Lack of diversity and inclusivity in the water sector

The lack of diver­si­ty and inclu­sion in the water sec­tor, along with the lat­est research on Covid-19, fea­tures in updates pre­sent­ed to the Water Action Plat­form com­mu­ni­ty in October’s webi­nar. The learn­ings are tak­en from infor­ma­tion shared in What­sApp groups accessed by over 1,100 peo­ple in util­i­ties in 88 coun­tries, along­side insight and analy­sis from tech­nol­o­gy con­sul­tan­cy Isle’s expert team.
This peer-to-peer knowl­edge-shar­ing com­mu­ni­ty is spon­sored by lead­ing water indus­try part­ners. Here are the lat­est learn­ings from the Water Action Plat­form, select­ed from the webi­nar broad­cast which was pre­sent­ed by Piers Clark, chair­man of tech­nol­o­gy con­sul­tan­cy Isle.
Learn­ing 1: Diver­si­ty and inclu­siv­i­ty ‘lack­ing’ in the water sector
Ear­li­er this month Northum­bri­an Water host­ed a diver­si­ty and inclu­sion sem­i­nar as part of its recent inno­va­tion fes­ti­val. It explored a broad range of issues includ­ing gen­der, race, reli­gion, sex­u­al­i­ty and dis­abil­i­ty, and asked ‘how’ and ‘why’ the indus­try needs to do bet­ter. Around 40 water organ­i­sa­tions from around the world got involved and it became appar­ent just how ‘lack­ing’ the water sec­tor is at diver­si­ty and inclu­sion. For exam­ple, in the water sec­tor, Black and minor­i­ty eth­nic work­ers rep­re­sent 5% across ener­gy and util­i­ties com­pared with 15% across oth­er sec­tors. In addi­tion, female work­ers rep­re­sent 20% across ener­gy and util­i­ties, com­pared with 47% across oth­er sectors.
The event result­ed in a com­pre­hen­sive report being pro­duced which pre­sent­ed the ‘good, the bad and the ugly’ of the cur­rent state of the water indus­try. It also includes exam­ples of best prac­tise, and most impor­tant­ly actions that com­pa­nies must take to ensure mean­ing­ful change.
Learn­ing 2: Covid-19: Waste­water is an effec­tive ear­ly detec­tion tool
Waste­water-based epi­demi­ol­o­gy can help in the glob­al fight against Covid-19 in par­tic­u­lar, by pro­vid­ing an ear­ly warn­ing detec­tion sys­tem. Researchers from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty and the Con­necti­cut Agri­cul­tur­al Exper­i­men­tal Sta­tion tracked the rise and fall of all the cas­es over a 10-week study. They con­clud­ed that when com­pared to con­ven­tion­al com­mu­nal out­break detec­tion meth­ods over the same peri­od, the pres­ence of SARS-CoV­‑2 RNA con­cen­tra­tions in pri­ma­ry sludge was up to two days ahead of pos­i­tive clin­i­cal tests, 1–4 days ahead of local hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion and 6–8 days ahead of offi­cial report­ing. This data shows, again, how viral RNA mon­i­tor­ing in munic­i­pal waste­water could be a use­ful infec­tion sur­veil­lance tool, par­tic­u­lar­ly in com­mu­ni­ties fac­ing a delay between spec­i­men col­lec­tion and the report­ing of test results.
 Learn­ing 3: Spe­cial­ist sup­port dur­ing a crisis
Fol­low­ing the Beirut explo­sion in August, the Water Action Plat­form set up the Cri­sis Response Reg­is­ter (CRR) for water indus­try pro­fes­sion­als who are open to being approached in times of nation­al or inter­na­tion­al cri­sis. The CRR con­tin­ues to grow in pop­u­lar­i­ty with over 200 vol­un­teers from 31 coun­tries. Recent suc­cess sto­ries include Oxfam Aus­tralia, who reached out to 32 Pacif­ic-based CRR vol­un­teers to help dur­ing the Mon­soon season.
