 Good morning, good afternoon, good evening everyone. My name is Carlos Diaz, I am the IWA manager of the Climate Smart Utilities Initiative. Welcome to all of you. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you very much for being here. I am going to moderate this meeting, this meeting of the community of practice of the Climate Smart Utilities Initiative. Please, my only request is that all of you please mute your mics if you are not speaking. So welcome and let's get started. So this is the agenda of today, the welcome and introduction, an introduction from myself. Then we will have a short introduction about the Climate Smart Utilities Initiative by our colleague Brenda and Poma. Later we will have a presentation on groundwater use minimizing carbon footprint by Dr. Stephen Foster from University College London. And then we will have two very interesting case studies, this case stories, these kind of stories we are collecting from everywhere. This is one of the main activities of the Climate Smart Utilities Initiative to collect these good cases on adaptation, mitigation and leadership which are the three pillars of the Climate Smart Utilities Initiative. We have two interesting case studies, one from Bergen, Norway by Marie Sagen and the other one from Manila Water from Philippines by Sara Bergado. Then we will have a short questions and answer session moderated by myself. Then we will have the breakout rooms and closing remarks. What are the objectives of this meeting? This is the meeting of the community of practice of the Climate Smart Utilities Initiative and the objectives are to learn about adaptation and mitigation actions in different water utilities to understand experiences and challenges of practitioners in implementing these climate actions and to discuss possible outputs for the community of practice. What can you contribute to the COP? Because as you know, this community of practice is one or maybe the main component of the initiative and we are really relying on you to learn about climate actions and adaptation actions and this is very important for us and we are paying a lot of attention to revitalize this community of practice. So say that I would like to give the floor to my colleague Brenda Ampoma to go through the Climate Smart Utilities Initiative. Brenda, please, the floor is yours. Okay, thank you Carlos. As Carlos has already mentioned, my name is Brenda Ampoma from the International Water Association and I'm based in Ghana. So before we move on to our main speakers for today, I will be sharing with us a brief introduction on what the IWA Climate Smart Utilities Initiative is all about. So to begin with, this initiative is a legacy of an IWA GIZ project known as the Wacklen Project and it supports the utilities around the world to work collectively to win the race to resilience. So basically the goal of the initiative is to assist in climate resilience within utilities through climate adaptation and also mitigation. Now with the climate, with the changing climate, we are all experiencing the effect of this changing climate and for this reason we need collective actions with measurable outcomes. You also agree with me that we are in a race against ourselves and the only way that we can win this race is together. And we believe that utilities can take a lot of action towards global decarbonization and are also key to city successful climate adaptation. So when we say an IWA climate smart utility, what do we mean? Now these are water, wastewater or urban drainage utilities that are improving their climate resilience while contributing to significant and sustainable reduction of carbon emissions. And these can be public utilities, private utilities or a mixture of these companies who advocate for climate action. So the initiative has four main components and one of which is the reason why we have gathered here. Knowledge sharing through a community of practice that supports an exchange of knowledge among technical expertise. We also have an information repository component, a utility engagement component and then an awareness raising campaign component. So under knowledge sharing, we have put together a community of practice that we have been organizing meetings, webinars and master classes to share knowledge on what we are doing as utilities. And then we also have a platform on IWA connect, which is a IWA social media page. And that's people interact among themselves. So if you are not a member of the group and then you would like to be a member, please visit IWA connect and then you can join the platform and then contribute to the discussion that are going on on the page. So basically the community of practice platform provides an opportunity to exchange on common problems to share knowledge on solutions, inspire innovation and then also create a storehouse of knowledge on two main topics. The first being climate adaptation in asset management and planning. And then the second on mitigation or reducing carbon footprint of assets. So we have we have on IWA connect we have separate group of climate adaptation, and then we have separate group for reducing carbon footprint but then in the future we are trying to merge all these groups to become one major group on climate smart utilities. So the first group on adaptation we had a first kickoff meeting somewhere last year on 24th of March. And then the outcome of this meeting was to identify some priority areas that we felt we could share knowledge on an experience when we are talking about climate adaptation. Now one of the priority areas was to have a platform to share best practices, case studies and research. And currently we have a website that we are updating constantly with some best practices case studies from different utilities. We also consider the need to gather and map information on climate financing pathways. We also consider the need to share experience with people working with regulators to incentivize resource adaptation approaches, and then also to promote information on tools that can support adaptation. And under two to support adaptation we also had a webinar last year on climate adaptation tools. Another priority area we consider important was to showcase some adaptation actions. And under this as Carlos said in the introduction we are collecting case studies on some adaptation actions that are implemented by utilities for other people to also learn what is being done when we are discussing climate change. So under the group on reducing carbon footprint same as adaptation we also had a kickoff meeting in December last year. And then also identified some priority areas one of which was to have a shared tool and approach for greenhouse gas monitoring. Under this we have also created a subgroup that with people who are interested in greenhouse gas monitoring so if you are interested, please go on IWA Connect and then join this group and also contribute to the fruitful discussions or activities that are going on within this particular group. We also consider it necessary to have a platform to share experiences on low carbon approaches and specific technologies or challenges. As it is being done for the adaptation we are using the website to also share information on case studies and best practices experiences amongst utilities. We also consider the need to have financial incentives to invest in green technologies, and then also to have defined goals for climate neutral utilities. So these are the different areas we have identified under both adaptation and mitigation. And we will encourage all of us if you are doing any project or any assignments within this group, please feel free to contact us and then we will provide you the platform to share your knowledge to the wider community of practice group. So under the information repository components, as I said earlier on we have a website which is www.climatesmart.org and we are occasionally updating this website with a lot of resources. If you log on to the website and then you click on the library page, you will see a lot of resources there so we also advise you to visit the website and then make use of the resources that we are constantly uploading. You can also submit your own resource by using the submit a resource button and then you send the resources to us. Also if you want to send it directly to us too, you can also send