OzWater’23 — United by Water
ISF presents at the 2023 OzWater Conference, pioneering solutions for water sustainability.
Image courtesy of The Australian Water Association
On Sunday 30 April, the 2023 OzWater Conference kicked off featuring six presentations from the UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF), with the theme, ‘United by Water’.
The conference is an annual event over three days connecting Australia’s water community and offering delegates the opportunity to learn from each other. OzWater’23 was also an opportunity to celebrate all of the outstanding work being done within the Australian water sector and reflect on the importance of this work in creating a sustainable future.
On Day 1, ISF had three presentations. The first was ‘Future scenarios for Greater Sydney’s drinking water catchments’, featuring Ebony Heslop, Alex Butler and Deyvid Rosa. ISF and WaterNSW have explored scenarios of alternate catchment future states to understand how impacts from broad-scale megatrends and local drivers may create potential risks or opportunities for catchment health and supply security.
In conjunction with Sydney Water, ISF’s Pierre Mukheibir and Ebony Heslop also presented on ‘Building asset resilience to climate shocks: Key enablers from global success stories’. This presentation focused on adapting water utilities around the world to the impacts of climate shocks and preventing impacts to their services.
ISF’s Simon Fane, Tasneem Rangwala and Pierre Mukheibir also pitched ‘Tailoring Adaptive Planning Framework for Local Water Utilities’. This explored the adaptive planning framework that provides guidance to navigate through the changing landscape of challenges at the planning stage, to manage uncertainties in an organised manner.
[l-r] Rachel Watson (NSW Department of Planning and Environment), Alexandra Butler (ISF Research Consultant)
On Day 3, Alex Butler and Simon Fane presented on ‘Doing water efficiency well – a guide to the NSW best practice framework’, explaining the NSW Water Efficiency Framework as a guidance for developing and delivering water efficiency programs across a range of contexts.
On day 4, Melita Grant presented on 'Partnerships for Transformation - guidance for water management and Rights Holder Organisations (RHOs)'. Her talk was co-developed with research partners from Timor-Leste and Indonesia and provided audience members with an overview of the practical how to guide to develop respectful and mutually beneficial partnerships for water, sanitation and hygiene and inclusion outcomes.
ISF at Ozwater’23 delivered on a myriad of thought-provoking presentations and engaged with the sector’s leading companies and innovators in pursuit of better outcomes for all.
