Budapest Water Summit: Sustainable innovation for ensuring safe drinking water

The summits theme is very much relevant for the present day global problems where we are moving towards achieving the SDGs by the stipulated time frame

The Budapest Water Summit (BWS) is just approaching in Hungary started from 28-30 November, 2016. This is a very high level summit in aiming to expect around 1800 participants. The innovation agenda is dedicated to a day in parallel of the summit, which encounters a day of Sustainable Water Solutions Expo. The visitors of the innovation day are expected to about 600 from 117 countries. The BWS 2016 serves as a high panel discussion forum for the heads of state government or the top most representatives of the international organizations working on the related issues. The follow-up of the Paris agreement for achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs) in the water sector is being highlighted at this conference where a Sustainable Water Solutions Expo is a display session to explore the sustainable innovation agenda of water problems and solutions in the form of water production, purification and supply.

First of all, the summit theme is very much vibrant for the present aspects of global problems where we are moving through achieving the SDGs by a stipulated time frame. Specifically, the SDG 6 is designed to achieve clean water and sanitations for all. However, the developing countries are well known to face the water problems severely as the impact of climate change, disasters, pollution or highly dense population. It has been researched that Bangladesh is one of the top most vulnerable countries in the world in aspects of climatic disasters where the country’s highest prioritized issue is water wrapped with such condition. As the consequences of global climate change, our see level is increasing and the salinity intrusion exposing new land day by day. In the scarcity of using water, ground water level is decreasing while the alternative major source of water is surface water that is also being polluted. Rivers are losing their liveliness with enough water. These are main headed water problems in Bangladesh that ultimately connect with the multidimensional socio-ecological problems in our society. So, our continuous advancement immensely needs some innovation policies to resolve these types of water problems gradually where the solutions should be sustainable based on innovation, global competitiveness and technology focused.  
Therefore, innovating and adapting new technologies in the water sector should be our concrete agenda to go forward with the SDGs. In fact, innovation is a continuous agenda in the development process, but we do not see our country’s concrete innovation policies for the betterment in our research, science and technology either in the government or non-government sectors. In Bangladesh, innovation policy is initiated as a crosscutting issue with other policies. It is true that some of our private sectors are stepping forward with their own innovation policies in a scattered way. However, the realization is that the formulation of our state innovation policies is now a demand for the momentum, so that we can explore more development challenges and opportunities from the grassroots levels. The new policies must help us to investigate innovations and innovators both from the grassroots; otherwise, we may be forced to bypass many challenges that need to be addressed properly in achieving the SDGs.
The Sustainable Water Solutions Expo of Budapest summit is aiming to deal with some global innovations with water problems. Some of the selective global innovations are highlighted in this Expo to link up with the upcoming solutions for SDG 6. Like many other developing countries, Bangladesh may take the opportunity of those innovations in addressing our country’s water problem. Here, the selective innovations can be considered for our country’s sustainable water development-
1. Water from air – an innovative approach to solve water scarcity: a) WaterSeer:
A collaborative work between the VICI-Labs of the University of California, Berkeley, and the American National Peace Corps Association conducts a research with the theory of water cycle and develop an innovative water solution based on the theory.
They have developed a device, named the WaterSeer, be able to produce drinking water by condensation technology without using any chemicals or electricity. One unit can produce around 37 litres of good quality drinking water per day. This technology is very simple technology to operate and install, environment-friendly with the least maintenance costs. In its tower-shaped superstructure, hot air cools down rapidly in the metal-lined condensation cavity, so the process water content condenses into the metal lining. The water can be collected through the pipeline. The technology can be applied without any infrastructure that offers a solution for the drought prone, hot or temperate area.
b) Water Gen device: This is another device, but works on the same theory of “natural water cycle” as stated before. The device is developed by the Israeli company Water Gen that produces quality drinking water from the thin air with a minimal cost. For producing about 3100 litres water in a day, the device uses electricity, and at least 60% humidity and 26 degrees Celsius temperature in the surroundings. 
A type of small device can also be used for a little supply of water for a family and office as under the similar environmental conditions, which produces 15 litres of pure drinking water per day. These devices can be very suitable here for our country’s climatic condition.
c) Warka Water: The bamboo made structure of Warka Water collects the condensed water in a container resulted from variations in temperature, and thereby provide a good quality of drinking water for the residents living around the installed device (tower shaped). On an average, a single tower can produce 94 litres of water per day without using any energy sources. 
As per designers, this tower has some special features in the sustainability requirements of water solutions, which are – no need electricity, no specialist knowledge to operate, no need too much installment cost; moreover, one tower may sustain for the long term in producing safe and excellent drinking water for the local community.
2. The Drinkable Book:
This innovation is a process of filtering water, first invented by Dr Teri Dankovich from Carnegie Mellon University. Each year globally, about 3.4 million people die from water pollution diseases. Bangladesh is one of the victims in such sufferings. 
By considering this background context, a revolutionary innovation takes place with a book whose pages can be used as filters. Research shows that it can destroy almost 99.99% bacterial germ of polluted water. Interestingly, the orange pages of this book show some educational messages that teach us about some indications that how to stop water pollution accordingly. It is very cheap to produce the books and recognized as the cheapest water purification method up to date. A single page or filter paper can be used for thirty days to produce quality drinking water while a whole book can produce pure drinking water for a person for maximum 4 years. The book pages contain silver nanoparticles, which have an excellent disinfection effect on water.
However, we have no much data on the successfulness of these innovations that can be implemented in large scale in our country context. But the piloting of these concepts has been done in many areas. Therefore, we must think about these innovations in handling some of our future projects. Among many other innovations, Budapest Water Summit is highlighting those innovations targeting for the developing countries especially, which are in the currently shortage of water or in other related difficulties. Finally, providing people with sustainable water solutions is clearly a priority, so it is vital to discover and disseminate the information on this ground to enrich the global innovation network.