it to my email address. I'll put it in the chat box and then we will always upload these resources onto their websites. So we also have another component called the utility engagement and the objective of this component was to establish a community with utility executives for them to share their expertise, challenges and solutions to empower them to be leaders and also advocate for climate action. Now under awareness campaign, IWE has developed a shared vision with committed utility leaders around the world to support the utilities on their climate smart journey. And somewhere last year a call was made to all utilities for them to endorse the vision which will serve as a guide to innovation, tools and knowledge exchange to support the utilities on their climate smart journey. We believe that once you endorse the vision you act as a champion to provide inspiration and momentum for all utilities to achieve a cultural shift on the three interconnected place that was talked about by Carlos which is adaptation, mitigation and then leadership. Now last on the slide is the recognition program that has been developed by IWE to recognize utilities on their climate journey. Now we have opened applications and if you are interested, please submit an application if you are doing anything that is related to climate adaptation and mitigation. We also have a travel grants available for utilities from developing countries. And the plan is that we want to recognize these outstanding utilities during the IWA World Water Congress which is slated to happen from 11th to 15th September. And you want to find out more about the initiative. Next slide please. Please visit any of the website that has been displayed on the screen here or you can contact our programs and engagement manager who happens to be a moderator for this meeting. And then he'll be more than happy to provide you any information that you want that is related to the initiative. So that's being said we will move on to the main presentation for today which will be presented by Dr. Steven Foster who is the IWE groundwater chair. He has an extensive international experience in groundwater assets and management. And as I said he's a current chair for the groundwater management group and a visiting professor at the University of London. And over the years too he has also held other senior positions such as the World Health Organization groundwater advisor for Latin America in the Caribbean. He has also been the director for British Geological Survey Division and then the World Bank groundwater management team advisor. And he will be presenting on groundwater use and minimizing its carbon footprint. So Dr. Steven Foster please the floor is yours. And for your kind introduction for your invitation to join this group. Next please. In one sense groundwater resources are well indicated as a major resilient resource for using climate adaptation where they occur. And for two reasons for this they have generally very high microbiological and for the most part chemical quality. And secondly the aquifer systems have very large storage and they're not vulnerable to climate variation in the short term. But there are problems if we if aquifers become polluted for example can be very persistent and remediation is problematic. And India as an example of the variability of groundwater storage and therefore the ability of aquifers to play a role in climate change adaptation for utilities and I give here a section of the intergangetic plane across Punjab where you can see it absolutely enormous resources that really do not respond to short term petrifications of climate. The ground which is always available. in contrast, and at a different scale, the real scale is in the very small box on the right of the picture, a section across Peninsular India, where there are aquifers, they're highly used but they're very low in storage by comparison. So we really need to characterize aquifers in terms of their resilience to climate through assessment of storage, their productive capacity and indeed their pollution vulnerability. I wanted now to go to the other side of using groundwater more for climate change adaptation, namely the issues of the in excess with energy use and carbon footprint, which is relatively poorly understood and documented at this point in time, and this is our specialist group's current knowledge of the subject. In public water supply energy consumption is for source pumping, conveyancing to demand centres and any necessary treatment. Now for groundwater, if you've got good water well design and energy efficient pumping, and that means optimum depth of wells, good screen design, pump dimensioning and regular maintenance, these costs can be relatively modest. And the US have recently published some typical water well use energy uses at around 0.53 kilowatt hours per cubic metre, which equates to about 220 grams of carbon dioxide per cubic metre. So the positives of groundwater and energy use context are sources close to demand, usually needing only simple treatment. But the negatives are pumping lifts and if pumping lifts get out of hand and aquifers are not managed to become overexploited, these can become a real problem. But, and I have to just divert to irrigation here, I know it's not the primary interest of the utilities, but the issue of the carbon footprint of groundwater use is mainly related to irrigation use. And this groundwater irrigation compares or I am favourably to gravity fed surface water systems, obviously. Groundwater use for crop irrigation has increased enormously in the last 50 years or so. And the first figures here on China, there's now about 100,000 million cubic metres per annum extracted for irrigated agriculture and pumping is an average depth of, from average depth of now as high as 70 metres, generating about 33,000 million kilograms of carbon dioxide per annum. USA have been looking at this as well, their aquifer depletion is also running quite high in the Midwest and in California. But they also note that the mobilisation of bicarbonate to the surface from aquifers adds to the carbon problem. And there's some figures there on that issue that they've recently published. Perhaps the most difficult situation is in India. Groundwater use is put at 122 to 199,000 million cubic metres per year for irrigation. And aquifer depletion results in the emission of a large amount of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Latest figures are 45 to 62,000 million kilograms per annum. This is based on 70% electric pumps, 30% diesel pumps. But this constantly falling water table is the problem. Pakistan in a similar situation. And the figures are there for that country also. Next slide, please. So we reach a conclusion that on the one hand, large groundwater storage and naturally good quality are a major factor in favour of greater use by the water utilities of groundwater in their attempts at climate change adaptation. But there are complications. And the complications are that should groundwater become polluted or should it become overexploited, then that carbon footprint changes quite radically and rapidly. I've used the banking analogy here to illustrate the balance of aquifers, income investment and expenditure as opposed to recharge the storage and discharge. But large storage has proved in the past to be a policy curse more than a policy blessing in groundwater because there's a lot of political complacency. And people tend to think that all aquifer use is sustainable. And that's obviously not the case. We are facing quite major overexploitation problems in South Asia, China, the Middle East, Southern Europe, parts of the USA and in parts of Latin America. So it's a widespread problem now and only just in its infancy in terms of being addressed by the regulatory agencies. And we have to recognise that water utilities are a major groundwater stakeholder if they invest in groundwater for climate change adaptation and they need to become more involved with sustainable management and effective protection. Next slide, please. So just to summarise, if we want to keep the carbon footprint of groundwater used down, we need to conserve groundwater quality and prevent pollution. Where it's being used is an important source of water supply. We need to have optimum water well designed to ensure energy efficient pumping. And