On the occasion of the Inaugural Addresses of Nigel Wright, Professor of Hydraulic Engineering and River Basin Development, and Jay O’Keeffe, Professor of Freshwater Ecosystems, the Institute organised a symposium entitled “Integrating knowledge for sustaining rivers” on Friday 10 October. At the symposium top experts in the fields of environmental sustainability, ecosystems and river engineering gathered to discuss advancements, lessons learned and challenges in the field.
Freshwater is among those fundamental resources without which no life is possible. Despite this, water resources worldwide, with very few exceptions, are being degraded, over-exploited and diminished. In order to reverse this situation and achieve a sustainable management of water resources, a long-term commitment to protect the natural resources and cycles is required.
UNESCO-IHE, with its 5 departments, 14 research cores, and scores of partners worldwide, is ideally placed to provide this integrated knowledge and capacity for sustainable management of water resources.
The symposium reflected on some of the diversity of skills and knowledge that the Institute and its partners can assign to this crucial responsibility. It also payed tribute to the men and women who developed the concept for the IHE – Institute for Water Education, and who have seen the vision through to reality over the past 50 years.
Professor Nigel Wright reviewed how engineering has over time learned to merge knowledge with other disciplines to face the increasing challenges in today’s society, such as climate change, water security or environmental sustainability. Promoting an inter-disciplinary approach is also necessary in research activities, where attention has begun to focus more and more. Nevertheless, Professor Wright claimed that the search for research prestige can sometimes move the focus away from the other primary function of the Institute: teaching, which needs to promote “more independent study; more flexibility and more multi-disciplinary group work".
Professor O’Keeffe agreed with his colleague that sustainability and integration of disciplines are key concepts to dealing with environmental issues and water resources. “Integration of disciplines in water management has been one of my preoccupations since joining UNESCO-IHE. Holistic water resource management requires the integration of many skills and the recognition that we are dealing with spatially and temporally complex ecosystems”.
In this context, Professor O’Keeffe reviewed the concept of environmental flows, which arose from the relatively common-sense idea that taking all of the water out of rivers was not a wise or sustainable way to manage water resources. Apart from anything, it meant that downstream users were left without water for their own needs, and a waterless river provides none of the benefits that a flowing river offers. The 1950’s in particular was a time of command and control engineering. It was only in the 1970’s that environmentalists began to promote the advantages of leaving water in rivers, and developing the original methods for assessing how much water was necessary to maintain downstream ecosystems.