Good morning everybody, excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, friends, partners of the Institute, colleagues, and I would especially welcome our retired staff amongst the colleagues sitting here. Welcome to the 60th anniversary of UNESCO IHE, Institute for Water Education and IHE Delft. Normally you would say the 60th birthday is a birthday where you start thinking about your retirement, but this institute is not thinking about that. So we are thinking forward. We are thinking how we can really further develop and implement our mission. The challenge of the Institute, of the very beginning, always was how we adapt to the changing landscape in the last 60 years. And this is still the underlying theme for the whole day and for the day-to-day work of the Institute. Learn from the past, act in the present, and plan for the future. The Institute has an illustrious history of contributions to science, society, and development, and had also always a clear focus on water-related problems based on the more than 700 years of experience this country has with water problems. The adaptation capacity of the Netherlands to the changing water challenges became very soon internationally renowned. And it was for engineering and technical competence. And if we reflect the earliest activities of the Institute, we clearly see a practical emphasis on technical and engineering solutions. But step by step, the Institute became a forefront research education and capacity development institution in addressing the complexity and interwoven water problems. They are no longer amendable to disciplinary approaches. To avoid unintended consequences or collateral damage, a single issue-driven measure or a solution is no longer necessary and obvious. This led to a shift towards the understanding of processes and systems. And this also meant that the Institute went out and is going out of the classical water sector box. Cutting across disciplines became vital. Trans and interdisciplinary cooperation became state of the art. Without such an understanding, the agenda at 2030 cannot be implemented. Engineering sciences, natural science, as well as ethics and social sciences form today's basis of the Institute's work. And there is an element which is an add-on in the Institute and is of equal importance. This is highly skilled, motivated, dedicated, and committed staff in the Institute. You can't deal with water problems and water issues without passion. But the Institute itself is not sufficient to deal with all the problems we have ahead of us. It is necessary to complement our own capacities and expertise with our partners. And I think IHE Delft must maintain and strengthen its strategic partnerships we have since a long time. Number one is that we are a flagship Institute within UNESCO. But we are also a flagship entity in relation to other UN organizations, if it is, for example, WMO, but also ASOS. And we stay embedded in this UN system and we will work to strengthen this relationship. It applies also for other international organizations, for stakeholders, for institutes, for universities in the global south. Without this network, we would be not able to follow our mission, to implement our strategy, and to be really adaptive also to the cultural diversity in the countries we are working in. But first and more, this Institute is embedded in the Dutch system. We have to continue working closely with the Dutch water sector. I think it is a real strength that we are working closely with Dutch university and we are fully embedded in the Dutch higher education system. And last but not least, I think it's also important that we continue working closely with the three crucial ministries, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Ministry for Research and Education, and the Ministry for Infrastructure and Environment. Because all ministries together provide us with the necessary basis we need for a successful work. I think we have an interesting day ahead of us. And I also think that we are not simply celebrating a 60th birthday looking back. We look really strongly forward. And I think the underlying elements of the day are we are discussing the role of the Institute if it comes to innovation. We are also discussing the role of the Institute if it comes to influence. And I have to say, if we see the influence, we have been able to generate through our 15,000 of alumnus around the globe. I think this is something what is really important and what really is a strength for us. The third point is demonstration. Demonstration means that we are trying to find feasible solutions together with our partners in developing countries and demonstrate that these things are working. And this does not mean that simply we see the developing countries as a kind of laboratory of the North and the South. We see the developing countries as partners to enable us to really adapt to the need and the cultural diversity with our partners. And last but not least, we are talking about impact. Impact is always an issue which is high on the agenda, but very often it's not clear how we measure it. And I think if it comes to impact of an academic institution, of an institution who is doing capacity development, it is very difficult to show impact in a kind of short-sighted perspective. This is nothing where you simply can work in four years periods. I think what is important and this is one of our major focus that we really are trying through our work to change mindsets. And changing mindsets is a long-term investment which pays back later on properly. So I wish you all a really inspiring day. And I think you can really see in the program that we try to involve partners, stakeholders, PhD fellows, students, and I think this will become a lively day. So thank you very much for coming. And now you see in your program an interesting item. The item is called Breaking News. And I think this is the right moment to ask the chair of the Foundation Board, Dirk Jan van den Belch, to come to the stage and to introduce this item. Please, Dirk Jan, the floor is yours. Well, thank you very much, Frits. Actually, when someone announces that you are going to break News, and this being an academic environment, one knows that News has already been broken, right? Well, nevertheless. But let me first, on behalf of the Foundation Board, congratulate you all on the 60th anniversary of the Institute. And as the title of today, the impact of IGA Delft in a changing landscape clearly signifies you have not fallen into the trap of gloating about a glorious past, but rather taking up the challenge of exploring a very promising future. And I think that's a very good thing. Because obviously, in all three areas of work of the Institute, be it research, education, or capacity building, in all these three areas, major changes are taking place. In research, as of course Frits already explained, multi-disciplinarity is very much the name of the game, and this is something the Institute will need to transform into. And in the area of education, you will face numerous discussions on learning outcomes, because, of course, the outcome of education will have to fit within this new orientation of the research work. But also, I would say, the modes of delivery of education will present a very interesting challenge for the Institute, because I do believe that, in fact, if you look at the target group of students, if you look at the kind of students we are receiving at this Institute, I would say that this Institute is really set up, geared to make a big success out of e-learning and online education as a full integrative part of its education offerings. And I think that is really something to work for, because you will be, in that case, a leader in the world in adapting these kind of new technologies. And in the area of capacity building, well, there again, the Institute is going through a transformation, because we are no longer discussing, I would say, development corporation in the traditional sense, but rather we are discussing how we can help in a sophisticated environment where we will meet with people that really know their stuff, that are really well educated, and will bring this capacity building thing on a completely different level. So all reasons to really focus this day on the future of the Institute and make sure that indeed the next 60 years will be of the same quality and of the same success rate as the past 60 years. Now for us as the Foundation Board, we carry the responsibility to make sure that the Institute, the environment of the Institute is set right. And well, for those that are a bit more familiar with the recent history of the Institute, we had to overcome some challenges. So we have worked on the administrative governance of the Institute. We have made great improvements there, but even more important, of course, we had to make sure that we guided our discussions with the UNESCO leadership in such a direction that we could maintain the link of the Institute with the UNESCO and UN system with a full recognition of the fact that this is an academic Institute where rules and laws of academic freedom really are most important. And I think we have succeeded. We are now in a progress to bring the Institute to a category two status. All the work that's been done in that respect goes very well. We have a very receiving end, I would say, at the UNESCO site of our discussions. And in fact, I think everyone is quite happy that it turned out the way it did. So I think we can, with great confidence, look to our future in that respect. And then, of course, there is the issue of the leadership of the Institute. Given all these dynamics I just described, we had a task to find someone as a successor for Fritz, who almost is now a permanent vector. And as a successor to Fritz, to make sure that we find someone that actually can lead these important developments in the Institute that can animate a debate on the important decisions that will have to be taken. And I'm very pleased and happy to announce that we found such a candidate. It's Professor Eddie Morse. He will address you in a few minutes. And we believe that he is the kind of candidate that brings in the academic track record, that brings in the experience of managing academic institutions, that brings in a very important network. He brings in, as well, important international experience. And we do believe that, well, by appointing him as Rector to the Institute, it is a safe pair of hands to bring the Institute further in the coming 60 years. He will start the 1st of July. And I don't know, that might be the real breaking news. But if we have to surmount the problem, the Foundation Board has a list of emergency phone numbers. In fact, in the case of the IHE, it's only one phone number. It's the phone number of Fritz. And we have found him willing to continue to stay on until the 1st of July, so that there will be a smooth transition when Eddie will take over the reins of the Institute. And then we will really say goodbye to Fritz. But as I say, already in advance, we really would like to thank him for standing up for the Institute in difficult times. And we had a very pleasant and close cooperation Chair of the Foundation Board and Directorate of the Institute to make sure that, in the end, all will be well. Thank you. Thank you very much. And Eddie Morse, Floris, yours. Good morning. And I'm really happy that I am allowed to be here and stand on this stadium and say something to you. What I will not do is say something about the future, because I think this day is an excellent day to hear from you how you think about the future. But what I would like to do is to introduce myself a little bit about my background. And one of the things why I like to be at the IHE Delft is because I like water. Water has always been my passion. And it's still my passion. And I'm very lucky in the sense that I can combine my hobby, which is swimming, actually, together with my work and work with water I've done throughout my career. I did that in different places. And to show that a little bit, I was born in Senegal in Dakar and moved from there to Asia, lived in Kuala Lumpur. And after that, went to the Netherlands to finish my education. I had my training, say, in Wageningen, where I did lentil water use. And from there, I majored actually in meteorology and hydrology. So again, water coming back also in my studies. And after that, I worked for the World Meteorological Organization, first in Africa and later in the Caribbean. And actually, it was in Barbados that I first encountered IHE. And there, I worked together with Jan Norder. Maybe some of you still know him, and with Huub Safenayen. And together with them, we gave training course for hydrologists in the Caribbean region. When I finished working for the World Meteorological Organization, I actually was looking for an opportunity to maybe work here at IHE Delft. But I got another job offered in Wageningen. That came first. So that's how I ended up in