sustainable Development Goal number six, and more specifically the goals that relate to improved water quality by the reduction of pollution, the implementation of integrated water resource management, protect and restore water-related ecosystems, expand international cooperation and capacity building, and strengthen community participation. So my keynote would touch on bits and pieces of this and show to you some case studies by which we could actually fast-track some of these to achieve Sustainable Goals, Sustainable Goal number six. So just as a quick background, our waterways support a number of environmental values. In fact, the valuation of our waterways, specifically the freshwater lakes and rivers, which occupies about 165 million hectares worldwide, is about $3.2 billion US dollars a year. So it is a fairly valuable resource that we have here. Our rivers and waterways support a number of environmental values. In Southeast Queensland, for example, it supports aquatic ecosystems, cultural and spiritual values, supports primary recreation. We love swimming in our waterways. Secondary recreation, of course, human consumption, aquaculture, industrial use, and predominantly around the world drinking water. However, these values are threatened by multiple pressures, such as the development of water resources that tend to alter the natural flow of our rivers, such as water storages, hydropower plants, runoff coming from different land uses, agriculture, urban areas, industrial areas, and in some rivers, we still see a lot of rubbish and garbage. On top of that is the whole challenge of climate change. We can't just keep on doing what we're doing now. We can't just do a little bit more. We have to do a lot more because we have to counteract climate change. So it's not a surprise, and our speaker yesterday from the Asian Development Bank, when we launched the Asian Water Development Outlook Document in 2016 yesterday, that the first Outlook Document outlined that 80% of the rivers in Asia-Pacific area are in poor condition. The red line there indicates where it's poor, so you only have a few countries there with rivers that are in good condition, and they are, of course, New Zealand, Australia is in there, but the rest are really in poor condition. We have put too much pressures on our rivers to actually give them time to cope. And what we have done as water managers, water scientists, water advocates, we have been very active in coming up with multiple solutions for multiple pressures. The diagram you see there is actually a diagram developed through the International Water Center, which basically displays the different types of solutions that Southeast Queensland had put in place during the millennium drought. So we had wastewater reuse. We had water-sensitive urban design We had a reduction of nutrients coming from our wastewater treatment plants. We have best practice agriculture, so all the different types of solutions that we could possibly put towards the catchments to ensure that our waterways are coping very well. So I'm sure you would have had a pleasure of seeing Brisbane River. The Convention Center is actually adjacent or alongside the Brisbane River, and Brisbane River as you see it now is actually a result of a number of years of work and commitment by the, as Marion has indicated, whole of government, the community, and the researchers who have actually put forth a lot of effort in where Brisbane River is at now. But our colleagues at Healthy Waterways and catchments would know that that's not good enough. Brisbane River still has a lot of room for improvement. How are waterways responding? Now, there are different waterways respond differently, and these photos here were given by a dear friend of mine from Passig River Commission. So you can see a before-after shot of Passig River, exactly the same shot. The first photo, as you can see, a lot of rubbish. The next photo, the effect of the removal of that rubbish and the planting of different types of vegetation actually improve that aesthetic condition. This type of response is very easy to track. It's very easy to observe because it's very visual. And usually that's a very, what we call as a low-hanging fruit. You have to get rid of the rubbish. You have to get rid of the garbage. In so doing, and I know Ramil from the Passig River Commission was challenged with this, the relocation of some of the people who were living on the side of the rivers and literally discharging directly onto the river had to be relocated and had to be given alternative livelihood. But look at it now. You could actually see it. That's how the river is responding. It loved it. In Southeast Queensland, through healthy waterways and catchments, there is a monitoring program called the Ecosystem Health Monitoring Program that has been running for over 10 years now. It's a very extensive monitoring program. And to some extent we are more challenged here with monitoring because we really are monitoring now the chemical and the biological features of our waterways, not just aesthetics because we've cleaned the rivers already from an aesthetic point of view. We then now have to look at the chemical and the biological factors. The map you see there is a map of Morton Bay and most of you would have seen Morton Bay as you fly into Brisbane. The Bay water quality actually shows an east-west or west-east gradient where you have the eastern part, the blue areas, our clean, pristine water quality. It's actually a very special part in the world. It's the only place in the world where you could actually stand on the blue part there, sit on a boat, I mean stand on a boat and see dugongs, turtles, healthy seagrass, very clean water quality, turn yourself and see the city skyline, see Brisbane. So this amazing juxtaposition of very pristine high biodiversity area with juxtaposition with a highly urbanized area does exist and exist in Morton Bay. The areas on the western part though are more turbid. They have higher nutrients because we've actually positioned our sewage treatment plant discharges on that