we need to act along with the regulatory agencies to reduce and avoid groundwater overexploitation and falling water table. And that particularly applies where there is competition for groundwater between water well irrigation and water utility use for public supply. Next slide, please. So the management challenge is a long stoning one now. Groundwater resources for too long have been abandoned to chance and business as usual will lead to further degradation. The government role must be transformed, it is being transformed in many countries, but not enough to the promoter, not from the promoter of short-term development to the long-term resource guardian. There's a widespread need to strengthen governance through building effective institutions, creating the adequate base, making essential linkages and aligning financial incentives. Implementing management plans, the appropriate monitoring assessment provides the basis for adaptive management in response to climate change. And water utilities have a critical role to play here as a major stakeholder for the potable water supply function. So that's, I think, enough to start. Just to summarize, groundwater a major potential aid in climate change adaptation of water utilities, but it needs management to achieve that and to keep the carbon footprint down in using it for that function. Thank you. Thank you, Doctor, for an excellent presentation. Please, if you have any questions for Doctor Foster, please already start putting the question in the chat box. And as I said earlier, after all the presentations, we will have a section dedicated to respond to all the Q&A questions. And please direct your question to a particular speaker so we can be able to respond to it faster. We'll move on to our second speaker, who is Marie. She will be presenting on Bergen's Water Actions in a Changing Climate. Now, Marie is a climate change and sustainability coordinator at the Bergen Water in Norway. Previously, she has worked as a manager of technology and business development at the startup Invert Appu and at the headquarters of the International Water Association. Her background includes experience from the Danish Environmental Protection Agency, also low water utility and also an ambassador for the Young Water Professionals for the International Water Week. So, Miss Marie, please, the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you very much, Brenda. Thanks for organizing and thanks for having Bergen here today to share our story and both our actions in and towards a changing climate. Many of you might not have heard of Bergen before. We're a smaller city, but we're the second-largest city in Norway on the West Coast and, in fact, the rainiest city in Europe. So, almost around three meters of precipitation per year, which is quite a lot here in Europe. Utility is serving around 300,000 people and we're a full water cycle utility. That means both drinking water, wastewater and drainage. So, we manage all the water from the mountains to the fjords, also through the city, of course. Bergen, of course, we follow the national goals through the Paris Agreement, but in addition, the Bergen municipality has some added extra more ambitious goals. We have a goal for 2030 to be fossil free. So, all the missions, there should be zero missions within the municipality's border. In addition, there's a 2050 goal to be at one and a half degree city, which is even more ambitious. So, all our actions within the city, within the municipality should make sure that we're not exceeding global warming one and one and a half degree. Next slide, please. Bergen Water received last year 2021 the Norwegian Water Sector Sustainability Award. A lot of this, of course, link to our climate mitigation efforts and are listed here to the right. Already today, we're 60% self-sufficient with energy, mainly through our biogas treatment plan from our wastewater sludge, but also through hydropower turbines from our intakes to our water treatment plans. That is something we're also looking at expanding as well, both of these. Already from 2018 to 2020, we had 15% energy reduction and we're looking also even more through this energy management system we have to reduce this even further, but a lot of lowering temperatures and having smart systems in place here. We also use a lot of no-dig solution. So, instead of digging up the pipes when we need to do renewal, there's a lot of technology here to save both costs and the time and energy and also there, of course, the citizens living around with a lot of noise. So, definitely our preferred solutions and a large amount of our projects are no-dig solutions. We strongly believe in the circular economy, sorry, last slide still. Okay, so we are all our biogas, 100% of it goes to local buses. I think the production hour equals around one bus going 76 times around Earth, just to put the numbers in perspective, and all our biosolids goes as fertilizer to farmers. We also developed our own climate footprint tool. We started this in 2018 as a path to become climate neutral, and this climate footprint tool includes tier three. So, also the production, the emissions from production and transportation of everything we need. We had a 35% reduction of our climate footprint from 2018 to 2020. A lot of this comes from our biogas treatment plant being new and being optimized in production, and a lot of it also things I already mentioned here. But, in addition, we also, because of the climate footprint tool, the results we saw the effects of swapping out chemicals and swapping out, for example, filter materials and our drinking water treatment plants, and this has had a great effect as well. Next slide, please. Another thing we've been doing is our serial mission construction sites. This is fairly new. Bergen municipality now has a goal that all municipal construction sites should be serial missions from 2025, and we started with our first one in 2020. This means that all the machinery bit onsite for construction are electric. And what we see, which is great already, is that we can see the demands from the municipality creates ripple effects beyond the municipality, also for more the private sector, because the entrepreneurs can, they have predictability, so they can buy the machinery and use these on other projects as well. We're also collaborating with the local energy company for mobile charging, so we have containers that can be moved around for enough energy at the right spots at the right time. Next slide, please. Then we're moving more to the climate adaptation part, just a nice image here from a local newspaper vision for Bergen in 2045, with a lot of blue and green infrastructure, a lot of sustainable urban drainage systems. Next slide, please. So I've seen this journey, of course, as others as well. This is the trend. We've seen it from around maybe the 1960s, as this figure mentions. It's stormwater management has been moving from just being pure flood management to being much more complex and much more interesting with all its added co-benefits. We've been looking more at recreation and aesthetics, water pollution and water quality, daylighting of streams, the ecology of the recipient, stormwater as a resource, which is very, very important to us, and of course also robustness, microclimate, etc. So you can see maybe this transition from this upper part just to flood, moving below to more livable cities. Next slide, please. These are some quotes from our 2006 overall plans, like water utility plans. But we can see this is important, things that have been shaping all three years, although this is 16 years ago. It's very important in Bergen that we give the stormwater time and space. And we see stormwater as a valued resource and it should be used as a positive element in urban planning. And back then we said water engineers, urban planners and landscape architects should communicate more. And they have, like there's been a lot happening in the last few years. And increasingly so, if you take the next slide, please. Because stormwater management is so much about collaboration across different sectors and different stakeholders, which that's why we always had an integrated approach in Bergen. Of course, we have a lot of inter-departmental and interdisciplinary collaboration within the municipality. We also have this inter-departmental