[Extract] "We've got 19th century institutions making decisions about 21st century challenges!" - Gonzalo Delacámara - a podcast by Antoine Walter

Gonzalo Delacámara is Consultant on Natural Resources Economics for the United Nations and Water Policy Advisor for the OECD, the European Commission, and the World Bank. Gonzalo is also Director of the Center for Water & Climate Adaptation at IE University, aiming to reinvent education and train the people who will change the World tomorrow.

Why does the World misbehave when it comes to Water? Why can't Water be truly circular when all water professionals agree it should be? Why do we still have to evangelize the World to the treasures of resource recovery? The list goes on and on. And from inside the Water Industry, it can get frustrating. 

Yet, there's an unpleasant truth to accept: the Water Sector is an epiphenomenon on the broader scale of things. I know it's unfair, and it probably doesn't make sense, but it is simply and coldly true. This is how, as per the example Gonzalo shares today, people will pump up desalinated Water from the Sea to the Atacama desert - which represents the trifle of 250 bars of pumping - just because the commodity market can cover the cost.

No one will dare to argue that it is sustainable to waste Water and energy just for some bits of copper. But as Gonzalo will demonstrate in a jiffy, the wrong incentives lead to the wrong results.

So I'll let him develop the argumentation, as he'll do it much better than what I would bastardize here, but I will lead into that conversation with a straightforward question for all of us.

In one month from the date I release this episode, the Water's who's who will converge to New York for the UN Water Conference. You've heard it all: once in a lifetime, didn't happen since Mar Del Plata in 1977, bla bla bla. 

But are we sufficiently applying this advice we've got from Claudia Winkler and Alice Schmidt on this microphone by Season 3,  Episode 6? Are we zooming out before we zoom in? Will we aim for real solutions that break the water silo and really embrace the circularity nexus, or will we waste this opportunity with short-sighted debates? 

If one assembly has the power to finally set the right incentives, that should be this one. So if you know a delegate that will attend the main or a side event, take this episode, and send it to him. Tell that water who's who that water people won't solve water alone. That we need circularity in the decision-making so that the entire system of systems ultimately gets circular. 

Tell them, do it, and I'll meet you on the other side!

Why do we have so many Good Reasons to make Wrong Water Decisions?

Further episodes of (don't) Waste Water!

Further podcasts by Antoine Walter

Website of Antoine Walter