part. So hence you have the east-west, west-east gradient. In 2000, the different governments, local governments and in collaboration with Australian government actually invested about $400 million to reduce wastewater. The graph you see there is actually the reduction of nitrogen. The blue one is coming from the largest sewage treatment plant we have, Luggage Point. Most of you would have heard about that through the two days and you see by 2000 there was a significant reduction of nitrogen. The other plants also followed. So there was significant reduction of nitrogen from the sewage treatment plants. So how are waterways responding? This is a sewage map. What you see there in red is sewage. It was actually measured using a radioisotope signature, Delta 15N, it's a very specific signature for sewage. And you can immediately see that where there's the discharge of Luggage Point and the other sewage treatment plants associated with other local governments, you actually see and can measure sewage. After the commitment, with the commitment of several millions of dollars from local government, you actually see the sewage decreasing in the bay until such time here in the last graph, really, there's only very little sewage. That's a major accomplishment on the part of the local governments. But they did that because they had visually a map that could tell them that there is sewage on the bay. So, and it is very visual and that means they have to do something about it. So, and hence the power of being able to tell the managers about how our waterways are responding is very critical. The graph you saw before was powerful, but maps like this are more powerful in actually showing the effectiveness of management interventions. So, how do we listen to our waterways? We monitor them. But we know that in most places, even here, we're not exempted to that. Monitoring is always seen as an expensive activity. In developing plans for waterways and rivers, it's always put in as the last. We would like to monitor them, but monitoring is very expensive, especially when we embark on the chemical and the biological monitoring programs. I did this engram, a very quick engram, which basically shows in the 1990s, you actually see an increase in the mention of monitoring in the publications around the world. And that's because I think that's when we kind of gleaned that our waterways are getting to be polluted. And so we started monitoring them and it's still going up. But what do we do with all this monitoring data? The traditional ways we graph, we put them in tables, and you saw the ones before, we reflect them in maps, which is probably more visual than just graphs and tables. And in most cases, they're left and put on the shelves and it's predominantly the regulatory agencies who would like to use them because they have to use them as part of their mandate. Now there are other ways by which we could reflect the results or the reactions or the responses of our rivers better. And one of that is through waterway health report cards. And this is giving our waterways a better voice and a voice that could actually reach out to a broader audience. So why healthy waterways or why waterway health report cards? It's very simple. It's the same phenomenon or it's the same process or principle as a school report card. So your kid comes home with a report card, you know he or she did well because he or she got an A. Well, he didn't do very well in some subject because he got an F or a D. So healthy waterway, but the report card in the school, the teacher actually uses a lot of exams, participation in class, a lot of different parameters to actually come up with a report card. The same with a waterway health report card. It enables large and complex data to be communicated to a broader audience because it's easy to understand. It directs and focuses management action. So you know that your child will have to do better in maths because he or she got a C instead of an A. So you can actually target management interventions with using a report card. It identify regions or issues of concern. It also provides accountability. And I'll show you some examples of this later on, measuring the success of effort of management actions. And it's a framework for monitoring activities. So it allows you to prioritize your monitoring activities. So you'll see there a lot of examples of report cards. The S&Q Healthy Waterways partnership then first released a report card in 1998. And I know Paul Greenfield who's in the audience would know that that wasn't a very smooth process for us when we first released it. There were a number of factors why it wasn't as smooth as we wanted it to be, which we could share with you later on in the discussion. But the report cards are now becoming very popular because it has been very effective in raising awareness. This is an example of the type of awareness we get out of a report card launch. And this is just about 30% of the print media. And I mean, this is print. I don't even talk about the audio and the video media that we get after a report card is launched. So it has increased awareness, different types of headlines, of course. So it does command the headline of our print media for a week or a month after the release. As I indicated before, we could use report cards to identify issues of concern. Once again, the map of the bay, that part of the bay got a D minus and the bottom bit close to luggage point got an F. And that was because during that year when we were monitoring that, it actually reflected some algal blooms due to the increase of nitrogen going into that part of the bay. So you can highlight that these are the areas that we need to look at and manage a bit more. Now, I've done this graph to really show how in a simple way, we could actually use the report card ratings to provide accountability or to track the effectiveness of management interventions. So the first, I started with the 2002 report card. Generally, through that time, Morton Bay held on to a good rating in spite of increase in population, and that was because of the