 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Yulia Vistavna from the water program. And today, we have a event from source to tap on revealing the link between water pollution, sustainable water supply, and quality. Water has been a part and a priority for this COP28. But it's not only about the amount. We should be sure what we are using the water of appropriate quality. So today in our panel, we will discuss why water quality is important and how it's situation in different countries, what we can do to ensure what we always have sustainable water supply. But before starting introducing our panelists, please let me to open our discussion with the opening remarks from our deputy director general and head of the Department of Technical Cooperation, Mr. Riu. Thank you very much. Excellency, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. And thank you for joining us today at COP28 for this site event. It's a pleasure to speak today on behalf of IAEA and to learn from your insight on the matter of profound significance, the impact of water pollution on our nature environment, and this critical implementation for water sustainability, especially in the context of our changing climate. According to the UN, approximately 2 billion people are living in countries experiencing high water stress, which demonstrate urgent with which we need to tackle this issue. The IAEA leveraged the power of science and technology to address the effect of climate change. Our researchers are working on cutting-edge nuclear science and technology to help countries to adapt the climate change in multi-areas, including water resources. Through our technical cooperation program, the IAEA also has built capacities at national level to monitor and adapt the climate change using nuclear applications. We will also discuss the instrumental role played by the nuclear technique. Now as isotope hydrology in navigating the complex web of interactions within our water system. Through isotope hydrology, scientists at IAEA trace the movement and orange of contaminants by understanding this impact and intrigued pathways, we can pinpoint pollution source and help implement effective mitigation strategies, protecting the integrity of our water supply. As we gather here today, it's crucial to recognize the key link between a clean and abandoned water supply and the well-being and livelihood of global population. There's a pressing need to understand the source and the pathway of water pollutant, particularly in the face of climate change. Due to the climate change, water resources are facing unprecedented challenges. Pollution, both from nitrous and the emerging components, pose a significant threat to our water resource. The identification of this pollutant source and the movements can support countries to develop mitigation strategy to ensure access to clean water in the world that is undergoing profound environmental changes. I hope this event will further international collaboration as we work together, further where access to clean water is universal. I look forward to a stimulating session and to hearing your insights. I thank you very much. Thank you very much for the opening remarks. And please let me introduce this distinguished panelist. Today with us, we have his excellency, Mr. Juan Pasetti, his resident representative of the UN in Austria, but represent Paraguay, as ambassador of Paraguay. We have Yolanda Lopez. She is hydrologist, hydrogeologist, but also representative of indigenous community of Maya. We have with us, Johannes Kulmo, who is UN water-wise chair. And we have Mr. Takahiro, Konami Director of International Affairs Office of Water and Disaster Management in Japan. And with pleasure, introduce Ms. Maha Alzubi. She is regional researcher and also co-lead from the Fragility to Resilience and Regional Integrative Initiative in MENA region of International Water Management Institute. So thank you for joining us today. And please let me to start from the national level. Mr. Pasetti, what is the problem you have in Paraguay with the water quality and how you are trying to solve this through different communication and different partners and interactions. Thank you very much for this opportunity, for inviting me to be part of this discussion. And I commend also the agency for organizing this event. And to talk about the importance of global, regarding your question, I have to mention that Paraguay is very dependent on water and on the quality and also the quantity of water. Because 97% of our exports are directly or indirectly dependent to water. So that's why we are very much caring in studying the water, the water quality, fresh water, as well as the groundwater. So we are facing, because the production trends, we are facing risk regarding pollution, pollution of fresh water and groundwater, especially from nitrates. But also, due to the high dependency of the water supply sources, the groundwater is fundamental. More or less 40% of the country, of the citizens, of the villages, take the water from wells. So we need to study, before using this source of water, we need to study aquifers. So in 1990, we had a project with the agency to provide with a laboratory of tritium to analyze tritium, deuterium, as well as carbon-14. And during more or less 20 years, we have used this technique in order to study and to look for the sustainability of this water source. And just one example, when we did the survey in one place, we realized and determined that the content of tritium was zero. And that means that the life of the half life, or the life or the age of the water was more than 70 years. And so this also motivate us to do more studies regarding the future sustainability of this particular aquifer. And we realized that it was not going to be sustainable. So we decided to use other source of water for this very important city. So this is just one example how we use this technique. But another very important issue is that, as I mentioned, this project, we started in the 90s. So it's already more than 30 years in this period of time. We lose many technicians. They already retired. But also the technique is