stormwater forum. But it's not enough just within the municipality, which the utility is part of. We also work with external stakeholders such as reaches and development, universities with citizens, and we had a lot of trainings to create ownership to all the rules and requirements and the guidelines that also the city has been developing. To the right, you can see some of the, an illustration of some of the complexities of Norwegian stormwater management. Next slide, please. Yeah, further on the integrated approach, as I mentioned before, it can happen with great ideas. But you also need to make some specific requirements to make sure this is actually followed up. And that's been the great part of Bergen. It's been taken seriously since 2006. Water and wastewater is part of the framework plans, which anyone who builds anything in their city has to submit. So water always needs to be part of it. And we can see this increasing understanding that we need to adapt to the water, not the other way around. In 2019, we got our municipal stormwater management plan, which further really spells out and makes it clear how stormwater should be integrated in all land use planning. And it's also written that, and it's also stated here clearly once and for all that blue-green infrastructure is the first choice. And that's also part of the framework plans now. So anyone who builds anything needs to argue if they're not using blue and green infrastructure in the city of Bergen. Next slide, please. Just some examples here. This is from a local school with a blue-green concept, great with all the rain in Bergen also for playing. Next slide, please. Another one here with a local park that used to have a bird channel that's now been daylighted. It's beautiful river park that also explains the history here. And yeah, a great recreational area for the local residents here. Next slide, please. Then it's Mindebyun, which is an exciting area around two kilometers long. It's being developed right now. It's a former industrial area being turned into residential area with the metro line being open to go through the entire area. And a channel that's been, it's been buried. This is a local low point in the area. So it's obviously where the water will go also with the flood. So we're not only reopening the channel and making it a nice recreational area and next to the bike lanes and everything you can see here. And it even will be a migration route for local trout, but there'll be a double channel. So there'll be one underneath that can handle up to a 200-year interval rainstorm. So we'll have enough capacity for the bigger floods, but also still have something that works and is is beautiful and adding something positive to the everyday of the residents and people coming through. There'll also be a water square, a lot of green roofs and arbor and greenery. And blue and green infrastructure has really been a focus point in developing this new area. Next slide, please. So everything that Bergen's done so far, it's never been alone. I think the collaboration we had with other EU partners has been very, very crucial for us when we've been continuously part of EU projects since for a long time the ones that have been most relevant for storm water management are mentioned here. First water, then bingo and latest begin, which is what about blue green infrastructures through social innovation with all about how we together can build more resilient and livable cities. Next slide, please. I will not go into all the details here, but if you go to the begin web page, you can find a lot of great materials on storm water management and all the co-benefits and the complexities in how you can create all the great win-win situations with storm water, one on social innovations for delivering blue and green infrastructure, one on health and blue and green infrastructure, one on biodiversity. And there's also tools for how you can try to calculate in monetary terms some of these co-benefits. We try to bergans and of course just uncertainties, but it looks like through the work and begin and the mean the million, you could if you add up the cost not only for flood but all the co-benefits, it would amount to around 33 million euros. Some of the pictures here from the meetings, which are one of the great parts of this kind of collaborations, where you meet city to city and talk directly to people in other cities that work with the same challenges as you, get a lot of inspirations and good solutions. A bit like again why we're here today with communities of practice is a great way to make things happen. We're here to share and try to accelerate our successes. Down to the right is some pictures illustrating this interactive art installation that's soon coming in Bergen through begin. That's visualizing precipitation and explaining about climate change. It's going to be on our main square here in Bergen and it's a result of the local newspaper having a competition and an idea from a 14-year-old boy. We're excited to see that as well and there's also paper on art and blingery infrastructure in the begin on the web page there. Yeah, I think that was everything I had to say. Thank you very much for having me here and looking forward for the discussions. Thank you. Thank you, Marie, for an excellent presentation and I must say that you are doing some great work out there. Congrats to you. If you have any questions for Marie please put the questions in the chat box and in the Q&A she will respond to all the questions. So our last presentation is going to be from Sarah who will be presenting on how Manila Water is building climate resilience. Now Sarah Bergado is the sustainability head of Manila Water Company and she is responsible for environmental, social and governance strategy and performance reporting. Prior to her appointment she has also held various roles in the organization spanning from areas of operation, quality management, program management, human resources and customer service. So Miss Sarah please deploy yours. Thank you. Hello, good evening from the Philippines. Thanks Brenda for the introduction. I hope you can hear me well. Marie was a tough act to follow but I hope I can share about Manila Water's adaptation and mitigation action items in response to the global issue of climate change. So let me just paint the context for Manila Water and how we operate. Next slide please. Yeah, okay. So the Philippines is tagged as the from Green Watch, it's tagged as the fourth country that's most vulnerable to climate related risk. So if you can see we have it floods, typhoons, droughts and sea level rise because the Philippines is an archipelago with more than 7,000 islands. And maybe to make the conversation more interesting I'd share my personal story on having experience also of this the impact of massive flooding. A couple of years ago, well actually 10 years ago we live in a valley and we just bought a new house being newly married and a week before we transferred to that new new house there was a there was a storm and it flooded. And the first thing that we had to do was a couple was to clean the mud out of the house and of course it's very upsetting. But upsetting is an understatement because as we went around a day later being part of the emergency response of our company, the devastation was really more massive than what we have experienced in our property. In the communities that we went to, the streets were barely possible and houses up to the third story of their houses was filled with mud and can just imagine the stories where people had to be rescued from the rooftop. So that's the scenario here in the Philippines. We experience typhoons up to 20 on the average per year passed by the Philippine area of responsibility. Eight to nine tropical cyclones make the landfall and as a result of climate change, the winds can be up to more than 170 kilometers per hour. It's aside from that massive rainfall, we also experience drought and sea level rise especially in our coastal communities. So we also have operations in other islands of the Philippines and people living in the coastal communities amount to more than 30 million people as of 2020 data. So this is the scenario here in the Philippines, the impact of natural calamities and of course of climate change. Next slide. So there, so Madela Water, it's actually a private company