Wageningen, where I did my promotion at Vue University in Amsterdam on lentil water use of forest in the Netherlands. But actually, I worked a lot outside. And my PhD was, in that sense, a bit particular because it was so much focused on the Netherlands. I've been working lately very much in Bangladesh. So I'm very happy that I see your excellency here. And I'm also very interested to hear your words. And I know that we've been talking already a bit about what future possibilities are there also in a closer cooperation with Bangladesh. But I also see that with a number of you whom I met in different occasions where I see good linkages and good possibilities to build on the future. For my personal background, I have a daughter and a son. They're both in the age that they should have finished their studies by now. My daughter did. My son is, say, very much interested in rowing. So that's why it's taking them a little bit longer to reach the deadline. But I do hope that that will also come soon. I do hope also to move, actually, a little bit closer to Delft or towards Delft. I'm living at the moment in the Batua, which is too far away looking at the different traffic jams and not easy to reach by public transportation. So I hope to come here. And I hope also to visit IHE Delft a couple of times during May and June to also use the opportunity of the presence of Fritz, but also of Edmund, to take over some of the responsibilities and have a very fast start in July. And I also hope, actually, to talk a little bit more extensively with a lot of you during that time, but also the first couple of months after my start in July. So with that, I'm really looking forward to the outcome of today. But I'm also looking very much forward to working together with you, say, for the next couple of years to take a next step with the Institute, which I think is a really excellent Institute. Also, listening a little bit what I hear from people outside, so from countries like India, Pakistan, Nepal. If you talk with people about IHE, they all talk about one of the entry ports, actually, to the Netherlands if you want to study something about water. So I do hope that we can use this reputation and can build on this reputation, actually, to make a next step. So thanks very much. I'm looking forward to see you all quite often. Thank you. Thank you very much, Eddie Morse. And I think it's really a good occasion that we at the 60th anniversary of the Institute now can really say the future of the Institute has a face. And I think this is important. Now we are moving to the next part. And the next part I think is a quite important one because this Institute has, from the very beginning, a very special relationship with Bangladesh. And I think Bangladesh was always a partner in the cooperation where we really could see how the Institute's adaptation to changing landscapes really worked on the ground. And therefore it is a great honor for me to announce now his Excellency Sheikh Mohammed Bilal, Ambassador of Bangladesh to the Netherlands to ask him to take over the podium and to provide us with his address. Sir Floris, yours, Excellency. Good morning, Professor Fritz Holzer and Chair of the Board, the actor-desected Professor Eddie Morse, Excellencies, distinguished panelists, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. Let me pick up from where Professor Fritz began on the much-threatened concept of retirement. As a public servant, bureaucrats, diplomats, retirement is something which we've found to be very threatening. And sometimes it's much more than what some of our colleagues come to believe. But that we come to see as a concept of our own warranty period. But for those of you, Professor Fritz and the likes who are in the business of touching people's lives in the business of impact, there is no warranty periods. You'll continue to exist even after your time in your spirit, even maybe God might have some thinking for you on the other end as well. So retirement is not there for you. It's only for us public servants and bureaucrats. Let me begin by congratulating Enos Kaichi Institute for Water Education for their very successful endeavor over the last 60 years in imparting knowledge and education on water to more than 15,000 professionals from around 160 countries. I consider myself fortunate to have been able to congratulate you, thanking you all in person for all that you have been doing, for all our people in Bangladesh and beyond. I therefore take the privilege of expressing our appreciation to the UNS Kaichi for its world-class research, providing hydraulic engineering solutions to the Netherlands, and also graduate educations to a large number of water professionals from almost every corner of the globe. The vast majority are from the developing world, including Bangladesh. The fact that IH Delft choose to be in the Netherlands is a feat in itself. There is perhaps no other country which pioneered leaving below the sea level and in the process turned their challenges into opportunities like the Netherlands did for centuries. The Netherlands showed to the world how government, business leaders, academics, and civil society must act together. IH Delft stands as a huge testimony to that process. You did it because none of us could solve it alone. Ladies and gentlemen, Bangladesh as a delta country and crisscrossed by numerous rivers has been greatly benefited from the UNS Kaichi. Many of our civil and water resource engineers have pursued higher studies in the UNS Kaichi over the years. They are now contributing to the development of our country through their augmented knowledge and skill acquired from these prestigious institutes. I can see few familiar faces all the way from Bangladesh here today to continue this partnership and thereby to make Bangladesh solve its problem with innovations and creativity in a sustainable way. The UNS Kaichi has also been actively involved in Bangladesh over the years under different NAFIC funded projects, mainly to enhance organizational capacity on integrated water resource management at different engineering universities of Bangladesh. Bangladesh and the Netherlands are delta. Bangladesh is the Asia's largest and world's most populated delta. Many of our populations depend on the delta for survival, especially for their heavy dependence on agriculture and fishing. However, unlike the Netherlands, our delta is vulnerable to sea level rise and other climate change impacts, including slainization of soil and water, cyclonic storms, coastal floods, increased flood risk, water logging, scarcity of freshwater, sedimentation, et cetera. The management and development of water resources in Bangladesh is critically important for a number of reasons, poverty eradication, disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation, livelihood improvements, economic growth, environmental sustainability, et cetera. Proper management of water resources is thus paramount for us in achieving the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. The knowledge and services of these institutions in human and institutional capacity building are vital to the achievement of sustainable development goals, especially SDG6. SDG6 is definitely ambitious, but it is crucial to the overarching goal of eradicating extreme poverty. 2.4 billion people still lack access to sanitation. So non-fulfillment of goal six will compromise the achievement of all SDGs. While we talk about SDGs, we need to remind ourselves about the challenges of climate change as well. As thousands of activists and scientists around the world gathered last week around the world to what they call March for Science, people in Bangladesh would like me to convey on their behalf as their envoy that climate change is not an issue for debate or discussion anymore. It is a question of our existence. I'm not here to tell you that it is in the Constitution of the United States, Article 1, Section 8, quote, to promote the progress of sciences and useful arts, unquote. But I'm here to appeal to you that your research and scientific dedication is all the more required to make the lives and the struggle of our people more livable. Our people may not be aware of the fact that, thanks to climate change, seawater is something we are going to have plenty in the future. Greenland's coastal ice caps, which have already passed the point of no return, are predicted to increase sea levels by around 3.8 centimeters by 2100. And if the entire Greenland ice sheet melts, future generations will be facing oceans up to 7.3 meters higher. But at the same time, clean drinking water is still incredibly hard to come by in many parts of the world, including Bangladesh. This is why United Nations predicts, by 2025, 14% of the world's population will encounter water scarcity. And many of those countries won't be able to afford large-scale desalination plants. This is why we are hugely encouraged to hear the news like the invention of a graphite oxide membrane that ships salt right out of seawater at the laboratory of University of Manchester at the United Kingdom. At this stage, the technique we are told is still limited to the lab. But its demonstration of how we could one day quickly and easily turn one of our most abundant resources, seawater, into one of our most scarce clean drinking water is hugely promising. We are aware and immensely grateful to these institutions, UNESCO, for their life-saving research to evaluate the problem of arsenic poisoning in Bangladesh and hope that with continued research, there will be a time when problem of arsenic poisoning will be a matter for research medium. From our side, we can assure you of our total support as we ourselves also striving to make solutions like these more sustainable and doable through our quest for implementing the sustainable developmental goals 2013. In Bangladesh, likewise all other goals, we put equal, if not more, emphasis on goal 6 as vindicated through inclusion of our Prime Minister Shaqasina as the member of UN High-Level Panel on Water. In her address at the meeting of the High-Level Panel on 21 September 2016 in New York, our Prime Minister urged the international community to consider water as an integral part of the new development architecture. She emphasized the need for ensuring equitable sharing of trans-boundary water bodies, including integrated management of river basins and underscores the necessity of promoting access to water-intensive technologies to effectively address water-related challenges. Ladies and gentlemen, as Bangladesh and the Netherlands are countries of deltic nature, there exist immense scope of corporations between our two countries in the areas of delta management, water resource management, and other related areas. I would like to mention here that in this regard, Bangladesh and the Netherlands signed an M.U. towards resilient and sustainable determination for a prosperous Bangladesh and a latter of intent on cooperation in the field of land acclimation and accretion in Bangladesh in June 2015. Excuse me. The government of the Netherlands has extended their technical support in the development of Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100, which is expected to be finalized soon. During the official visit of Bangladesh Prime Minister to the Netherlands in November 2015, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands issued of extending all cooperation to Bangladesh for implementation of Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100. It is my pleasure to inform you that Bangladesh is the current chair of Delta coalitions and as current chair, Bangladesh is going to organize DACA water conference in July this year. This water conference will encompass Delta Coalition Ministerial Conference and Regional Water Conference, which is, excuse me, I beg your pardon, which is expected to be participated by countries of South Asia, East Asia, Asia Pacific, and members of Delta Coalition. The conference will focus on action-oriented activism and momentum on water issues with a view to building resilient future for all. Ladies and gentlemen, before I conclude, allow me once again to watch UNESCO IHE as you look back to your institutions last 60 years to continue more discussions on human terms, more importantly, of those people who are beyond our gauge and senses as they languish in the slums or shanties and make forceful contribution towards attaining SDG-6 as well as attending challenges of climate change for the very need of peace and development at the local, national, regional, and global levels. At the same time, allow me to urge all of you, scientists, students, and academics to put their voice together, both in words and deeds, so that governments make decisions based on science and take measures to implement the results of those decisions. There are just so much misinformation. A lot of people just don't know who to believe, they don't know who to trust, and I think it is time for scientists to evolve in one voice