As part of its on-going mission to tackle emerging contaminants, such as PFAS – also known as ‘forever chemicals’ – the US has announced that $1 billion will be dedicated to addressing PFAS, bringing the total funding announced for emerging contaminants to nearly $5 billion. PFAS – widely used, long-lasting chemicals that break down very slowly over time – have been used in many different consumer, commercial and industrial products, and when present in drinking water or wastewater contribute to a variety of harmful health impacts, including developmental challenges in children and increa ..read more

The impacts of climate change are disrupting countries in the Asia and Pacific region in their efforts to meet their Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), according to a new study by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The report, People and Planet: Addressing the Interlinked Challenges of Climate Change, Poverty, and Hunger in Asia and the Pacific, states that despite the region’s progress in improving food security, and health and well-being, more frequent a ..read more

Watch this 12-minute on-demand webinar, to learn about pioneering customer cases from Cities who are shifting away from conventional fossil-based polymers, toward renewable solutions. Topics discussed How municipal and industrial wastewater treatment operators can: Add more renewable materials to the value chain Use less fossil feedstocks Limit human impact on the planet and make a positive contribution to global circularity and climate goals Watch the video here The post Shift to Renewable Polymers appeared first on The Source ..read more

Brine valorization is being researched as a potential waste product from desalination that can be used as a concrete accelerator for the 3D printing of concrete. Noura Chehab, Mohammed Alsindi, Nikolay Voutchkov, Hussain Bukannan, and Fatima Bukhari describe the process and its benefits. NEOM is a new region being built from the ground up in the north-west of Saudi Arabia – driving solutions to the world’s most pressing issues. One of NEOM’s primary goals is to develop and implement at-scale solutions for water scarcity and pollution, minimising water costs and eradicating waste. ENOWA, the wa ..read more

Nikolay Voutchkov, who heads a world-leading innovation centre that is breaking new boundaries in desalination, spoke at last year’s IWA LET conference. With the 2024 edition of the event coming up, he explains how the latest developments are moving the technology towards circular principles to achieve a target of zero liquid discharge that embraces renewable energy and resource recovery. Most desalination plants are used to drought-proof water supplies for the world’s arid urban coastal municipalities. Approximately 44% of global desalination capacity is found in the Middle East. With mega-pr ..read more

In December, well over 1000 delegates from around the globe came together for IWA’s seventh Water and Development Congress & Exhibition in Kigali, Rwanda. Right from the time we started planning the Congress, and through all the hard work and preparation, we had great aspirations. This was an important event. As I observed in the previous edition of The Source, IWA is pluralistic and genuinely global in character; with a presence in 140 countries, we are now more globally representative of the regions, languages, cultures, and segments that make up the world’s water constituency than ever ..read more

Originally from Korea, Yale University Professor Jaehong Kim gave a plenary keynote at the IWA Leading Edge conference held there in May/June 2023 in the city of Daegu. Here, he outlines his research area of nanotechnology. By Erika Yarrow-Soden IWA’s 18th Leading Edge Conference on Water and Wastewater Technologies (LET) was held in Daegu, in South Korea, from 29 May to 2 June 2023, and marked the 20th anniversary of the series. The series is held in a different country every year, and is designed to be the place where new ideas are introduced and the opportunity is provided to interact with ..read more

The Asian Development Bank is drafting an innovative contract framework to support sustainable and secure water systems for people in the Asia and Pacific region. Stephane Bessadi, Stephane Giraud and Vincent Leloup explain how it is intended to future-proof standards of delivery. Despite global efforts to ensure safe water supplies and equitable access, water security remains a persistent challenge. In Asia and the Pacific, around two billion people are considered water insecure – a situation that is exacerbated by increasing customer demand, depleting water resources affected by climate chan ..read more

IWA held a webinar on how data influences the delivery of sanitation services to those most in need. Erika Yarrow-Soden highlights the key messages. On 7 September, IWA held a webinar on ‘Improving data systems for sanitation’, led by IWA’s Inclusive Urban Sanitation Initiative and the Water Policy and Regulation Agenda, in collaboration with Eastern and Southern Africa Water and Sanitation (ESAWAS) and WHO-Regnet. Time is of the essence The race to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in time for the 2030 deadline is now measured in years of single figures, yet many countries stil ..read more

By Erika Yarrow-Soden The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report The Global Climate 2011-2020: A Decade of Acceleration punctuated the close of 2023 with the second decadal analysis of the state of the climate, including a study of the intensity of extreme weather events and their socio-economic impacts. A collaborative work of the WMO, national meteorological and hydrological services, national statistics offices, and specialised agencies of the United Nations, the report follows the first decadal analysis, covering 2001-2010. To gather global data, WMO Members were requested to compl ..read more