significant investments in sewage treatment. So you might say, okay, it maintained a B, but the bay maintained a B despite the population increase and that's because of the investment of local governments in sewage treatment plan upgrades. We had a wake-up call in 2009 for the first time the bay declined to a D, which is equivalent to a poor and boy, did the media love it. The headline went crazy. First time, for the first time in 10 years, the bay was poor. And that was associated with a high rainfall after a decade of drought. But you don't just blame rainfall, you actually blame the catchments and the stuff on the catchment that was brought down to the bay by the rainfall. So the message there is we need to look after our catchments all throughout the period, not just during a high rainfall event or when there's no rain. The bay did pick up and to some extent, this is a story of resilience. So the bay recovered slightly when we had the 2011 flood. It went back to a C. It, 2011 flood came on top of this recovery. It still maintained the C. And at the moment, the B is hovering between a B minus, a C and a B minus, which is good. So it is a story of resilience that it was able to pick up after that call that we had in 2009. So it's there. The challenge that we have put forward in our future of Motton Bay business case is there are two options. We need to invest more in protecting our woodways and with that, we should be able to maintain a B, a good rating for the bay by 2030. If we do nothing, we have increased in population. We talked about climate change and there's a high chance the bay will go down. So these are all predicted. So these types of visualization we could use to actually tell the story to our politicians and to the managers. So, excuse me, I always have to say this all the time because people forget that, because A, B, Cs and Ds are very simplified, they forget that the report card ratings are actually backed by rigorous science. And if there's not enough monitoring data, we do look at expert opinion, but that's still very rigorous science. So if we were to graph increasing science quality and increasing communication quality, by the way, I give credit to Bill Denison who we work together a lot. If we were to graph that, the modern scientists would definitely be on the increasing science quality. That's where we thrive, we publish in nature, we publish in science. The politicians are on the other hand in the increasing community quality, that's why their politicians, they speak very well. What we want is basically the truth to power here for our stakeholders. And usually the report card is very effective in driving this. We want increasing science quality but also effective communication quality. But monitoring is not enough. You can monitor your waterways until you see the last fish or until you see the last seagrass. So I've put this quote up. The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty, the activist is the man who cleans up the river. So we need to do more than just monitoring. And that's where IWRM comes on board. I did another Ngram of IWRM and IWRM did actually increase together hand in hand with the increase in monitoring. So the global water partnership has provided a general framework for IWRM which looks at economic efficiency, considering social equity and ecological sustainability. There'll be some questions about this later on. IWRM became very popular in the last two decades. The question we have to ourselves, why have our rivers not improved that much? Do we need to do something? Do we need, how do we operationalize IWRM more? I'd like to showcase healthy waterways and catchments. It's an independent not-for-profit organization. We have been involved, it has been in existence for over 20 years now, has gone through different types of government. The vision is very solid. It works with government, industry and community to protect and improve Southeast Queensland's waterways. It influences decisions, policy and actions to improve and maintain waterway health. And it releases the report card every year. And I'll finish with one slide. And lately it's merged with SEQ catchments. So healthy waterways is actually a very good example of how IWRM can be implemented. I won't go into that detail of adaptive management because I'm running out of time, I've got two slides. I'd like to share the difference between studying a problem and solving a problem, and this is once again from Bill. When we study a problem, we tend to detach ourselves. We're not as passionate. When we have to solve the problems of our waterways, we need to be passionate. When we study, we have to embrace complexity. When we solve, we have to simplify. We have to involve people. When we study, we publish and fund in peer-reviewed journals, but in solving, it's quite different. These are different journals that our stakeholders want us to put our work in. In studying, we need to get it right, but in solving, we need to get it done. So, last one. Hall of System Understanding and Approach in Developing Solutions, Recognizing Trade-offs and Ecosystem Services, Strengthen and Support the Implementation of IWRM Plans through PPP, Innovative Financial Mechanisms, and Ableing the Communities, and lastly, listening to our waterways monitor, model, and communicate. I'll put this as a placeholder for the Basin Leaders Forum later on, but before I do a 50-second video after this, I would like to acknowledge the key players in what we are doing today in terms of waterways here. Paul Greenfield, Bill Denison, and Stuart Bahn, SEQ Healthy Waterways Catchments, the GCI Photography Competition that you've seen before, Leith Bully, who shared with me her photos, and the last one, I would like to indulge you in a very short audio video that will happen here. It was done by Leah Barclay, who's a musical expert, and what Leah has done has actually captured the different voices of our rivers, and this one is from Nusa River, and this river got an A rating, and I'm finished then, Ganesh. Dolphins, insects, fish, water bubbles. Thank you very much.