to save mother nature together. Let me conclude by quoting Prime Minister, Mark Rute. As he said during UN High Level Panel on Water, quote, none of us can solve this alone. We need to tackle tomorrow's water challenges today. We have no time to waste, unquote. Let's work together for a better tomorrow and beyond. I thank you, Mr. Gaiji. Thank you very much, Mr. Ambassador. Your last comment brings me to an additional comment from my side. I think science is extremely important, and sometimes we have to put it in a kind of short phrase and I always put it in a short phrase in saying, science without policy still remains science. Policy without science is gambling, and I think this is something we should always be aware. Now it's my pleasure to introduce to you Michael McLean, our professor for eco-hydrology, and Michael will guide us through the morning sessions and I think the landscape and the scene is now properly set by the address of the Ambassador from Bangladesh, and I think now we go a bit more in concrete cases and Sir Floris, you're Michael. Thank you very much for doing that. Thank you. Well, good morning, everyone, and thank you so much to our speakers that opened the session for setting the context, reflecting on the fact that IHE Delph, UNESCO IHE, is celebrating 60 years now. Now it's a day of celebration. No one, however, reaches the age of 60 and no institution reaches the age of 60 without a lot of lessons, without living to that point a rich life. So our goal today, and we're so grateful for the number of partners who have joined us, our goal today is not, as Derek Yan said, to gloat on our accomplishments of 60 years, but we do want to reflect on some of the lessons, some of the highlights of those 60 years. We are increasingly trying to become a learning institution internally, which requires systematic reflection. So as you look at your program, you'll notice that there are two sides, there's a blue side and a green side. The blue side is the morning and the morning includes, as the afternoon does, a dynamic combination of sections. There will be some presentations, there will be some interviews, there will be some panels discussing, there will be opportunities for you to join in as well with your questions and with your remarks. And roughly, the morning is intended to be that period of reflection, reflecting on the past, reflecting on some of the lessons learned very much in a discussion between staff of IHE Delft as well as our partners. And then in the afternoon, as you turn to the green, we will turn our attention to the future and building upon the lessons and the accomplishments of the past, looking to the future and how this institution for the next 60 years and more is going to continue to be impactful and continuing to provide service to so many nations of the world. So that'll be our simple set of objectives for the day. In a relaxed manner, you'll notice that I'm the first speaker to unbutton his jacket. And over the course of the day, I'll probably get more and more relaxed as I hope you do, because this is intended to be an exchange. Now you'll have two opportunities specifically at the close of the morning session and at the close of the afternoon session, when we have a larger panel discussion, you'll have the opportunity to ask your questions. And in the meantime, it'll mainly be a dynamic between the selected staff members, representatives of our PhD program, of our master's program, and some very important partners. Because you also do not arrive at 60 without having strong and meaningful relationships with partners around the world. So I hope you'll see those reflected. Now, we learned in the opening words that our partnership and relationship with Bangladesh goes all the way back to the beginning. In fact, it was a call from Bangladesh for knowledge support that gave birth to the international program that became in time IHE Delft. So we'd like to begin by, I'd like to invite Chris Zavenberger onto the stage. Chris, please come on up. Chris is a professor of flood resilience of urban systems at IHE Delft and also at the Technical University of Delft. Hey Chris, you are also leading DeltaCAP, which is our current program with Bangladesh in capacity development. So I'll allow you to invite on stage the members of your panel. Great, thank you, Michael. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, your excellencies, panel members. May I ask you to come on stage? We are very fortunate to have you here to celebrate our anniversary, but also to participate in this conversation. And yesterday we had a pre-meeting and we were discussing that we had to sit on a sofa to have a candid conversation about a serious topic. And we concluded that it's a new experience for all of us, isn't it? Yes. So please be seated. Thank you. So we have 20 minutes discussion, which is quite short. And I will start with introducing you to the audience and then start to throw a first question to Dr. Quasem. And also I encourage you to reflect or to intervene and that we have a vivid discussion. And I know that you, given the meeting we had yesterday, that you have a very specific opinion about how IHE is doing. And you have also some, I would say, some own ideas how to proceed. So we would like to have that information for you. So Dr. Quasem is a nester of our alumni family. He graduated in 1979 and then he obtained his PhD in the U.S. and then came back to Bangladesh and became, in your last part of your career, Director General of the Water Resource Planning Organization which supports the national government. And you're all still very actively engaged in the Delta Plan and you are advising the government. So we are extremely happy that you are here and I will come back to my question soon. You are our PhD fellow, our star, I would say. And you are now working on a project where you, a research project, where you are looking at the Delta Plan in Vietnam and Bangladesh and later on also in the Netherlands. And you're trying to extract some lessons. So you are very well placed to take part in this discussion and we're looking forward to that. And then we have Professor Shalem Kahn. And Professor Shalem Kahn is a person who has a great academic distinction in the field of Delta Planning and Management. But he's also very famous, I would say, in the Dutch Delta family. Everybody knows you. You are involved in many projects with the University of Utrecht, TU Delft, Delta Iris, UNESCO IHC. So you are very well placed to have an opinion about how we are doing and how IHC is participating in the process. So my first question to you, Dr. Gwassen. You have been an important figure in Bangladesh shaping the policy in water management. And if you look at the role of UNESCO IHC, IHC, I must say, what is your opinion? How do you see, say, the modus operandi of IHC and how it evolved in time? And where are we now? What do you see in the transfer and the shifts? And more importantly, what lessons do you want to convey to us? First of all, your question is too difficult for me because IHC was established in 1957. And at that time I was not here. But anyway, say, I will very briefly narrate my journey to IHC, through IHC, and along with IHC. Now my journey with IHC, my ways, it was inspired by my seniors who had been the IHC students in the late 50s after establishment of IHC. Netherlands had a catastrophic flood in 1953. Bangladesh had two consecutive catastrophic floods in 1954, 1955. Later on, the ambassador of Diden Pakistan, of which is Pakistan was a part, requested the Netherlands government to train the Bangladeshi engineers with the Dutch knowledge and experience to face these floods and develop water resources. And then the group of engineers, young engineers came to Netherlands to IHC. And these group, and from there regularly year by year, they have been coming, and I think now we have a few hundreds of IHC alumni in Bangladesh in water sector. And these, those alumni, IHC alumni, they formed the core who prepared the first master plan, which is known as ICO master plan 1962 to 1964 for water flood control irrigation and water management in Bangladesh. And that was the first generation. And they were the real backbone of development of infrastructures, planning policies, planning and infrastructures in relation to flood control irrigation in Bangladesh. And the IHC graduates in Bangladesh, they played a very important role in our next second attempt of formulating a master plan. Now this is, I learnt the stories of IHC from my seniors when I joined as a fresh engineer in water development board in 1970. And then my journey has started through, IHC has started in 1978, when they, and I found IHC, an international assembly of, international assembly of, not Dutch assembly, of water sector engineers from Asia, Africa, North, South America, Australia, the whole world. In my course there was one who did MS in USA but came for the IHC course here. I asked him why. So his reply was, I know IHC is a very practical oriented education, for the practicing engineers. That was IHC, how people looked that way. And it was a centre of excellence also from another point of view. The teachers of IHC were the best, I think, once, from different universities of the Netherlands. From Austria, I know our design, our design of dams was from Austria. We had hydraulics from UK, we had one from USA and one from Australia also. So from different parts of the world. That was the excellence of IHC. But I missed at that time, number one, female students, only seven-eight students in the whole institute, social dimension of engineering professionals like skills, management skills, communication skills, then networking skills. These soft skills, those things I missed. But now I find a lot of girls, young and old, I mean hovering around IHC and I think IHC has now some multi-dimensional approach also, multi-disciplinary approach also. And that was how I saw and what I missed at that time. And now my journey also was through Netherlands, was also at IHC. What I missed in IHC, that I got at ISS, I have post-graduation at ISS also. And I'm very proud always, I'm proud to say that being an engineer I had a distinction from there. I think we should stop here. Okay, okay, thank you. Thank you very much for your contribution. Prof. Shalam, you are involved in many projects, as I just mentioned, and you have a very specific opinion about that it's time to reflect, to consolidate what we are doing. Could you elaborate a bit more on that and specifically what should be the role of IHC? Yeah, thanks Chris first for the kind introduction. I think this is an opportunity for me to be back to IHC because I've been to IHC for several times. Actually my first Dutch collaboration started at IHC when Yetsi Huun, I think is somewhere in the audience. He invited me to IHC for a conference and I met Flip Wester of Wageningen University. We started the first Bangladesh Dutch Delta project called Dynamic Deltas, which ended this year. And all that started here. So we Flip and I started talking in the cafeteria outside and the whole concept developed from there. So I think my Dutch experience, also my experience on Delta and Water, it actually, the collaboration it started here. So that's why IHC has a special place for me as well. And when I start working with my colleagues, I go actually go beyond being colleagues. I actually, we end up being friends. So this becomes more personal in that. And I find it interesting because I have partners all over the world, but Dutch are very unique in terms of making even professional relationship. And if you go back in the history, you'll see that starting from the Mogul times, that's how it has been for the Dutch. That's the approach they've been taking. But these are just the introductory things I wanted to share with you. Thanks again for giving me this opportunity. I think the Dutch, Bangladesh and the Netherlands, you know that probably already, that we have a long history going back in water and Delta. Chris started the Delta Cap project. I'm a partner with him in Bangladesh, and which is very unique. We are going to discuss that a little more afterwards if we have time in the second round, perhaps. And there are many other collaborations with IHC, especially the Core Bangladesh project under the UDW program of NWO. And currently I'm involved with five or six projects with Dutch partners funded by NWO. And two or three of them are together with IHC. So I'm very fortunate to have this opportunity as well. But in the water and Delta sector, I think Netherlands has a very strong collaboration with Bangladesh. I started back in 1957 when IHC actually started training the Bangladeshi water professionals. And that was the first initiative in capacity building. But later on, we also moved into water management. And this concept was brought in by the Dutch to Bangladesh. It was not there before. So it helped a paradigm shift, particularly Bangladeshi implementing organizations like