obsolete. So we need, in this case, a particular case, we start working again with the agency in order to update our laboratories. And finally, we are moving forward in order to update capacities, hard technology, as well as soft technology. Thank you very much. You did excellent link between water pollution, involvement of different groups, and also to show how isotope hydrology can be useful for that. Yes, you did also mention that residence time is very important, because sometimes you can use water of 1,000 years old, or 100 years old. So quality can be absolutely different compared to what we are doing now in the last 100 years. And also we are using nitrate isotopes to understand the sources of water pollution. This is one of the new technique that we're introducing now and developing, because we know about the water quality. But we don't know who is responsible for this quality. And isotopes help us to understand it much better. Please let me go to Regenals' situation and to ask Maha. Maha is the regional representative of the international research for development in one of the most water-scarred regions. I think it's not only in terms of water availability, but also about water quality. How do you see the problem of water pollution there? What can be done? Who can be engaged in that? Thank you so much. Actually, this is a very interesting topic, as you just mentioned in your opening statement. It's not always about water quantity. We need as well to consider the water quality, because it's equally important, the water that we are consuming, like it's very important what equality we are bringing to our body. So thinking from source to tap, before going to the tap, I would like as well to highlight the source to consider as well what we are bringing to the water systems, to the water value chain in terms of chemical fertilizers, heavy metals, microplastics, this is very important. Instead of going to the challenge, let's see the root of the problem. So this is equally important to understand how our behavioral, let's say, our lifestyle become challenging enough to bring materials that it's caused harm to our body, to our environment. So in the mean actually, as most of you know, like population growth in a very dramatic way, in 2020 we had like 418 million. It's expected to be like 680 by 25. This means more urbanization, more water consumption, more wastewater to flow to the system. So this means adding another layer of the complexity is the scarce water. So for example, here in the Galvestite, we have energy enough to produce fresh water through salinization in the other part of the MENA. We don't have that luxury of resources to even treat the water, the wastewater. So we have a challenge in term of the high cost of the system itself treating the wastewater. So it's not easy like for some countries even to collect the wastewater from the system. So that's why up to 50% even more is just discharged without any treatment to the environment. That cause a lot of problem. So even like half of the countries in the MENA, they don't collect wastewater. As I just mentioned, 50% or 57% of collected wastewater it goes to the environment untreated causing health problem, environmental issue and problem. So climate change in the region, it means like either less precipitation. It means like less water to be filtration to the ground water. That causes well impalance when we are talking about like agriculture consuming up to 80% of the water. How about the drainage water of the agriculture? This is another problem we need to consider. So it's really complex. However, there is always like some countries, I will give, for example, Jordan, they are collecting every drop of the wastewater. They are treating all it. All the effluent of the treatment implant is being part of their water budget either for irrigation, mixing with fresh water and some part of the country or using it out of the treatment implant for crops like fodder or plants. So it's been like the challenge is it creates sometimes innovation and this is applicable for other countries but I would say like we have a great experience in Jordan, Tunisia, they are really advanced when it comes to the wastewater treatment and management. Thank you. Thank you for mentioning wastewater treatment. I came from the country where we are treating about 80% or 90% of all wastewaters and I was actually surprised at the beginning of my career with not all countries like that and some countries there are no wastewater treatment facilities and here technology innovation is very important so we need to be sure that we are back water in the good quality status and also we need to understand, you mentioned very important things about how we can separate sources, agriculture wastewaters to better manage it. So continue with the water management. Please can I ask Mr. Takahiro, what's the link between river management and the water quality and how the community engagement can be important here? Yeah, thank you for your introduction and I'm very happy to be here. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Takahiro from Japanese government and I'd like to focus on the importance of social innovation along with engaged with technical innovation, which there is a lot of cutting edge technology to purification of the water, water-based water treatment in Japan. There's a list of technologies, list of professionals in Japan, not including myself probably. So, but today I'd like to focus on the conjunction of the involvement of the stakeholders. So usually water quality is a responsible responsibility of the manager, water manager, various water manager like reservoir manager, reservoir manager, waste water treatment plant or hydropower company or agriculture organization. So then before 1960s, Japanese water quality was very devastating situation. And after that in 1991, Japan has made a community, special community focusing on the water quality management involving all relevant stakeholders. It was called Seiryu Renaissance Team. Seiryu means either Japanese word means clean water flow. Usually found in the mountainous area nowadays. But historically it was