in the Philippines. We serve in Manila alone. We serve up to seven million customers but including the other business units across the archipelago and also in other countries. It's around 12 million. We've been around since 1997 when the water sector was privatized. Manila water is more known for our social impact, bringing water to the communities. So this year is actually our 25th year in August. So just a quick story, only 26% of Manila was served with 24-7 water at that time in 1997 but now 100% of the Manila concession is now served with 24-hour water, water service. So while our programs are geared more towards the social, we also recognize the need for a focus on the environment because of course this is where we get the raw water sources that we treat. So Manila water was actually one of the, well it's the first company in the Philippines to adopt a climate change policy in 2007. But if you can see, I just quickly summarized the contents of that policy but you will notice that majority of our statements are really geared primarily towards adaptation. This is also in line with the Philippines that we really have to emphasize adaptation but closely following that are our climate mitigation efforts and of course this can only be done through capability building and partnerships with the various sectors of society. We also have a published climate change report so that's available also in our website. Okay so onto our adaptation measures. So what we're currently doing is really to secure first our raw water sources. For the Manila concession we have a demand supply master plan until our concession period in 2046 and this is updated every five years through our rate-reveasing exercises in that plan we outline our plans for new water sources so that we can ensure the public that we serve that we have enough water. Currently this is a challenge because our Manila concession still has a deficit but we are working on it by constructing new water treatment plants of course in partnership with the government that is in charge of looking for new water sources to serve the growing population of the cities and municipalities in the Philippines. So overall we have disclosed a target up to 2025 that we must have 15% buffer across all the on the business units all the communities that we serve. So aside from that we also need to ensure that our facilities are resilient towards various natural disasters as well as climate change. So for the past years we have conducted a resiliency and business interaction study so that includes various scenarios such as tropical cyclones of over 170 kph also considering sea level rise and it also includes the earthquake although not part of climate change but it's also considered in the study particularly a magnitude of 7.2 earthquake. So just last year we are also trying to align to TCFD and a climate scenario assessment is currently underway. So all of this all of the studies of course we use as a baseline so that we can proceed or implement programs and projects to retrofit and rehabilitate our existing facilities to withstand all the on the risk the all the risks that were mentioned earlier. Okay so just examples of the facilities this one is 10 MLB Olandes wastewater treatment plant it's actually an Iowa honor awardee for project innovation so you will notice it's built on stilts with the control room on the second floor and the the wastewater facility is actually underground. If you can turn to the next slide so when that flooding happened we were able this the facility was able to to survive because this is right beside the river. So another example of a facility that is on stilts this is the 11 MLB olandes wastewater treatment plant. Okay so apart from rehabilitating and continuously improving our facilities we are also keen on emergency response so we have under construction our eighth online emergency reservoirs so this one can serve actually up to 5,000 evacuees in in times of crisis it can give water to around 5,000 individuals for three days so it's around 50 to 100 cubic sized emergency reservoir mainly this was designed for an earthquake but of course in terms of other calamities it can also be used. Okay another is we have invested also in mobile treatment plants this is water from various sources so whenever supply water supply is interrupted we can drive this mobile treatment plant and provide water to the communities. The only challenge here is that we have to transport this between islands so so it has to fly in an aircraft as well but it has been helpful as several typhoons have that have devastated the southern parts of the Philippines so this one was able to bring relief to to the communities there okay but of course at the heart of climate adaptation is that your employees and your partners the people are prepared mentally physically to respond to various um prices and calamities so there are drills being conducted we have a business continuity team that ensures that they can respond to any disaster that might happen and in partnership with our business continuity team we also have our foundation this is our social corporate social responsibility arm that also responds by providing potable water in hygiene kits to to the ones affected by the calamities this is through their program called agape agape means to help or to to assist okay so for our mitigation we try to keep our non-revenue water at the lowest level possible so our target is to hit less than 15 percent so this is both an adaptation and a mitigation measure adaptation because we are being resource efficient and we can push more water to the communities so again our target is to keep it really low at less than 15 percent and of course uh we to mitigate the risk of um raw water quality deterioration because of climate change as well as soil erosion we also protect our watersheds we have a total of eight around the Philippines we have our integrated watershed management plan and we also partner with the local government the national government and also with the indigenous people that live in the community so the indigenous people are actually the ones who patrol the area and mitigate behaviors that are harmful towards the environment and they are also our partners in planting and nurturing the forest in in the in the area okay so uh also part of our watershed protection we involve our employees and the communities and we plant trees that are endemic to to the area and then of course we purchase and have on site renewable energy to address our emissions as well so last year we have purchased around 20 percent of our usage in in the Manila concession so we are investing more and of course trying to also the challenge is the infrastructure in in the Philippines but still we try our best and we have two major facilities uh one to 2.5 megawatt facilities that are being explored so hopefully next year we can harness more um renewable energy yes and so uh energy efficiency initiatives um for our Manila concession we started early around uh from 2013 um in terms of our distribution network we tried to use gravity lines so that we will not use more energy in pumping Manila is as well as our other areas they are rolling terrains so we try to utilize gravity and design our network system in a way that is energy efficient so we also have demand-based network management we we test our pumps regularly as for the offices we replaced with led lighting and also the air conditioning units we have converted to inverted units for the our other business units we're also doing the same at present and uh part of that is also um our wastewater treatment as we expand our wastewater coverage we are also helping the country reduce uh its greenhouse gas emissions of course it's also aligned to the Philippines national uh contribution um for a greenhouse gas reduction okay so moving forward okay so um in the pipeline we are developing our net zero strategy uh aligning to the SPTI standards but the in the interim we are um uh we have committed to a 60 percent reduction on our scope one in scope two emissions by 2025 um still it's not enough so we will uh realign our targets uh further and um also in terms of our watershed we are currently doing our forest uh carbon accounting and we would like to emphasize as well that in our adaptation and mitigating strategies um we perform relentless communication