Bangladesh Water Development Board. The idea was to build and construct, but then it started to change towards, more towards management. The usual concept of development, it shifted more towards management and more interdisciplinary participatory approaches. So that happened because of those Dutch collaborations. And I'm not saying this because IHC is going to pay me for this. I'm just saying because this is my observation in that. But the other aspect I want to highlight is that through all these projects, I have seen many graduate students from the Netherlands, from IHC, Wageningen University to Delft, they visited Bangladesh for their thesis, sometimes short-term research. And they have gained knowledge and experience in Bangladesh, which they brought in back to the Netherlands. I think this aspect is very important. And I believe Shanuri is going to expand a little more on that being a graduate of IHC. I think she knows how important it is to bring back the knowledge to the Netherlands from Bangladesh. So the value of mutual learning and collective learning, I think that is also important. But I'll end this phase of my discussion by saying that this is a very good time, as you have already said, that this is a very good time to sit back and reflect on what IHC has done so far and how we can progress forward. Thank you very much. Shanuri, you are quite modest. You're not intervening. So I give you the opportunity if we talk about collective learning and that we are together working on, say, a mutual learning trajectory. How do you see how does IHC should take up that role to facilitate that process? First of all, thank you so much for inviting me and use those super kind words, especially when my professor is sitting out there. Hi, Mark Ray. Yes, when you were talking about mutual learning, in my research on delta planning, how this delta planning knowledge travels from the Netherlands to countries like Vietnam and Bangladesh, I missed that aspect, to be honest, Chris, this mutual learning thing. If I am allowed to share what delta planning is, like the Dutch delta planning, this is a package of knowledge which has been labeled commonly as Dutch delta planning approach and this is being travelling to different countries like Vietnam and Bangladesh. The first stop was Vietnam. Now it's in Bangladesh. The next destination will be Myanmar. And I observed through my research that this is a one-way journey. So where is the mutual learning part there? And this knowledge approach, this package also have expertise who are Dutch in nationality, but they have more working experience in different parts of the world rather than having more working experience within the Dutch delta program. So they are kind of bringing in a blended flavour of water and delta management practices. And then I also observed attempts of replicating the ideas of what is commonly known as Dutch. Then when this flight takes off from the Netherlands and reaches those destinations in Vietnam and Bangladesh, it follows by a series of attempts of getting adapted to the country context. So then I see our scope for mutual learning but not a pathway where this mutual learning is fine. Professor Shalam's suggestion to reflect and to see what have we done so far is also what you strongly support. That's what you think? Is that what you suggest as well? Yes, I think there should be a two-way flow of knowledge and mutual learning, which is missing. I have a point about IAC involvement in this delta plan. Now, I mentioned that the first national water plan in 1960 to 64, the IAC graduates were there. The second plan was in 1984-85. At that time, a multidisciplinary team came to IAC and they had training, tailor-made training on planning. Then, but the national water management plan that was in 2000, 2001, that they are also the IAC graduates. I was the DG at that time of Warpo and myself and other IAC graduates, they were the leaders of that national water management plan. But I found IAC's role in the Bangladesh delta plan here. And I'm very happy to know that this delta cap, the IAC is going to do that, but I strongly feel that the IAC should have given a build a capacity for the delta team, the delta team about the delta planning. That I very strongly feel. And that I miss very much in the plan and all the approach in all aspects of the delta plan. We have 20 seconds. Can I go very quickly? Yeah, very quickly, very quickly. Focus on the strengths of IAC, strong water science and technical aspects, technical disciplines, international expertise, I think that is a very strong thing IAC has and a global pool of alumni. That is I think very unique to the Dutch institutions. Position IAC very strongly and strategically links with Embassy of the Netherlands in Bangladesh and also I see his excellency here. So you have already made contacts with the Bangladesh Embassy in the Netherlands. I think these are very important to position IAC, build strategic partnerships with Bangladesh institutions and value collective and mutual learning. We have already discussed that. Strengthen interdisciplinarity within IAC. I think IAC has that, but I don't see from outside at least, I don't see very much cross boundary connections between different chair groups. That's an area you can work on, to work together on specific research themes or projects. So these are the things I think that could be things to consider for the future. Tenor, one last. To complement with Dr. Kasem. Yeah. I observed IAC's presence in Bangladesh as a Dutch institution, but in the Netherlands it has a more international flavor and it promotes itself as an international institution. So sometimes I ponder about its own nationality. Is it Dutch or is it international? It is international. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much to Chris and the panel members. Thank you. Very insightful remarks. Some congratulatory, which we always appreciate, but also very pointed at what we can learn from the past. And also it's wonderful to see the newest generation of Bangladeshi water leaders challenging us. Challenging us on this collective learning theme. Let's return to that as we go further in the program. But now I'd like to invite our next, in this case, interview, and I'd like to invite Klaus Schwartz to the stage first. And Klaus, I'll allow you to introduce Marco. Klaus is an associate professor of urban water governance at IHE Delft. And he's also head of the Water Services Management Group, which focuses on management and governance of water supply and sanitation provisioning in developing countries. Klaus, thank you. Thank you very much, Michael. May I invite Marco Schouten to come up to the podium? Marco Schouten is the CEO of Fietenz Averis International. He's also a former colleague at UNESCO IHE at IHE Delft, where he worked before he became a staff member of Fietenz Averis International. May I ask you to take a seat and then we can start our small conversation? We were asked to discuss the partnership between IHE Delft and Fietenz Averis International and particularly to see how this partnership addresses the needs of the water supply and sanitation sectors. Maybe it's a good idea to first start with a small introduction of Fietenz Averis International. What kind of organization is Fietenz Averis International? Okay. Thank you very much, Klaus. Well, first of all, thank you for inviting me. It's a great honour to be at this very glorious day, 60 years. To talk a little bit about my organization, Fietenz Averis International, it is a little bit of a strange organization. Maybe a little bit like IHE, which is also a little bit of a strange organization. Fietenz Averis International, we are essentially, we are coming from the Dutch water operators. So the Netherlands have 10 Dutch drinking water companies and they provide water through these, well, like these glasses. And we do that for the last 150 years. And we have been able to reach, to become best in class. So if you receive water in the Netherlands, you know it's of good quality. You know it's always there. You know it's always constant pressure. You don't even know the price of it because it's very cheap. Well, and that specifics of these, say best in class has been translated by some visionary leaders from the Dutch water sector and they said everybody in the world deserves quality of water like that. So 10 years ago, they established Fietenz Averis International. And essentially what we do, we are a corporate social responsibility vehicle. And what we do is, we try to unlock the expertise and the best practices and the knowledge and open that to our colleague operators abroad. So what you see is these Dutch water companies, they have become better at that. In the beginning it was really like, how do we do that? We go into a plane and we land somewhere and we take a look at the local situation and we try to do something about it. But over time we have become, we are a learning organization because once you go there a second time and a third time you see structures, you see better and more effective ways of influencing and also better partners to work with, like Unesco Archie. And so that has grown into an organization which is currently active in 21 countries and we have about 300 staff going out every day. Okay, and these are staff of Dutch water utilities that go abroad. You've already touched a little bit about the changes that FITN's AVDAT International has gone through and earlier it was also highlighted some of the changes that IAT Delft has experienced in the past decades. I would like to sort of focus now on capacity development. Both FITN's AVDAT International and IAT Delft have a very strong focus on capacity development, particularly in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG6, which seeks to achieve universal access to water and sanitation by 2030. In one of your earlier statements, you have highlighted that capacity development activities should be tailored to the realities of staff in water utilities. How would you describe these realities? What are the realities of that staff in drinking water utilities are experiencing? Indeed, very importantly, what you put in the hit in the question is the Sustainable Development Goals. That is a key element which makes also the life of IHC and also FITN's AVDAT International more interesting because the Sustainable Development Goals are in contrast to the Millennium Development Goals very much focused on management. They focus on sustainable water services management and universal access. That means it goes beyond just connecting somebody and then hoping that water will go through it. It goes really into building an organization which will be able to sustain the services. Therefore, it focuses very much on capacity building and on staff. That in essence puts, I think, the focus on capacitating the staff to be able to sustain the services. That also brings in this focus of these people who are working in these utilities. Of course, I know the utility staff in the Netherlands and if you look at that staff, that's not very different I must admit from our peer organizations and they have specific characteristics. First of all, they are very loyal. Most of them, they worked there for 20, 30, 40 years within one utility. They are not moving along a lot. Secondly, they are not very well highly educated. Most of them, if you look at, there's one PhD, maybe 10 MSCs, maybe 100 with a little bit more education and about a thousand which only finish high school if you're lucky. It's not a very high quality, high educational value. That also brings with it that utility staff, they are not very accustomed to reading or writing. For us, for example, that is also a handicap or obstacle because if we send out our staff to support our colleagues, we often ask for them to provide some kind of report. That is difficult. Another element which they are very loyal so that they have very practical tendencies. Thirdly, what they also have is the water sector is a peculiar sector because there is no competition. Meaning that by definition, you see that the water sector professionals, they are a little bit inward-looking. So they are looking within their, let's say, their own monopoly, their own service region and they have a tendency to not welcome newcomers, be not too innovative also. So they are critical, we relate to that. And they rely very much on proven practice. So that has a lot of elements in it which you need to work with and for us what we saw as the key element which we are working with is trust. So if you want to have any effect, any impact in the water sector, you need to build a relationship with a utility over a staff member or a student which is built on trust. So how we operate is we make a partnership with another utility and we stay there for a very long period. So they get to know us and we get to know them. And how do you address this dimension of trust in capacity development? So what kind of capacity development, I mean, maybe I