William (Bill) Cosgrove, 80, joined the International Institute for Applied Sys-tems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg near Vienna as a Senior Research Scholar in 2012. He received his B.Eng. and M.Eng.
(sanitary engineering) and Honorary Doctorate of Science from McGill Uni-versity in Montreal, Canada. Cosgrove is Director of the Water Futures and Solutions Initiative – World Water Scenarios Project. He is a member of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Think Tank on Water. Cosgrove is a for-mer Vice President of the World Bank, Honorary President of the World Water Council and former President of Québec’s Bureau des audiences publiques sur l’environnement.
World Water Council
I N T E R V I E W
Poor water supply conditions sometimes seem to be the result of a gap in water research, but they aren’t. Is part of mankind suffering from water scarcity because of bad water governance?
In a number of cases government actions are not adequate. This brings me back to the beginning of our con-versation, naming research priorities:
Why do some governments fail to meet the people’s needs concerning water and sanitation? Is it really bad will? Per-haps they lack the fi nancial means, or they don’t know how to govern better?
Today it is recognized that governance involves actors in the private sector and NGOs too, not just governments at multiple levels. How do we get good government if the current one is inade-quate? These simple questions don’t have easy answers. If they did, I believe more progress would have been made.
Would you hazard a rough guess as to which is more signifi cant – bad govern-ance or a gap in research?
My guess is that there are more places where something could be done with-out water scientists’ support. I think, maybe in one third of cases needs could not be met even with good governance, because of poverty or ongoing confl icts – in those cases water research into lower-cost ways of handling water supply might provide a solution. In the other two thirds of cases – where something could be done, but it’s not being done – we could benefi t more from research by social scientists into
“why is it not being done”.
Is water scarcity, for example around the Mediterranean or in the Near East or northern China, also an outcome of global climate change, or does climate change play just a minor role?
Today most observers would agree that climate change has an impact on water supply – through more frequent fl ood-ing, more frequent and more severe droughts and so on. But there is still no proof of this. Perhaps this, also, is an is-sue that needs increased research. But in my view it is more important to see more research into how people can cope with the consequences of climate change.
Let me shift to the German scene. You know the “Water Science Alliance”
initiative which is aiming to install a sense of community among geologists, biologists, chemists and so on working in the fi eld of water research.
Of course, I’ve been a member of the Scientifi c Advisory Committee since the founding period.
In comparison to other nations, is the tendency to fence oneself off into distinct disciplinary realms a typically German phenomenon?
This is certainly not a uniquely German phenomenon, nor is Germany the only country recognizing that this can’t con-tinue. I would say that Germany was among the fi rst to act, for example through the movement to create the Alliance three years ago. The United States is just at the beginning of the creation of what they call the “Water Partnership”, bringing together all the actors who are linked to water. In Canada there has been something simi-lar – though a bottom-up movement –, called the Canadian Water Network. In its approach it also tries to link social sciences to physical sciences. So this is a trend.
Do you have any recommendations for the Water Science Alliance in Germany in order for them to succeed in creating a sense of community?
I think the approach taken by the Alliance is defi nitely moving in the right direction. How to make it move faster?
Certainly the website being developed will help – as will general improvements in electronic communication – take ad-vantage of the trend of social networks.
In the last decade this has proved to be one of the main ways the world is going to change. Bringing people together at annual conferences is also a good idea to speed things up. As, of course, is inviting scientists from different disciplines to work together in research clusters.
Looking at the next fi ve to ten years of water research: Where do you see wide open gaps that urgently need to be fi lled?
The most urgent thing in research is to begin thinking systematically across disciplines. If only we had all the data collected by different sciences for a given location, we could start examin-ing the multiple interactions between them. I suspect that this would turn Power generation usually cannot do without water (below right: power station cooling towers). A Japanese company now wants to collect solar energy in space (above top) and send it down to Earth (above bottom). Water consumption: nil.
Mafic Studios, Inc. (2)
out to be a gold mine of information:
We could start using what we already know but which is hidden inside the different disciplines. This could be a fast-track way of coming up with new ideas that are relevant to policy.
Is there an even more important gap not in research but rather in worldwide communication?
I agree. We should always ask ourselves at the beginning of a new project: How can this be useful to those who have to make the decisions? And, if we get results: How will we be able to present them so that it will be understood?
How will administrations in developing countries learn that there are suitable alternatives to wasting or polluting water? Lectures from scientists are not likely to succeed.
Absolutely. Two-way communication is important, and perhaps much more urgent than research itself. We are inves-tigating different ways of communicating
with administrations and policy makers without repeating old mistakes. We ask them what they need, what kind of re-search we should do. We try to engage in partnerships so that we can answer the questions they think are important.
You are very much engaged in future scenarios of the global water situation.
Please let us have a look into your crystal ball.
I’m very positive about the future.
How come?
In fact, I have often been asked how I can be so positive when history teaches us that things don’t get better. I have several reasons. The fi rst point is that modern methods of mass communica-tion make it possible for more and more people to participate in discussions of common issues. This applies not only to administrations and scientists but to the population at large. This is very important because the mass of people infl uence their policy makers.
My second point is that a growing number of women are participating in these processes – which is crucial be-cause women tend to have a different view of the world around them.
This sounds mysterious.
It isn’t. During the last World Water Forum I met a young woman from Spain, a social scientist. She had just fi nished a study on the different views on the environment held by Spanish men and women. In brief, the result was that men usually ask: “How can I use it?”, whereas women ask: “How can I nurture it?”
I am convinced that this is not confi ned to Spanish people. I believe men and women all over the world are like this.
And as women are gaining more and more infl uence in civic life, this is a point of hope for me. Finally, a third point is that all over the world we can see an increasing number of young people engaged in environmental protection.
So you see that I have good reasons to be positive about the future. ■
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R E S I S TA N C E
BY BENJAMIN HAERDLE