uh primarily towards the employees so that we can always get their full involvement in all uh in all sustainability um activities um and no less than our president have also frequent dialogues with the employees and to our external stakeholders he's the one driving the sustainability agenda as well so um and we we uh also partner with of course with the local government and involve them in uh all our activities okay uh i think this is the last slide all right okay so that's it for Mandela Water and i welcome any questions that uh you might have later on thank you thank you Sarah and please uh if you have any questions please feel free to put it in the chat box i will hand over to my colleague Carlos to lead us in the Q&A discussions thank you yes thank you very much thank you very much for the three amazing presentations and also for the questions that we are receiving via the chat box please don't forget to send your your questions or otherwise you can also request to not to give you the floor to address your questions uh uh to the speakers let's say go let's say let's uh uh address the first question by Juliette Willis uh i was interested to understand what has been the additional cost to ensure climate resilient facilities as compared with business as usual for instance in the case of Manila right this uh there's a sewage treatment plant showed that could survive a typhoon uh or on the coast how have how have you decided how much to invest given uncertainty of climate change and this is very interesting because we are actually uh we are actually organizing this uh uh regulator forum in the congress and and it's all about increase uncertainty and how to decide on cost right because most of the time regulators are busy trying to set the tariff and increase cost means increase risk right and so it's very interesting question so please i think the question is addressed to Sara first so Sara if you want to elaborate on on this yeah it's it's it's true that we really have to work with our regulators uh fortunately there is uh a 5e um exercise it's called the rate rebasing exercise where in we can um revise uh the plans um but indeed there there has to be some lobbying and influencing along the way so that they can put focus also on um the risk that are brought about by climate change uh but currently in all candidness the first order of business is water security first and uh probably when we have stabilized already the next one would be on uh environmental issues climate change included i hope i hope i have answered the question yes so thank you thank you very much yes sometimes uh the regulatory cycles are a bit uh a fix and that of course is a challenge something that we that we have to discuss further and there is a another question also for for Maria and for Sara about the more to the operational side right how how have you been able to embed climate resilience and sustainability into utilities operations and how they deliver services so maybe Sara wants to go first or Maria sorry Mari Mari Mari because Sara just spoke sure yeah it's it's not a simple question either of course this is like many small things over a period of many many years there's no single single person there's an overall effort right so one thing is the ambitions internally both of the municipality and and the goals both of municipality and the country overall but also the water sector the Norwegian water sector kind of our national IWA has set a lot of sustainability goals that's been helpful to follow and and streamlining this more and more through our national benchmarking which you know a little competition also helps to raise awareness uh general concerns of the society and general climate change awareness in the society has also been important and also a I think there's yeah certain people in of course in the organization really more more eager to talk about climate change and start taking initiatives and then it gets the ball rolling more and more will also help as well I think it's it's that's kind of be underestimated either of course our ISO certifications has helped us also as just overall seeing the mechanism through how everything so interconnected right when you start saving energy you also save money and it's yeah it's it's not just only for for for environmental reasons but it's all the sustainability issues are so interconnected with environmental social and environmental aspects together and of course also this we have a lot of national collaboration projects and you project as I mentioned I think those are the main drivers at least excellent thank you Sarah please if you could also address question yeah actually strategy is same with what Marie has mentioned it's a continuing process embedding sustainability in in the way that you operate and do business but I just like probably to add that it the tone should the agenda should come from the top tone from the top is very important so it's the leadership that should drive that ambition towards a more sustainable impact towards the communities and the environment and once you have the tone from the top that's the time that you have the your sustainability programs in place your social your environmental and then your governance also making sure that you have a responsible business that you run so I guess that's it yes excellent that's it but it's not the it's not easy easy task right not easy no I think we all agreed agreed on that also related to the cost implied and how to decide on what is right and also for for Sarah a very direct question about the sensors are there are there special sensors for the gases and other dangerous substances this is a question from Peter Rubik I uh sorry maybe I I'm not a technical person I might have to get back on that I'm sorry but I'll respond separately okay excellent another question how does the additional energy use an associated greenhouse gases for an aerobic treatment compared with the greenhouse gases reduced by reducing methane emissions I don't know if someone can answer this question so I'll jump in this is Julia I wrote yeah so it was a question for Sarah so Sarah you showed that you've been reducing methane emissions with by using aerobic treatment and I guess aerobic treatment obviously uses a lot more energy than anaerobic treatment and you must have done some kind of balance I was interested to hear how they compare of the additional greenhouse gases versus what you say like is it a net reduction I hope that helps clarify the question a bit better yeah thanks for thank you for your question probably I'll give more light to that on the technical aspect but what I know what we do in Manila water is we're a private company but we do the sludging activities from the communal septic tanks of each house so the treatment there releases more methane into the atmosphere so what we what we do is we dislodge every five years for that particular household and then we bring it to our large skill wastewater treatment facilities where the the technology is can abate the the methane from the that is generated by the household's septic tanks but yeah to your point probably I'll have our technical team explain it in more detail separately thank you thank you I I think all these trade-offs only remind us that everything is connected right and everything is circular the same like Mr. Foster explained right with the the possibilities to use the wrong water and the the costs associated with that and also the the energy used two more questions I think and we and then we will be okay with the time are there are there any particular technologies used to capture the gases from the wastewater treatment plants if if there is anyone who wants to jump in this and to reply to this question I'm happy to give you the floor I think just quickly again it's not my my field in detail either but a lot of it will be reduced as a part of the treatment methods themselves because it'll be turned into to solids instead of going to gas as as a reduction as as a process happening in for example the recipient or in air if he's just being laid there so I think I'm not sure if that's what the question was about but I think when it comes to a lot of greenhouse gas emissions from treatment processes that's something there's a lot of research and uncertainties on including also in the recipient so that's an area we're all looking into