existed in Eberfea. And clean water was Eberfea in Japan. At that time, the 30 worst rivers were designated, identified and the special committee was set up for each river to deal with improving water quality. The committee was co-chaired by the river manager and the waste water treatment manager. And involving communities, that is very important. Communities including agricultural organization, which is a very important part of the community usually. And relevant stakeholders including of course, tap water provider and hydropower reservoir managers. And they have shared the quantitative target, for example, BOD or COD with the stakeholders, including community. That's very important to agreement with community and making, including awareness. Raising awareness of community people to their kind of, their activity. Can make improvement or even deteriorating the water quality. So after the deadline of the first plan, it was the year 2000, unfortunately, only four river, among the 30 designated river has achieved the target. But the water quality index, there's a drastically improved in 20 years. So now I focused on the technical improvement, cutting-edge technologies can be treated with along with such a community involvement and stakeholder involvement activities. And in terms of the international cooperation as well, Japan has committed the Kumamoto Initiative for Water in the Asia Pacific Water Summit in April last year. To make up, improving the basic living conditions of people in the Asia Pacific region through international cooperation. And it was also extended to the world through the commitment made in the UN water conference in March this year. Japan is intending to share our experience with whomever needs it. And today I have not mentioned, so there are a lot of technologies of water related, water quality related ones, is also existing in Japan. And please think of Japan if you need a partner to improve water quality. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. You highlighted many times important local communities, communities involvement because we providing this service, water quality to community because after they need to ensure where they're drinking water, there's enough quality they're using for agriculture, for food. And here I would like to ask Yolanda as representative of the indigenous community, how local community can be engaged here? How they can be participating all those steps relating to improve the water quality? But how they collect and support decision makers with their data? Yeah, thank you very much. Julia Excellencies and to all the panelists. I would like to first exemplify the complexity of understanding the water cycle. We are talking about local, different levels from the local to the global, but also there are different stages spanning from also the local to the regional, national. And within these interactions of levels and different stages, it's important to include human and indigenous peoples in local communities because they can contribute with a different way of understanding groundwater resources, fresh water resources as well. And the most important aspect that I would like to emphasize is for example by trying to integrate these different understandings of the water cycle is very important and is becoming a challenge for many hydrologists in particular because the hydrological science tradition has focused more only on the hydrological aspect, but the social aspect has been dismissed and overlooked. And I think it's a moment in history in which we really need to bring together the two different ways of understandings. And this is very important for understanding those complexities. And I can bring an example. For example, I am from a Mayan community. The Mayans were a water-oriented society. They were very good in understanding the water cycle. They were also very good in developing different technologies according to the time of the Mayans for surviving in a place in which water was scarce. Just to give an example, I'm from the Yucatan Peninsula. In that place, 65 million years ago, there was the crash of a meteor in which it's supposed to be the end of the life on Earth. And this crash formed a very complex system of groundwater caves that the Mayans, they call cenotes from the Mayan War sinkhole. In that particular cave, so in that particular place, the Mayans, they made a living. They flourished as a civilization and they were able to survive very long dry seasons by understanding, by managing and engineering the landscape according to their needs. And I'm talking that the Maya society was a very complex society as well. So one way to start to look at the possible solutions to the complexities that the water cycle is posting on us as humanity and as civilization, it is important to really bring such understandings of the water cycle from the past and to bring it to the present. And there are many ways in which we scientists, we can do that by, for example, recovering the knowledge of local people and also indigenous peoples and by working alongside stakeholders and knowledge holders. So, for example, as part of my research, I've been doing studies in that particular place in Mexico in the Yucatan Peninsula and I was able to develop together with all the different sectors and all the stakeholders involved, the first local groundwater balance for the whole Yucatan Peninsula aquifer. And this was the first time the local people, the local communities were able to have a tool in which they can detect, for example, hotspots of pollution that was related to the presentation and the intervention that my colleague was very kind to provide with us. So there are many ways in which we can develop our own monitoring tools at a local level that the results can also influence the global level. Thank you. Thank you very much. You highlighted many times about water cycle, what is highly impacted by climate change. So we can see through those links how climate change impacting water cycle, impacting local people, about water quality, there are diversity of different interactions here. And we should consider what we have in complex systems as you