should rephrase it. What type of capacity development activities, what formats do you see as promoting trust between staff of water utilities and organizations like Feth and Saverage International or perhaps IHC Delft? Yeah. Well, the first element of trust is they need to trust you. So you need to have a very clear profile. And that profile for example for our organization but also for IHC is there should not be any commercial interest. So for us we really portray ourselves as well. We are there and we want to support you but in the end it's your success. And if you are successful we are also successful but we are not there to claim your success. A second very important element there is that there needs to be commitment. So this commitment should be there for a longer time just like Fritz said in the beginning. If you want to make impact in the water sector it's not hit and run. It's not short term. It's there, you need to be there for a long time and you need to follow up. There's a lot of things which need to be repeated. You need to be patient also. Because in the end also a monopoly service provider is there forever almost. But does it also not lead to certain restrictions in the sense that if you focus capacity development activities on this dimension of trust it also means that the scale at which you can operate is quite limited because you need to invest quite strongly in particular relationships. And it means that if you invest in those particular relationships it means you cannot invest in other relationships. So where is the balance a little bit between creating meaningful capacity, developing meaningful capacity and reaching a scale. If we speak about the SDGs, universal access we need to go beyond 21 or 25 countries and projects. So where is this balance between these two dimensions? That's a very good question. And that's one of these questions which also sort of keeps me awake. Because what I have learned over time is that it's pitiful. If you do capacity building you need to focus. You cannot do as in the USA or in English they say spreading thin. If you spread thin the impact will be very small. So you need to understand the local situation. You need to understand the local decision makers, the managers, the key players, also the local contextual features and then your impact will be big. And you cannot take all of it. For example of course we are CSR organization so we get a lot of requests from other countries. And you're easily let's say ask and also tempted to go to new countries and new utilities and there's also money available and to go there and to do a project. But that really doesn't really make much sense if you cannot sustain it.  So you really need to protect yourself to make sure that your impact is bigger by making very selective choices. I think that's also for IHC a very important step. And to follow up a little bit on that. So you know IHC Delft quite well. You've worked here for many years before you went to FIT and Saviouris International. You also are quite well aware of the capacity development activities programs that we have. To what extent do you think that the existing capacity development activities that IHC has fit well with the idea of developing capacity of staff of what utilities in the context of SDG6. How suitable are the capacity development activities of UNESCO IHC or IHC Delft? Well first I think IHC should be proud of its programs of its education.  You can really see that very clearly. So that is something which makes a tremendous attribution I think to the SDGs. But your question also of course refers to the future. So what I think would be very valuable for IHC is to become more accessible to staff and people from potential students from developing countries but also from developed countries. And that relates to costs, the cost for MSc courses or individual courses. So that should be something which needs a lot of attention. And secondly also the modalities. When we work with utility it is hard for us to say goodbye for one and a half year to staff members from a utility and after one and a half years they come back. So what I very much would look for is for IHC to engage with a utility or with several utilities or with several countries specifically know about the local context and then also go into much more to lifelong learning. Combining work with study and also during the work time make that part of the study. And these type of modalities will be very beneficial for the sector. And also that will give IHC a niche which they will be able to give more impact. Okay. A final question. Fitensevres International and IHC have had an MOU for the past I think five or six years. We're currently in the process of discussing a renewal of the MOU hopefully starting in 2018. What do you see as the key components of the new MOU between Fitensevres International and IHC Delft also in relation to your ideas about capacity development? Yeah. So I think for the last five years the MOU, but I think since Fitensevres was established IHC and IHC have worked together. And what you see is that it's also an evolving relationship. In the beginning it was very much focused on there was a project or a proposal to be written let's find a consortium partner and work together on this project which is fine and I think we still do that. And five years ago we thought maybe we can do something more structural and we thought about well okay maybe if you look at the programs and the projects which Vaj is doing abroad then it will be interesting to see how let's say IHC gives sort of a scientific element to it. And we have together evaluated it and well it seems that we would redirect that. And what I would really much hope for we have established a new program which is called Water Works with all 10 touch utilities and what we will do we will help about 25 utilities around the world with co-financing from Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the coming 15 years to reach the sustainable development goals in 2030. So these goals is a very long-term goal. So what I would like to do with IHC is to engage IHC and to see if you really can help for a long-term impact so not short-term MSC and go away but really see there are about 30-40,000 people staff members involved in there how can we really make a plan to turn around these organizations? And a key element there is in these organizations it for example human resource management is just not there. So how do you develop employees to be really committed and to be really uplifted? And that would be really a new step because then that's something which you can monitor and you can also look every year from time to time to what extent you are indeed succeeding also in capacity development not only in reaching the SDGs but also in building on the capacity development in these utilities. Thank you very much Marco and I hope we will soon finalize the new MOU starting in 2018. Thank you. Thank you both. Excellent discussion points and questions I'm certain are emerging.  Please don't lose those ideas for specific questions and topics that you would like to discuss at the close of the morning. Something impressive was happening up here it was an engagement of this Dutch foundation with a private sector organization a private sector company. We recognize that over these years the international landscape of capacity development is changing greatly. Universities are more engaged in international training on site and the like. The private sector is coming in ambitiously to raise capacity as well with a different perspective a real delivery kind of private sector view of it all. So much for us not only to learn from those experiences but also to consider in how we are going to remain a valuable member and bring some added value to that growing community internationally. Keep that in mind and maybe some of you have some reflections on that as we go forward. Alright now as our final speaker and now an individual speaker before the coffee break I'd like to invite Irene Hout on stage. Irene is the head of research at Oxfam Great Britain. She undertakes research, system design, facilitation and advisory work on learning oriented knowledge processes. Now Oxfam is not a partner that we've worked with for many many years. We do have an engagement now with Oxfam Netherlands in the A4 Labs program in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs but Oxfam Great Britain has not been a partner. So this is an example of bringing in a brand new voice to our communication because we recognize that Oxfam is among the very impactful organizations in the world. We're looking for impact and also an organization as we'll hear from Irene that is devoting significant resources and effort to systematically improving our understanding and our ability to have impact. So we're anxious to hear your point of view at any. Okay great good morning. If it is possible to reduce the time a little bit that would be great if possible. Yes I'm being told to reduce the time. So I have the rather unenviable task to keep you still animated before coffee which should have been starting now. So I'm going to ask you to do something that will just free up the brain a little bit if you want to stand stand up a little bit if you just want to twist twist I know that I'm getting to the age anything because we're not just brains right we're bodies we can't absorb all this stuff I'm the tenth person you're listening to this morning. Yeah I see some movement. That's crazy. Oh don't hesitate. Feels good. Okay. Thank you. I need it back too. I noticed I was stretching my legs so I speak at number seven so I didn't want to hold you from having that opportunity. So basically a lot of what I'm going to be talking about is how do you create the enabling conditions for people to absorb stuff, information, evidence. If people's bodies are not ready to absorb but if you're overtired if you don't believe the messenger if you're just not convinced by the actual credibility of the findings it's not going to happen. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about the research realities in Oxfam. I'm Dutch. It's great to be back in the country of working trains and tall people and people who I thought could pronounce my surname but I didn't realize you were a foreigner so anyway I get very strange surnames I have to say and it's been great that some people have been talking about this notion of policy as a gamble and collective learning as a really difficult thing to actually make happen and trust and a lot of what I do is about building trust trust in the question trust in the data trust in the interpretation of the data so I almost studied at Delft by the way almost and then I was living in Burm at the time with my parents and my sister crossed that Delft on the registration form and put Wageningen because she thought I would be unhappy here anyway I was very happy in Wageningen and did land and water use engineering and it's great to kind of have a 30 year later cycle back into Delft so thank you for the opportunity so I joined Oxfam Great Britain about a year just over a year ago and it's been a really steep learning curve how about how does research how is it used by an organization how is it generated in an organization and what does it mean for an organization such as Oxfam which is part of a worldwide influencing network and I'll tell you a little bit about Oxfam as a confederation because I think it's really important to understand the knowledge process and one of the main issues that I've been really trying to grapple with is how do we make people curious for people to use science and for policy not to be a gamble they've got a want to absorb the information that's out there and this is my chosen picture not just because I'm Dutch but because I want to talk about and I'll come back to the metaphor at the end I want to talk about knowledge generation as a process and I'll explain the cow metaphor in a moment this year Oxfam is celebrating at 75th so we beat you however if you guys are planning a retirement we should be planning our funeral we're certainly not doing that and in fact our 75th is kind of this funny moment because we're not quite sure whether to celebrate it given the incredible incredible existence ongoing existence of intractable poverty and humanitarian strife for the first time Oxfam is dealing with four what we call category one famines in Africa it's never happened before so there's actually not a lot to celebrate and yet you know from humble a very small tiny beginning in 1942 Oxfam is the Oxford committee for famine relief and it was started in 1942 to try and break through the blockade that the allied forces had in place to ensure that food could get to starving women and children in Greece which was occupied by the unallied forces the other forces right I'm not sure what to call those and it was the beginning of a long history of working on advocacy with friendly governments in order to get food and other opportunities to