and hopefully in a few years we'll have more data on it thank you thank you marie and our last question from katsuya naito is a question for sara interesting question manila has a large population and engage water services in manila water and manila land do you work do do your company work with manila land and the adjacent utilities to address environmental adaptation and mitigation measures um yes we actually work uh well when the utilities were when the water sector was privatized the east side of manila went to manila water and the west side is uh being operated by manila but we do have that point of interaction and also in partnership with our regulators for example in terms of watershed protection I mentioned earlier that we also involved the indigenous communities so probably the funding for that actually comes both from manila water and manila so aside from that we always also discuss our our plans so that when we come to the regulating agency as much as possible our plans in terms of environment and climate action are are aligned I hope I hope that answers the question yeah I think so thank you very much sara another question for the dr foster from le cego gai gai gane dr foster how do you protect aquifers when you do carbon storage yes it's a interesting question thank you um I'm basically the depth range that you're dealing with in water supply from aquifers is relatively shallow and carbon storage in the subsurface is much deeper so basically you're you're looking at you know vertical separation and impermeable layers I think that's as much as you can say um the parallel question is how do you protect aquifers aquifers in general from pollution because when they're polluted you need tertiary treatment and that completely um pushes up the the carbon footprint of their use for petal water supply and this is about getting into land use management um I just give you a couple of interesting examples of that from the european union I've recently been working with some the danish water utilities and they have an aggressive program on two fronts one to reduce per capita water demands for reducing their leakage losses and also making water water use at the domestic level smaller and they've got the they've reduced their in in one of the major utilities the odensi utility in the center part of denmark they've reduced the average water consumption from about 190 to about 95 litres per day per capita and then needing less water they've gone into some programs of reforestation in the version of agricultural land with compensation to farmers uh for lots of crops funded by national government the utility and the local government agencies and these are this is a good example of of the way to go to ensure that you don't need advanced treatment of groundwater for pot of water supply which as I say is the one factor which will completely push up its its carbon water footprint but in terms of carbon storage underground there's usually a lot of vertical separation between the depths that you use for one and the and the other excellent thank you I think I think your answer partially answer the last question that is also addressed to you what are the best practices to ensure the sustainability on groundwater if you want to add a bit more or yes I could maybe expand I think this is probably the most important question of all but basically if we're not if we're talking about areas where groundwater is not used for irrigation first of all because it's simpler there in this case it is trying to ensure that the abstraction rates in the long term do not exceed the recharge rates and in general quite large areas of northern Europe and North America this is the case and so that you do not have continuously falling water levels because then you've got an unstable situation you can't design efficient wells and you're constantly facing increased pumping lifts and then you've got to protect the inner parts of the catchment areas that have been well defined by specialists and you do this through dialogue with farmers changing and modifying farming practices to reduce excess nutrients at times of leaching and recharge at times of excess rainfall and avoid pesticide pollution those are the the most important issues and the less water you have to protect the easier it is to do because it implies smaller land areas if you're in areas where groundwater irrigation is practiced as well it's a much bigger challenge because easily the largest abstractor and consumer of groundwater is irrigation in these areas could be Spain could be California could be the Midwest in the US could be southern Asia China etc and in those areas you've got to face up to some control over groundwater irrigation and you've got to have the regulatory agencies focused on long-term sustainability and the truth is that there's a long way to go on this this is perhaps the biggest single challenge in groundwater management at the present time we have substantial areas I say of India in particular China to a degree though they're making significant progress in the last five or eight years there parts of the US a lot of southern Europe particularly Spain and parts of Latin America where there is no balance between groundwater recharge and groundwater use in the long term as a result primarily irrigation not a public water supply but the public water supply gets mixed up in this cycle and can't escape increased pumping costs and so on Yes and Dr. Foster one last and now it is for real the last question what do you think about aquifer research recharge as a water reuse method any concerns on emerging contaminants from treated wastewater yeah I mean in general I'm a great advocate of what we call in the specialist area of groundwater management managed aquifer recharge that is to say taking every opportunity to root water into the subsurface wherever possible by land management action small land management actions but down a large scale across large areas they're very effective and there are a lot of good examples of this when we include wastewater as a source of recharge or downstream of cities things get more complicated and they get complicated for the very reason the questioner suggested emerging contaminants are becoming increasingly often found in groundwater systems particularly shallow groundwater systems downstream of large cities partly because they don't get removed in the current treatment processes that many utilities employ and here I think much more caution is needed and in fact in general terms and I can't always be like this it is better to focus groundwater capture for pot of water supply upstream of cities and major urban areas and leave the groundwater in the alluvial areas downstream for other uses particularly irrigation or industrial use because at the moment we don't have a complete a complete grip on managing the emerging contaminants and there are some that have been consistently found in aquifers certainly down to 50 meters depth thank you thank you very much and I think that because of the because of because of the time we are going to innovate a bit and to adapt as well so I give you the floor to Brenda thank you very much for all your questions and answers so Brenda please the floor this youth and thank you very much Carlos and I would like to say that we shouldn't end the questions and discussions over here and as I said during my presentation we have a platform for the community of practice group on IWConect so please feel free to join the platform and continue the discussions on climate adaptation and mitigation and according to their plan for the meeting we're supposed to have a second discussion where we have some breakout rooms but time has been fast-paced so we are going to give the floor to all of us to do have some experience if you want you to share your experiences with us on the topic for the day for just climate adaptation and mitigation if you are doing any activity to any project that is related to the topic please feel free to share with us and then we have shared with you the activities we have been doing on the COP so we would also like to hear from you if there's any further information that you think we could do to further contribute to the community of practice group whether we should be having more webinars more white papers and then if you also want to volunteer to lead any activity in the