Water Futures Book Launch

Peter Kingsley, Dave Smith, Water Futures

David A Smith and Peter Kingsley

MWH, now part of Stantec is calling for a concerted effort to innovate and invest to address the current and future stresses on global water supply. The theme of World Water Day this year was ‘why waste water?’ exploring how we can both reduce and re-use wastewater, focusing on the interlinked issues of wastewater and water stress.

MWH has collaborated with Peter Kingsley, an expert in agenda-setting foresight and innovation, in the development of fresh thinking about the possible futures of the water industry. We were delighted to mark World Water Day 2017 with the launch of our book ‘Water Futures: Water, Energy and Agriculture to 2035’ which looks at eight high impact, high uncertainty ‘threads’ that will shape water, energy and food in the widest context, from the emergence of a new phase of climate change to nano-filtration, and considers where we are headed as a global society.

David A Smith, Chief Strategy Officer MWH, now part of Stantec, and Peter Kingsley led the book launch and panel discussion event which took place at the Institute of Directors in London where our cross industry expert panel discussed water futures, scenarios and responses. On the panel were;

Sarah Hendry, UK Government – Defra Director of Floods and Water
Jon Rathjen, Scottish Government - Water Industry Team Leader
Mel Karam, KPMG and incoming CEO, Bristol Water
Professor David Balmforth, MWH Executive Technical Director and former ICE President
Stuart Lendrum, Sainsbury’s – Head of Sustainable & Ethical Sourcing

Attending the event were Bob Gomes CEO Stantec; Cath Schefer MWH UK Managing Director; and a large number of UK clients, industry leaders, and MWH colleagues.

David Smith said “Water, energy, and food security is probably the most important issue facing mankind, our Water Futures book identifies some major areas of challenge and opportunity, but most importantly it is about finding the approaches and solutions that will make a positive difference now. There are solutions and the water and energy industries must rise to the challenge of deploying new technologies and adopting progressive new community based approaches to turn the tide of water stress.”

David was also interviewed on BBC World Business Report. The featured broadcast was about “the part business can play in bringing fresh water supplies to a thirsty planet.” David highlighted global water shortages and the importance of recycling and reusing water which has now become paramount.

Going on to speak about the new digital technologies and treatment processes available which will enable us to clean up water, David highlighted the US San Diego Pure Water Programme as an example of these new approaches where they use 50% less water in effect because they will be able to recycle and reuse it. David went on to say that “we now have the technology through these kind of treatment filter processes to enable us to return water to an absolutely pure state, so where as we used to have things like ‘wastewater treatment plants,’ now what we are saying is we’ve got ‘water recycling centers’ that recycle water, generate energy, and you can recover nutrients and metals as well from wastewater. So you actually have a resource recovery factory that is driving down waste.”

The BBC World Business broadcast was released on World Water Day 22 March 2017.