mentioned. And we need to take into account all this diversity that we have there. Here, like I would like to ask Johanna Skulman, who has a long experience in UN organization and UN Water 2023 conference. We heard many different commitments about technology, about capacity building, about local communities, about important to make a link between water quantity, water quality, about treatment. Please, can you tell us more about how water quality is integrated in UN Water Agenda and how it was maybe more highlighted or extended on UN Water Conference 2023? Yeah, thank you, Julia. I think water quality has been in the past a little bit forgotten child in the discussion. So we focused a lot on the too much or too little. And this is when we came up with big designs I mean, I come from an area where we focused, of course, on big infrastructure and then we understood that that is only a partial solution and the water quality problem was always a secondary problem that you fixed with money. And that, of course, works in some areas, but it doesn't work if we want to have a global improvement of water quality for, I don't know, the people that you are representing or I've worked in Chile. There's the Mapuche, it's the same question. There's a competition between the commercial interest in farming wood for paper production or mining and the local community. And this is a water quality problem first and foremost. So for the UN Water Strategy, I think that we have understood this and we have worked in the UN. UNEP is a big player in the water quality data trying to assemble water quality information for the indicator that's in the SDG6. And I think slowly, slowly, slowly, we are trying to put these pieces together. The program that you run in IEA is also old on the isotopes, it's not a new activity. It has only dawned on us in the past couple of years how important it is to put that puzzle piece about pollution pathways or water flow pathways into the bigger strategy because we had sectoral solutions for everything. And I think the UN Water Conference in March showed us that with sectoral solutions and upscaling sectoral solutions, we cannot resolve the water quality issue. And that also refers to biodiversity or if you think about how much carbon we want to sequestrate in peatlands or in soils, if the water quality in those biosystems is not adequate, we will not have the carbon sequestration. So it's a complicated issue that we are now addressing and we are developing at the moment the UN Water Strategy that was requested by the member states in New York and for sure that will be under the motto too little, too much, and too dirty. So water quality is really, I think, at the heart now of the understanding of the UN system. We are not where we should be, but we are getting there, I think. Thank you, it's also interesting what you mentioned because in our isotope hydrology section, we were using mostly like Mr. Faceti mentioned for the study hydrological cycle. We didn't look too much in the water quality aspect. So we focus on isotopes that help us to understand the movement of different hydrological pathways, how water is moving in the cycle, what origin they came from, where it's going. But also in this context, it's very important to keep this water quality component. We need to understand not only what exactly, because the limits of detection and also water quality threshold is very different between countries, but we need to understand what the source of this pollution, what it's coming from, because in this case, we can better manage it. For example, if we have more water pollution coming from agriculture, we can improve our agricultural management or wastewater facilities if we know what exactly amount of the water. This is isotope hydrology benefits here. We're able to trace the exact source of water using nitrate isotopes. And to continue a bit, but maybe a little bit in shorter, some improvisation now, I would like to ask each of the distinguished panelists to give us free home messages related to the climate change and water quality that all our deans and also online can take and to keep their most important one to go in this link. So, please, may I start from Mr. Petitie. Can you hear me now? Okay. Yeah, I think one of the most important is the interface that we need to focus and the scientists that produce data and with the policymakers. We need to consolidate this interface in order to translate the data from produced by the science in the study of water quality, as it was mentioned also, the availability of water in order to build sustainable policies, robust policies to tackle the challenges posed by climate change. And this is fundamental. I worked in different countries in Latin America and I saw the evolution that the research, the scientific sector, I would say suffer or witness and lived, moving from just doing studies and publishing but also I saw the requests of the society and also the policymakers saying you need to justify why we are investing so much money in your studies, in building your capacities. You need to show us why this is important. So many of our Latin American countries have now in their science and technology policies the obligation to tackle this issue in the objective, in the goals of their research. So translating this data into policies and all recommendation of policies, focus on climate change. Thank you very much. Focus on climate change because we are also found what climate change impact not only different amount of water, but ground water, surface water, droughts, but it's also water quality component impact where air traffic is in between like less dilution waste water opportunity, less of recharge and maybe more chemicals what we are using now also. And please Yolanda, from some take home message from you. Okay, thank you, Yulia. I have three key messages and they are interrelated. The first one is to scientists. Being myself also a scientist, it's important for us since it's science that influence policy to produce information that people without a hydrological background can understand. This will totally influence the way in which water literacy is