people who didn't have that so it's a very very interesting background and Oxfam continues to do a lot of that so I want to talk briefly about the changes that we're dealing with the research realities that I deal with on a day to day basis many headaches I have to say but also just amazing opportunities and then I'll round up with some reflections on the cow which is my going to be around research quality and capacity so key changes and challenges at the moment in the world of Oxfam Oxfam is a very political organization and one of our it's very value driven it's huge the confederation is very large it's 20 affiliates of which Oxfam Great Britain is one and by far the largest we're about half the staff, half the money half the certainly the history but we've got Oxfams in Brazil that are also fundraising and then we've got 94 offices around the country that all now have a very decentralized way of operating and we're about 10,000 people and counting so if you compare that to an agency I was quite surprised the UNICEF is about 12,000 we're in that same ballpark I always think Oxfam is quite small but actually it's quite large if you look at all of us and we're about half of that but one of our key challenges is the political shifts that we're dealing with I moved to the UK pre-Brexit never follow me around the world pre-US elections and we're really challenged by what a world which we're realizing there's a growing skepticism of evidence and a lot of manipulation of data for a particular audience is how do we deal with wanting to be an evidence-informed world-wide influencing network what does it mean for our killer stat we produce lots of so-called killer stats it's a word I hate, I'm trying to kill the notion of killer stat internally but it's something that we who have always thought was really powerful is punch people in the face with 8 billionaires owning the same amount of wealth as the bottom half of the world's population I don't know how many of you know that killer stat that came out this year in January at the Davos reports at the World Economic Forum raised global headlines that comes from my team so we produce phenomenal global inequalities data but this notion of just a headline and 84% of people in for example Mexico distrust the media if that's your theory of influence you've got a real problem so this what the other speaker was talking about collective learning how do we make people receptive and open to that kind of information so we have a huge political challenge and we need to unbubble ourselves and we're actively doing that I commissioned a team member to write a paper on the rise of populism and what it means for our strategies to have evidence and deal with messaging of evidence and deal with who we have conversations to and who do we listen to if they're not receptive we can do so much science but as your previous rector current rector not quite sure what his status is said it's only just science it just stays data and science a second one is that we are decentralizing and so Oxford and Great Britain had a lot of power in Oxford to decide what it was going to do we now have 94 offices that are saying well we're planning to do A, B and C I'm really trying to figure out what relationships do I need to make with the global south I cannot possibly have relationships with 10,000 people in 94 countries I have a team of 8 I have 8 researchers with who I'm trying to do an incredible range of research that influences the global and the national so we have to really figure out those relationships and how those roles we know who does what in that we have huge funding relationships at the moment we're in an election era in the UK an organization such as Oxfam has to abide by the poverty laws the charity laws which says that we are a poverty oriented organization so as soon as we put out anything that talks about inequality it becomes a political message and so we have been literally we have got a whole series of research reports that we now no longer can launch until after the elections because we will be told that we are being political when all we are doing is saying there's a lot of inequality folks and here are some of the drivers of inequality and here are some of the problems that it leads to for people who have got very very little it's not a party political message but in a binary political system like the UK or the US it is political it is party political so we have a really difficult when it comes to funding you know we get a funding benefits as a result of our charity stasis we have to really be very careful with what we are and aren't allowed to say I get media training as head of research because I get legal training as head of research I get told the fine line that we are allowed to walk between what we are allowed to share and therefore what I am allowed to commission and how we are allowed to interpret the data another key change and that has been a very positive one is the global challenge research fund in the UK so I don't know how many of you have heard of it but it is one and a half billion pounds of over five years one and a half billion pounds of funding for research on I suppose the intractable development challenges and what is great about it is that it means that organizations like Oxfam become necessary for universities and academic institutions to be able to say that they are having impact however what I am noticing is people come to us and say could you put your logo on our research proposal and I say well actually I would like to be at the table to frame the question I would like to be at the table to figure out the methodology I would like to be at the table to figure out what the data says and some of them are extremely keen and some of them are not so keen and the ones with whom who are saying no we won't work with you in that way I say okay bye that's fine because we can dictate some of the terms of that relationship which is so essential for collective learning I think that is what you are referring to as well in your talk I think it appears I think they are quite surprised when they realize that people like us actually have PhDs and have sat on the road through assessment panel here and we actually understand research excellence but it is about engaged excellence and how does that transform okay I see a clock ticking here so I am trying to figure out what to focus on in an organization if you are thinking about partnering with organizations like Oxfam you have got to understand the capacity challenge so I said we have a team of eight we are in a network of around 60 globally a lot of those people in the Oxfam research network it is not a lot if you think about it we are the entire research capacity of an institution over a confederation like Oxfam is 7% of the amount of people that work on communications we have a huge infrastructure on communications and they are essential for our research outreach work I have just become head of publications as well so there is this recognition that research unless it somehow goes out to where it is supposed to have an impact won't actually make any difference so that is really great so I have suddenly doubled my numbers it is still not huge but still it is great we have an investment problem we have got decision makers who are super passionate and value driven and don't always stop to read so how can we transform the huge volumes of data into two pages one page, I am giving one page sometimes to summarize the rise of populism so that the executive directors can be triggered to think not just from their gut but also from their heads and we sometimes trail the future what I mean the advent of automation in agriculture that is going to have a huge change for working conditions of agriculture workers around the world how can we get up to speed on those trends so that we advocate for certain policies we we are thinking forward not just trailing trailing behind okay I am not sure I am going to be able to do you proud and reduce my time I am afraid so the research reality in Oxfam is it is like a mist so I sit in the research team but there is enormous amounts of research that happen we have something called the market insights team and it would be interesting to know if an organization like IHE has that so we do research very proactively with the audiences who we would like to reach and say are they receptive to our messages what do they care about and can we somehow connect with their concerns and their issues so we pull 12,000 people a year just in the UK to say do they care about social norms and gender violence do they care about market based solutions to water do they care about consumer power we are starting a new campaign on decent work in agriculture value chains the shrimp industry actually and we were doing some market research and people actually weren't so convinced by the fact that down the chain get less of the percentage of the final value that you and I pay for in the supermarket so knowing that you know how you can it's really critical for your messaging otherwise you might be just hitting everybody with really important information but it doesn't land and I guess this is where I will come to the cow now it has to knowledge and people's action on knowledge is I'm increasingly convinced it's a visceral experience visceral is very I don't know how many people know the word visceral but it's like blood and guts and gore it's a body experience and unless you have been part of the journey of either framing the question or interpreting the data it doesn't you know it has no heart to it so we talk a lot about in Oxfam about how do you change people's hearts and minds and bringing them on the journey so how many cows how many does a cow have okay there's a few agricultural is here four most people I speak with have no idea that a cow has four stomachs and a lot of our knowledge generation also in Oxfam was kind of like you the cow eats something and poops something out that's your knowledge product right and then you put it in an envelope and you post it to somebody but what happens is that you miss this incredibly valuable opportunity of engaging the different stomachs of the cow so what happens in those stomachs you know who's at the framing if you think of the grass as that's where the questions are framed who's at the table there have you got that in your vision of collective learning have you got that in your theory of going to scale with your knowledge or your capacity and then the different stomachs of the cow yes you've got data collation and yes there's massive we do massive data quality checks as well I'm looking my deputy is looking at this giant cell at the table at the moment 3,000 cells of data for global inequality index of course you don't decentralize that part of it that's stomach number one or stomach number two but then the collective sense making the so what now what questions that's when you start to get the energy for action coming and what I'm trying to experiment with a little bit within within Oxfam and some of the other work I'm doing is taking people on the journey so that the people who would be getting the envelope are actually in stomach number three or stomach number four they are part of the generation of the insights don't expect them to absorb the insights and don't don't just measure and we've got a Twitter measurement problem at Oxfam as well like the Davos report I mean once it goes past a million we don't have anything but a Davos report you know cited by Barack Obama at the UNGA great you know fantastic however it doesn't necessarily move people to action so the research that we do is actually taking national country teams along along with us on the journey of these are the questions this is the data what should the report in your country look like how do you want to frame it in terms of your communication messages so we have quite a lot of journeys and I can think of lots and lots of examples of how we're doing that we've got a zero zero zero mission zero hunger research proposal going at the moment in Bangladesh where the people at the table are the Bengali research institutes ICAD Suley Mohak is with us at the table and the ECI the environment change institute is with us at the table as an NGO to say what are those questions how can we get data out there so that people are really understand what it might mean for them and it doesn't become a gamble so there's there's a phenomenal amount of work that we do at oxham and Ruth Weber with who I spoke in preparation for this event said give three messages I just have one engaged excellence remember the cow okay so if you can go away and think what does my cow look like of research who have I got involved where and what is the likelihood that capacity is being built in that process that knowledge uptake is actually happening through that process I think that's a huge step towards impact are you making people curious are you making them hungry for what's coming well I think that's where the metaphor stops