The writer is Senior Research Associate and Sustainability professional at BRAC Research and Evaluation Division

Budapest Water Summit: Sustainable innovation for ensuring safe drinking water

The summits theme is very much relevant for the present day global problems where we are moving towards achieving the SDGs by the stipulated time frame

The Budapest Water Summit (BWS) is just approaching in Hungary started from 28-30 November, 2016. This is a very high level summit in aiming to expect around 1800 participants. The innovation agenda is dedicated to a day in parallel of the summit, which encounters a day of Sustainable Water Solutions Expo. The visitors of the innovation day are expected to about 600 from 117 countries. The BWS 2016 serves as a high panel discussion forum for the heads of state government or the top most representatives of the international organizations working on the related issues. The follow-up of the Paris agreement for achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs) in the water sector is being highlighted at this conference where a Sustainable Water Solutions Expo is a display session to explore the sustainable innovation agenda of water problems and solutions in the form of water production, purification and supply. First of all, the summit theme is very much vibrant for the present aspects of global problems where we are moving through achieving the SDGs by a stipulated time frame. Specifically, the SDG 6 is designed to achieve clean water and sanitations for all. However, the developing countries are well known to face the water problems severely as the impact of climate change, disasters, pollution or highly dense population. It has been researched that Bangladesh is one of the top most vulnerable countries in the world in aspects of climatic disasters where the countrys highest prioritized issue is water wrapped with such condition. As the consequences of global climate change, our see level is increasing and the salinity intrusion exposing new land day by day. In the scarcity of using water, ground water level is decreasing while the alternative major source of water is surface water that is also being polluted. Rivers are losing their liveliness with enough water. These are main headed water problems in Bangladesh that ultimately connect with the multidimensional socio-ecological problems in our society. So, our continuous advancement immensely needs some innovation policies to resolve these types of water problems gradually where the solutions should be sustainable based on innovation, global competitiveness and technology focused. Therefore, innovating and adapting new technologies in the water sector should be our concrete agenda to go forward with the SDGs. In fact, innovation is a continuous agenda in the development process, but we do not see our countrys concrete innovation policies for the betterment in our research, science and technology either in the government or non-government sectors. In Bangladesh, innovation policy is initiated as a crosscutting issue with other policies. It is true that some of our private sectors are stepping forward with their own innovation policies in a scattered way. However, the realization is that the formulation of our state innovation policies is now a demand for the momentum, so that we can explore more development challenges and opportunities from the grassroots levels. The new policies must help us to investigate innovations and innovators both from the grassroots; otherwise, we may be forced to bypass many challenges that need to be addressed properly in achieving the SDGs. The Sustainable Water Solutions Expo of Budapest summit is aiming to deal with some global innovations with water problems. Some of the selective global innovations are highlighted in this Expo to link up with the upcoming solutions for SDG 6. Like many other developing countries, Bangladesh may take the opportunity of those innovations in addressing our countrys water problem. Here, the selective innovations can be considered for our countrys sustainable water development- 1. Water from air an innovative approach to solve water scarcity: