Sustainable Urban Water Management – Challenges and Opportunities in mainstreaming Climate Adaptation

Dr Matthews is the Executive Director and co-founder of AGWA. His work blends technical and policy knowledge for climate adaptation and water management for practical implementation. John has worked on five continents and more than 30 countries and published in many policy, scientific and technical journals and books, including Science, Nature Climate Change, and the PLoS family.

Emerging technical approaches to assessing climate risks, Dr John Matthews
Climate change is a new threat for how we manage water resources in a sustainable, resilient way, especially given the uncertainties around future climate impacts. But new solutions for assessing and reducing climate risk are also appearing. Indeed, climate change may even present new opportunities for how we conceive of more holistic and effective approaches to sustainable development. Here, we will describe an emerging family of technical approaches to assessing climate risk that are tolerant to and respectful of climate uncertainty that have been applied in more than two dozen countries over a wide range of spatial scales, and with groups ranging from the World Bank to Dutch and US water management agencies.

Ad Jeuken is a climate change adaptation expert at Deltares since 2008 holding a PhD in climate modelling (KNMI and technical university Eindhoven) and a professional background in water management. He has worked for international organizations like the European commission, ADB, GCF, WB, FAO and UNFCCC and for governments worldwide on climate change risk analysis, adaptation planning, training and capacity building.

Incorporating climate change risks into urban planning and design, Dr Ad Jeukens
The presentation will focus on the particular implementation of the approaches presented by John Matthews: how to incorporate climate change risks into urban planning and design? This will include, stress testing of urban drainage systems and the use of urban design sessions to build climate resilience against floods enhanced by climate change and sea level rise. Examples will be given from the city of Guayaquil (Ecuador) and Chennai (India).

Dr John Ngoni Zvimba (formerly with Mintek and CSIR) is currently with the South African Water Research Commission as Research Manager responsible for the sustainable integrated wastewater resource futures research portfolio. He has over 20 years of research experience focusing on sustainable municipal, industrial and mining wastewater treatment and management. His experience covers research and development on technology and innovation for treatment, volarization beneficiation of wastewater streams and sludges. He holds a doctorate degree in Bio-physical Chemistry and has postdoctoral research experience in Bioprocess Engineering.

Prof. Ishrat Islam is at the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka, and has been working in the field of urban planning, disaster management, and climate change for more than two decades. She also contributes to research on participatory planning and community-based disaster management. She holds a doctorate degree from Ritsumeikan Univeristy, Tokyo, and a master’s degree in Urban Planning from the University of Akron, USA. She is an architect and author of the book: Wetland of Dhaka City: A Study from Social Economic and Institutional Perspective’