right you don't want them hungry for what comes out the other end but you do want to invest you know in people not just at the end and but really in that journey and I really you know Mark was how to really echo your words is it's all about trust trust in the message trust in the messenger trust in and trust is through being part of the journey so remember the cow good luck with your institution and your next 60 years and wish us luck with our next 75 and have a good coffee thank you much thank you very much and an important message for us to receive from an organization that is putting you know a lot of detailed effort into this and the illustration of the cow I think was very effective good we're going to break for coffee now and I suggest that we return at a quarter to the hour right so quite for 12 yeah and we're going to come back and we're going to assemble a panel and actually will probably bring the panel members in perhaps a little bit earlier so we're ready to go so that we don't delay lunch very much but what we'd like to do in that panel discussion is distil out of the messages that we've received so far this morning some essential points right about the conditions for societal impact so let's take what we've learned and let's focus that into a few messages and we'll share that initially as a discussion among the panel members and then bring you into the discussion also to ask your questions so perhaps use a little bit of your time at lunch or at coffee break to think about that and perhaps discuss it with your neighbor but we'll see everyone back here at a quarter till 12 welcome back everyone you see we had already started the discussion up here not realizing it was time we have one hour now until lunch and I've learned that it needs to be an hour because the crew that's assembling our lunch out there needed a full hour from the conclusion of our coffee break no matter what time it was so we have this hour and I think we're going to use it very profitably as I mentioned we're going to begin with a bit more discussion a bit more reflection here with our panel but then turn it over to you to welcome your questions and also welcome your input you'll notice we have one new person who's joined our panel this is Nicola de Bray and she is a senior advisor of international affairs to the governing board of Rijksvaderstadt which is the executive agency of the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment, INM as we love to say it at IHE and Nicola's worked in various positions in the Dutch central government before starting her work at Rijksvaderstadt in 2007 and we have a long running and very important cooperation with Rijksvaderstadt and Nicola you've been a part of that process in recent years so we'd love to begin by offering you the opportunity to reflect a bit on our cooperation today and some of the lessons that we've learned and where that brings us to today and looking forward Thank you very much and thank you for having me as a guest I really enjoyed this morning's discussions and I find there were so many links in the discussions and the comments that were made to the reflections and the evaluations that we've had in the collaboration so in 2003 the Ministry of Transport as it was then called and Water Management started corporations with IHE and the main reason at that time is that we were very proud to host a UNESCO Institute on Water Education in the Netherlands and we were willing to find opportunities to support this institute very strongly we didn't quite know, I should say it quite bluntly, we didn't quite know the best way to do this to support the institute and to make use of all the water education knowledge and the cultural knowledge that's available so it was a supportive mechanism and now we are in 2017 and we've engaged in the fourth period of an MOU a memorandum of understanding between the Ministry of Infrastructure and the environment as it's currently called and IHE and at the three moments when the MOU relationship was prolonged and formally extended we found new ways of working together and using each other's interests and assets very strongly and for the Ministry of Infrastructure and the environment today we are very proud to have IHE as a partner in the collaboration that we do both on the innovation agenda in the Netherlands as well as on the international water ambition of our ministry along with the three other ministries that are involved in international water cooperation and may I add a little bit about the importance of innovation thank you very much so innovation as everybody knows here the Netherlands has big problems if we don't do long-term planning and water management we've acquired in the Netherlands ages and ages of experience and knowledge on how to tackle problems but we don't know how fast and how far the problems that will relate to climate change will affect the Netherlands and how quickly it will happen on the seas, on the rivers and on the lakes so we need to have solutions available for future challenges when we don't quite know what they will look like and where they will enter so innovation for our daily work at Rijkswaterstaat as the policy executive organization for water management in the Netherlands innovation is really at the heart of our work we need innovation and we can't think of innovation only here we need the inputs and the thoughts around the world and this is actually where we find that new knowledge and new ideas in other countries can help us and the PhD and MSc students of UNESCO IHE very strongly help us to get data and research done to bridge the gap between scientific knowledge and applied innovations that's one and the second part where the central government's really happy to work with IHE is that we've decided that we shouldn't keep all this knowledge and experience that we have in the Dutch context to ourselves we should share it with countries deltas in the world that really need it and IHE is an important partner in capacity building in research and in policy advice as well. Thank you so much because I believe that we don't often appreciate well enough our role as this bridging institution with of course Dutch knowledge being shared and best international practice being shared worldwide but also bringing those examples and those lessons and those new perspectives back into the country I mean that sounds a lot like collective learning doesn't it Shenor earlier you challenged us on the topic of collective learning and mentioned that in your experience thus far it seems to be a predominantly one way direction of knowledge exchange so perhaps some some ideas on how we can approach improving our practice and actions there to make it more effective two-way communication. Thank you Michael to be honest at this moment I'm still pondering about those mechanisms but what I observed that at IHE we have a very vibrant mutual learning in the classrooms where the Dutch knowledge are being promoted and taught and on the other end all those water management practices and innovations from Asia, Latin America Africa are also being shared so it's a very vibrant place of learning why can't that be a practice or a mechanism and since IHE is doing this for 60 years past 60 years maybe we all can think about taking this out of the classroom in these kind of bilateral cooperation and that is why when I was hearing Marcos and Irina's talk especially with the metaphor of Carl that also kind of provoked my thoughts that that can also be a mechanism using this kind of metaphors also and IHE is a very in a very good strategic position in such bilateral cooperation thank you and so I think earlier we heard a very sound recommendation that we are a technical leader internationally we need to continue strengthening and sharing that strong technical capacity but finding new ways and new metaphors and examples to communicate complex issues more effectively and to be very much to our favor as well Dr. Khan can I invite you to react to that and add to it I'd like to see collective learning from one or two different perspectives as well what you said are very valid too what we are practicing now in our research we have a research project called Core Bangladesh project this is one of the UDW projects that started last year this project we are actually we have invited the business communities to come with us and to build solutions to small to medium scale flooding in Bangladesh and this is the only project that has actually started building it before even the research took off so while we are still thinking of the research reframing the research questions they got into the field started talking to the people and things like that we made sure that all the stakeholders the local level stakeholders the local communities the local mechanics the local political institute and other stakeholders they are with us the NGOs at the same time the local government institutions we made sure that they are with us so this early engagement is very important for collective learning unless you get them on board before conceptualizing the research so the knowledge can be created but this will not stay there so this is one point I wanted to make so this is one practical approach for participatory learning or participatory research so based on this we engage also the students later on so the students from Bangladesh and probably from the Netherlands as well I think they will be involved the private sector we are trying we are not yet very successful we are also trying to engage the private sector in this research process as well and decision policy makers I think they are already engaged so this is one thing we have attempted and been have been successful so far for collective learning so in this process we are calling this a learning space so this is a learning space for all of us for the researchers, for the students for the business communities the local stakeholders everyone of and we learn together in this we learn from each other so this is one approach I think and a very effective approach I believe it would be and your focus on reaching out and a stronger engagement with stakeholders is something that we all are just learning and coming to realize more and more that it is a part of our success but Mako you described the typical water sector professional forward looking and perhaps not so open and gregarious to engagement of stakeholders and perhaps a bit set in their ways and not particularly innovative so how do we reconcile what we understand is the need to reach out and engage and innovate with a bit of maybe our natural character and tendencies well maybe what is a good example is often times delegations come to the Netherlands and they visit our treatment plants and also the water boards and they are always very impressed because our laboratory looks nice and we have a huge treatment plant and a waste water treatment plant also looks shiny and happy but what I always tell them is you shouldn't really look at these technical things at these buildings and these treatment plants this is not really the strength of the water sector the strength of the water sector is not locked in these technological innovation the strength of the water sector is in maintenance, operations doing something all the time in a good way and that relates very much into the culture of an organization the integrity of each and one of the employees of the management but also of the policy makers around it so you should not look too much at let's say in my experience if you want to go a step ahead into all kinds of technological innovations organizational innovations and even innovations in let's say in personalities and that is something I think IHC should really contribute in a very large manner all right, thank you I agree that as well and Dr. Kozum may I invite you to join the conversation I would very much like now in the beginning we started we can be a little relaxed because we have enough time watch speaking though ok, we can stop you forget about it and you know the Bangladeshis they loved talking please, we love listening to you now this is very interesting how now for me I can say this collective learning this for me these are high sounding academic false words I understand very less but one thing I understand this mutual learning can very little be in a room that has to be in the field now when I was here my mentor was professor Faroovan he told in the class I was just telling somebody here when you have a problem or the farmers come to you with a problem very difficult you also don't know the answer ask him what could be the solution he will tell you the solution, he will suggest then apply your knowledge and experience that has been throughout my life that has been for me a lesson this lesson I applied during 1998 you know Bangladesh had a devastating flood for 63 days and I was in charge of protecting of a very important project I didn't sleep 72 hours just on the embankment and in the morning a major army was called in major approach to the