Anoth­er exam­ple of the range of work under­tak­en includes an ongo­ing water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion issue in a Lebanese vil­lage. Local project coor­di­na­tors are try­ing to iden­ti­fy the source(s) of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion with lim­it­ed tech­nol­o­gy at their dis­pos­al. Ulti­mate­ly, they want to find a sus­tain­able, long-term, fit-for-pur­pose solu­tions and are work­ing with a num­ber of CRR vol­un­teers to achieve this. A dis­as­ter-relief organ­i­sa­tion which pro­vides train­ing and sup­port dur­ing human­i­tar­i­an crises is look­ing for more trained, qual­i­fied pro­fes­sion­als to pro­vide sup­port on water and san­i­ta­tion. RedR also has a ros­ter of pro­fes­sion­als to pro­vide sup­port dur­ing a cri­sis and has paid posts that last from three months to two years.
Learn­ing 4: How safe are water sec­tor work­ers dur­ing the pandemic? 
A paper from the KWR insti­tute in the Nether­lands has looked at that recur­ring ques­tion of whether waste­water is infec­tious – and the answer is a clear no. For those in the sec­tor these find­ings are reas­sur­ing. Broad­ly the safe­ty advice has not changed from the start of lock­down. The adop­tion of stan­dard good health and safe­ty prac­tis­es and stan­dard per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment for water util­i­ty work­ers is both safe and effective.
Learn­ing 5: Sta­bil­i­ty of util­i­ties in devel­op­ing coun­tries under threat 
The webi­nar fea­tured an inter­view with Peter Macy, founder and pres­i­dent of ROCK­Blue, which looked at the com­plex issues around the finan­cial sta­bil­i­ty of util­i­ties in the devel­op­ing world, and the impact of the pan­dem­ic – which has sent many tee­ter­ing on the edge of a com­plete finan­cial cri­sis. The com­pa­ny helps util­i­ties in Africa secure much need­ed finance and respond to chal­lenges in order to min­imis­es water dis­rup­tion, strength­en the rela­tion­ships between com­mu­ni­ties, cus­tomers and util­i­ties and enhance the long-term finan­cial via­bil­i­ty and dura­bil­i­ty of utilities.
Macy report­ed that in the ear­ly days of the pan­dem­ic many util­i­ties were already see­ing 30 to 40% drops in rev­enue, how­ev­er the fore­cast is for up to 70% drops over the com­ing months. ROCK­Blue is work­ing with sev­er­al util­i­ties to help them pre­dict future sce­nar­ios for bet­ter mit­i­ga­tion plans, car­ry out rig­or­ous finan­cial mon­i­tor­ing and coor­di­nate between organ­i­sa­tions, gov­ern­ments and the pri­vate sec­tor. He added it is just as impor­tant to address the long-term resilience and the need for increased train­ing and back­up staff; more secure forms of pay­ment, such as pre-paid meters; pri­vatis­ing parts of the oper­a­tion and work­ing with the reg­u­la­tors to increase rates.
Learn­ing 6: Ask for a mask
A paper in the New Eng­land jour­nal of med­i­cine has sug­gest­ed wear­ing a face mask may inad­ver­tent­ly give peo­ple immu­ni­ty from Covid-19, by both decreas­ing the chance of catch­ing it and decreas­ing suf­fer­ing if you do. The rec­om­men­da­tion to wear masks in pub­lic was orig­i­nal­ly made so that asymp­to­matic peo­ple or pre-symp­to­matic car­ri­ers would not infect others.
How­ev­er, evi­dence is accu­mu­lat­ing which shows a mask wear­er is exposed to a low­ered ini­tial viral load – enough to trig­ger an immune response and train the immune sys­tem, but not enough to make you seri­ous­ly ill. This is called var­i­o­la­tion and was a vac­ci­na­tion process up until the late 1700s.