managed by each individual and water literacy is the minimum amount of knowledge about how the hydrological cycle functions in particular places. So we can be able to develop possible solutions for the protection. The other is to policy makers and the policy making a sphere. I believe that by integrating and working alongside citizens and local and indigenous communities is the best way to go. So it's important to build capacity as was already mentioned and to create these spaces of neutral dialogues in which all conservation values can be brought to the table to work alongside with the communities. And the other one is to the individual level. So I think most of our individual decisions also influence water quality by using different products. We can choose those products that are not that harmful for the environment. And with that particular actions, we are really contributing a lot for the sustainable use of water and the quality of water. Thank you. Thank you very much, Johannes. Yeah, I only want to give one message to make it short. I think what we need to do is to integrate better green and gray solutions for providing systems that provide the maximum protection for water that can be groundwater, it can be surface water, lakes, whatever we have or the green water, because at the moment we are trying to focus still too much on one or the other. So if we want to be resilient in terms of water quality, we need more diverse systems and we can only do that if we understand pollution pathways, water storage dynamics that we have in our systems and then try to help nature where we need to help it and try to respect nature where we can respect nature and where that doesn't work then we need a gray infrastructure to provide the service. But I think that is my key message to integrate and be more diverse in our approaches to understand and manage water quality. Thank you. Mr. Takahiri. Thank you. It's become gradually difficult to make new aspects after that. But I'd like to focus on maybe repeated so to the making a solution of involving stakeholders and also focus on the importance of science and the technologies which is very important. For example, a sort of hydrology is also very important to share the current situation with the basis of the science and the technology. And there is another third important element is connecting person with science technology and stakeholders. Usually community people cannot understand the isotope hydrology. So then there is kind of the facilitator, we call it, of understanding the science and the technology and have a capacity of talking with stakeholders. So this is science technology and facilitators and communities and stakeholders. This is a triangle communication. It's very important. It's not so only for water quality but also for disaster management as well. So in water quality to construct such kind of a structure is also important. This is my message. Thank you very much, Ms. Maha. Thank you. Actually my message is going to be out of what you may be doing in the region based on scientific evidences that we generated. We just concluded a project called Rewater. It means like grief or reuse. So it was a five years project. Now we are today launching another project with Google this afternoon. So everyone is welcome to join the launching of the project. So reuse is very important. So wastewater is waste if we decided to waste. There is a lot of opportunity like, for example in the region. So water and it has like water nutrients to irrigate and fertilize more than 2.6 million hectares. Carbon to produce methane with a caloric value to provide electricity to eight million households. So there is a huge opportunity in the wastewater to be reused properly in the region. And I would go back again and stress on my colleague like integration between systems. So now like EME with other CGR center, we are supporting like integrated aquaculture agriculture using the fish farming water to irrigate plants, especially in desert areas. So this is another example of integration and there is a huge in the region. Circular economy is very important. If we are talking about how can we make sure like the effluent can be captured not to go to the environment, but to be circulated and to keep the lube closed. So these are three messages I want to end my talk to. Thank you. Thank you very much. So here from one side we have community, from another side we have technology, but everything very interactive. Actually something what we consume, it's coming to our waste waters. So if this agent I'm becoming more from coffee to pharmaceuticals moving, so I'm sure what it will be more pharmaceuticals and wastewater and maybe not all wastewater facilities able to treat or for some cosmetics, what we call now emerging compounds. They are also very closely linked to nutrients because it's related to wastewater. So removal of some compounds becoming an issue and we need to understand also some of the compounds used in agriculture, some of the compounds used at home. Should we actually involve people to think about what they're using? I put more cosmetics and I wash it later and it's in my waste water. I don't know if fish in the river would like to make make up or would like to take some pharmaceuticals. So probably we also need to engage community from other side to let them to think about that. And here we have in isotope hydrologist section we have a project now linking nitrate, isotopes nitrate contamination with emerging compounds to better understand what the pathways of those compounds would enter in later our rivers. But under the climate change rivers becoming more stressed, they're actually disappearing in some parts, even in Europe we never saw what river is disappearing but now it's kind of become regular and we still have a lot of pollutant there. So we need to show what we see link in local community innovation they really have a different pathways to integrate and here we are to make this message to our audience. So this is my concluding talk and I would like to thank all panelists and Mr. Liu for their opening and thank you very much, we stay here for photo. Thank you.