a) WaterSeer: A collaborative work between the VICI-Labs of the University of California, Berkeley, and the American National Peace Corps Association conducts a research with the theory of water cycle and develop an innovative water solution based on the theory. They have developed a device, named the WaterSeer, be able to produce drinking water by condensation technology without using any chemicals or electricity. One unit can produce around 37 litres of good quality drinking water per day. This technology is very simple technology to operate and install, environment-friendly with the least maintenance costs. In its tower-shaped superstructure, hot air cools down rapidly in the metal-lined condensation cavity, so the process water content condenses into the metal lining. The water can be collected through the pipeline. The technology can be applied without any infrastructure that offers a solution for the drought prone, hot or temperate area. b) Water Gen device: This is another device, but works on the same theory of natural water cycle as stated before. The device is developed by the Israeli company Water Gen that produces quality drinking water from the thin air with a minimal cost. For producing about 3100 litres water in a day, the device uses electricity, and at least 60% humidity and 26 degrees Celsius temperature in the surroundings. A type of small device can also be used for a little supply of water for a family and office as under the similar environmental conditions, which produces 15 litres of pure drinking water per day. These devices can be very suitable here for our countrys climatic condition. c) Warka Water: The bamboo made structure of Warka Water collects the condensed water in a container resulted from variations in temperature, and thereby provide a good quality of drinking water for the residents living around the installed device (tower shaped). On an average, a single tower can produce 94 litres of water per day without using any energy sources. As per designers, this tower has some special features in the sustainability requirements of water solutions, which are no need electricity, no specialist knowledge to operate, no need too much installment cost; moreover, one tower may sustain for the long term in producing safe and excellent drinking water for the local community. 2. The Drinkable Book: This innovation is a process of filtering water, first invented by Dr Teri Dankovich from Carnegie Mellon University. Each year globally, about 3.4 million people die from water pollution diseases. Bangladesh is one of the victims in such sufferings. By considering this background context, a revolutionary innovation takes place with a book whose pages can be used as filters. Research shows that it can destroy almost 99.99% bacterial germ of polluted water. Interestingly, the orange pages of this book show some educational messages that teach us about some indications that how to stop water pollution accordingly. It is very cheap to produce the books and recognized as the cheapest water purification method up to date. A single page or filter paper can be used for thirty days to produce quality drinking water while a whole book can produce pure drinking water for a person for maximum 4 years. The book pages contain silver nanoparticles, which have an excellent disinfection effect on water. However, we have no much data on the successfulness of these innovations that can be implemented in large scale in our country context. But the piloting of these concepts has been done in many areas. Therefore, we must think about these innovations in handling some of our future projects. Among many other innovations, Budapest Water Summit is highlighting those innovations targeting for the developing countries especially, which are in the currently shortage of water or in other related difficulties. Finally, providing people with sustainable water solutions is clearly a priority, so it is vital to discover and disseminate the information on this ground to enrich the global innovation network. The writer is Senior Research Associate and Sustainabilityprofessional at BRAC Research and Evaluation Division