group to please feel free to let us know and then we will contact you after the meeting so I leave the floor open if anybody has an experience that he or she wants to share with us and then also any suggestions on how we can improve or contribute further to the development of the COP please feel free to share with us thank you. This is Juliette will it's I can just share one thing if that's okay sure yeah um so I'm from the University of Technology in Sydney and I am currently finishing off a piece of work that's for the Gates Foundation which was a landscape study looking at particularly climate resilience in low and middle income country urban sanitation and so it's just to say that that study is is almost finished and if there are people who would be interested in that topic and in hearing the findings of that I can put my email in the chat and feel free to get in touch as I say the focus is on low and middle income countries and urban sanitation resilience thank you Juliette and if you have any reports any um papers that you also like to share with the wider community of practice please feel free to share with me and then I will put it on the page on IDWA Connect as well as I put it on the climate smart web page as well. Okay that sounds good we should be ready in another month or so so I'll share things via you Brenda thank you. Okay thank you too and any other contribution. This is Erika Varga I'm not from a utility but we accompany utilities and municipalities with control solutions based on artificial intelligence to reduce energy consumption in water management and renewable energy and I actually have a question for the audience because I had the feeling that in this webinar or meeting we had heard two case studies where to my understanding you struggle more like access water and storm water management and I was wondering if if someone from the audience can share a little bit of an insight from areas where they struggle with the opposite maybe it's a more water stress because I had the feeling that Dr. Foster touched on that topic but if you if anyone can share with some insight or like a little case study just in a few sentences okay I know it was not really a contribution and one like a question just if there is any brave volunteer for that. Carlos maybe it's Stephen Foster speaking maybe I could at least respond to please not from my direct personal experience but from the experience of our water groundwater management group in the IWA we've tried to analyze the experience of the three big cities where water failure water system failure has occurred or as almost occurred in the last five years or so and to what extent they were using groundwater to mitigate the problems that they experienced and we've done what we can to communicate with Cape Town with Sao Paulo in Brazil and with Chennai in India which I think are the cities that have most suffered on a large scale from water stress and water shortages and and so on in sure we say in the last five or six years. Our conclusions from that exercise were have been published I've got a short paper on it in an IWA I think it was an IWA outlet which might be of interest basically in Cape Town they ignored groundwater they have some substantial usable groundwater that could have been the reserve that gave the city much greater resilience but they concentrated all of their investment programs in large surface reservoirs which whose yield was much less reliable than they originally anticipated and so we think that that was a case where and the groundwater being used by the private sector and there was no water utility use at all and had there been and there was plenty of opportunity for it the situation would have been somewhat more secure in Sao Paulo also all of the public water supply comes from surface water sources which were severely strained a few years back but there are a large number of largely unregulated private water wells and these users were okay they were mainly condominium blocks and small industries that those aquifers would not have been suitable for the utility because the yields of wells were not sufficiently reliable the quality was too patchy but had the Sao Paulo authorities looked at a larger area they would have found aquifers that could have continued to supply and during the deficits in their reservoirs in Chennai was the third situation in southern India more serious they were using groundwater and surface water sources the surface water failure completely and the groundwater sources were also they were not big aquifers they were fairly thin aquifers and these were under serious stress and competition with irrigated agriculture and in the end the solution was to buy water from farmers and tanker again it wasn't very satisfactory but groundwater played a small role there so those we have I say looked at that experience and written it up then I can certainly make the reference available via Brenda thank you excellent I was actually very interested about that last question because as we learned in Bergen it rains three thousand millimeters a year in my city Lima it rains nine millimeters a year and that that actually are the kind of climate stories that we are trying to collect via these climate smart utilities initiative and the recognition program that we are running that we will have a special session during the congress to the IWI congress we are trying to collect all that different stories from different contexts different challenges and as a way as a way to as a way to to incentivize to other other utilities on taking action on climate climate action we have only three minutes Carlos I didn't realize you come from Lima but I should have also mentioned there for the example of Lima I lived in Lima from 1985 to 1990 working for WHO but nevertheless got involved locally in the groundwater management and as you say it doesn't rain in Lima almost and the major investment was made in Lima about that time and around in the into the 1990s was to really get conjunctive in your water supply and major investments were made so the vast majority of consumers could receive groundwater and surface water surface water at first because it was more readily available but it's not treatable for part of the year due to mine waste and then move on to groundwater and those actions which were pre the climate dialogue in fact were very useful in the climate context as well fully integrated use more mandatory charge of aquifers and making you know the whole system much more resilient than it was in the 1980s and before yes excellent thank you very much thank you for for the interventions we only have two minutes so I would like to invite you to continue I would like to invite to invite you to continue sharing with us your experiences as you see this is a group that is mainly targeting utilities so we are trying to capture applied experiences right implemented actions and this is of course a challenge and this is what we are trying to do via the climate smart utilities initiative thank you very much doctor foster for your interesting presentation about the possibilities of using groundwater I think the main the main takeaway there is to try to keep the carbon carbon footprint low and for that we will need more regulation to avoid to prevent pollution because otherwise maybe it doesn't make economic sense the use of wrong water right and also to the to the to the two presenters about our case stories our case studies really showing us how they managed to implement actions from the utility point of view in order to deal with this increase uncertainty that climate change is bringing to all of us right we are happy to have these stories and we would like to collect more of these stories so please I invite you to continue engaging with us via this community of practice one of the pillars of the main components of our initiative and I also please invite you to share with your colleagues about the opportunity to showcase your climate actions during the IWA congress and be aware that we have 10 grants to support utilities who wants to present the the the climate action in the congress from developing countries right and we will be very happy to review your applications and I think that the only thing I have to say is thank you very much to for to all of you please continue being engaged and see you next time thank you gracias