executive engineer he didn't listen because we don't like the army people then he came to me sir please come and see I immediately ran with there and there I saw a piping and I thought that this piping within an hour the hole will be washed out and on the other side was about 5000 people I mean about 1000 touch ed houses slums those all washed out what can I do how to find out that location of the piping and it was very early in the morning what can I do then I get emotional thank you for sharing then I was like a bat I was watching then a man he was a freedom fighter he had shot in his legs limping he approached me sir what is the problem I told him how can I help what can I do immediately he said sir there is a mosque nearby I am going to the mosque and no he said sir what we need I need everything is closed now I mean 5 o'clock in the morning I need to block fast to find out the location number 2 I have to close it I need bags with brick bats and sand and shops are all closed nothing there then he said then I said I need people and he said sir there is a way what there is a mosque nearby so he ran to the mosque and then he used the microphone of the mosque and then he called the people that is in in danger please come people rushed and some went to the conductor fled away only I was there of the department and then the people I don't know how they they took themselves decisions themselves they went to shops because they know where they can get the shops we had gunny bags where they will get sand and then they got they brought it and then some started feeling and then they you must have seen the Chinese they do so one by one so about quarter mile they made a line so one after another and in the meantime a group of say 10 15 young boys people they jumped in the water we believed me within 10 5 10 minutes they found out shout sir we have got it sir we have got it and then we saved that it was the people and people's participation this is learning how to manage this crisis with the people how to manage this with the people how to use the local resources how to use the local infrastructure the mosque microphone in the mosque I never had thought because I don't go to mosque this is participation and this is learning also I'm not going to explain further and that man still have contacted me those people thank you so much for sharing and the message last year was on 50th anniversary I had a message there that we these seats of higher education it's a challenge for them who will not who will take these farmers these people first and they will not consider their authority challenge to as a challenge to their own authority because in Bangladesh it's very strong that we don't like to accept public participation because we don't want they share our power and authority so this year anyway that I will come later so this is that we have to learn sitting at universities in the conference room I don't believe it's very little we can achieve very little but it has to be in the field thank you thank you I was saying thank you so much for sharing that personal experience because there's no doubt that it's in those intense personal moments that we learn and that those lessons are ingrained as deeply as they can be inside of us and I think we all learned as well from you sharing that and it ties back nicely to the necessity of opening up our minds and our community to bring in that wisdom and the engagement of others so at any may I ask you as our cow specialist exactly I was just getting that image out of my mind but bring it back if you'd like but I'd love to hear your reflections I mean you're having a crash course in the IHE community and family here and you are you know someone who's coming in from an outside perspective at the moment and any reflections that you'd like to share wow I'm surprised that collective learning is considered so novel I guess I'm really surprised and I think that you probably do more of it than you realize what I'm intrigued by is is though what one of the things that came up when I was listening is what are you assuming how are you assuming that change happens at scale so at Oxfam we're talking a lot about our theories of scaling right so do you think that scale happens by MIUs with private sector leverage point right do you think that it happens by building the capacity of not one but a hundred thousand people do you think that it happens by influencing policy and do you think and in Oxfam we're very strong on that as a value is do you think it happens by people power right and investing in movements and investing in the knowledge based in movements so I guess one of the reflections I had is I'm not sure I heard a lot of clarity about that and is that even a question that you ask is is what are you betting on when you're betting in a particular capacity building effort or a particular relationship or a particular way of doing research and then is the the game plan is the operational plan commensurate with your theory so if we take the example of research initiatives the first thing I look at when I'm on an assessment panel is the budget and and I ask where's the budget where is the money going is the money going to professors here in the UK or here is it going to organizations who are going to be part of the movement of change there wherever there might be is there investment in money in convening you were talking about I really echo your thoughts if we have to invest in that long term conversation in that long term engagement is there money going into that is there money going into sharing the glory when I joined Oxfam I had to tell my colleagues it's okay to put your name on a publication that wouldn't be an issue here in the world of academia I suspect right everybody wants their name on all publications but it's that notion of where the glory and how do you understand ownership so actually there's a lot of questions there for me about your theories of change and then how are you actually making that possible with where you're investing your money and your efforts so I guess I would challenge you a little bit on either making that explicit to me because I didn't hear a lot about it or just telling me that you don't think about it which is also fine excellent points and I know that we have some people in the audience who are thinking more deeply about this and probably can share some more perspectives and for me you also alerted me to the fact that we are one institution we are part of a community of partners working together but the world of change is so much larger than us individually even us and our partners and it's about understanding where to embed ourselves in the process effectively to plug in and make things happen that we also need to think more and work harder on but let's save your points I'm sure a few notes have been made in the audience our clock says six and a half minutes which means what's left in an hour half hour with the panel but I'd love to get to you as quickly as possible so may I just offer to the panel having heard from everyone now if there are any final reflections or additional points before we go to our audience this is on societal impact so I think it would be better to discuss that very quickly what we really mean by societal impact because I was not very clear about that alright thank you well maybe what we'll do is we can elaborate but we might even invite some perspectives on what societal impact is thank you I think that would be a good way to kick off some discussion also I was quite intrigued that nobody mentioned the word power or politics and we're assuming learning is neutral there's no contestation there's no findings I'm hearing from my neighbour that it's not political or it's not not political it's very political okay we agree that it's very political so how do you deal with power you know MOUs are created through quite fierce negotiations in my experience so how do we deal with that alright challenging and with power and participatory learning in many research in Dutch PhD and MSc Bangladesh is a case study there don't you think it's a time that we can also Dutch students can also go to Bangladeshi institutions and have their degree pursuing from them although it's a maybe an ambitious thought at this moment but I think we can think about it let's think ambitious thoughts societal impact thank you Dr. Wasem you signaled earlier that you might have a message for us that relates more reflections for the future but if you want no I don't find my name so I have to tell now we would welcome you will be a member of the audience at that moment and we would welcome it but if you want to give us a teaser a highlight of it the power of the mic come on take it power? power of the mic take it power of the mic right yes not this mic it's a great power now I have in fact I have few suggestions that is that's for the future that's number one that IHE should or can I should say should they will decide they will think should or should not but they can think of having institution having institutional support for continuing education and knowledge development in Bangladesh I talk I I mean all what I talk about Bangladesh in in water sector that was in initiative in late 90s but again that died out but again that is a possibility IHE can think of and we can discuss during lunch more in details number two is bring in social dimensions of water resources development in policy planning design execution and operation and maintenance good tying it back to some of that in this point so number three is now this I mentioned just I had another that what that I did in 1998 flood that was my IHE education and my ISS education okay so some element social dimension has to be brought in here number three is all the alumni I mean from Bangladesh most of the alumni are government they are the leaders of the water sector community either in the government I mean holding out of last 10 DGs Director Generals of Water Development Board nine were IHE alumni only the present incumbent is AIT alumni again will be IIT alumni for about four chief engineers of public health engineering out of last five our IHE alumni so these IHE these alumni who come here they in fact they are leaders at different stages of government different levels also they are leaders in the consulting community now when you have started contracting so they are the leaders now IHE should concentrate also to build their alumni not only on technical things as engineering leaders and managers with leadership quality training basic management skill training and communication skill which is very important because our starting from to I mean different level they cannot communicate with the donors I see with the consultants unless they are very consultant is very kind teacher like somebody from IHE also IHS so this is a number three and this is very because they must know that this communication skill the donors and with the consultants number four number four is well there is a limit to the power of the mic really ok then I finish honestly I am proud of IHE thank you and this is for all of you and I am proud that I am an IHE alumni I am really proud of it thank you to all of the panel members and the IHE alumni in Bangladesh is very active Chris knows and there are my friend and many of your teachers know thank you thank you again to all the panel members transition alright and thank you to you for your enormous patience in holding off with I know what must have been many questions and points you would like to raise yourself but now we are entering into that moment that it really is all about you and you please feel free to direct questions that are unanswered to any of the panel members our speakers interviewees and the like this afternoon to further elaborate perhaps on the points that they have made or to just bring your own points into the conversation now I think you know these are becoming quite common today but you notice we don't have folks running around with microphones so we are going to need your help for this because this is the microphone that we will be sharing and I think we may even have another one and it is really simple the way it works is that when you want to talk we toss it to you now it will test your skills a little bit both catching as well as throwing but it is soft enough that no one should get hurt but if you would like to just hand it along the chain of people that is also possible alright did I see a first question here alright here we go my name is Ronde here I was a staff member from 81 to 2006 I am retired by more than 10 years there were a few things that triggered me this morning in particular that was the word mindset that was the word personality that was the word leadership I missed the word role play I missed the word serious came in in my point of view ISE is becoming too much an academic institute we should and that was in those days in particular in those days of Moslemann we were training engineers practical engineers in the field they should develop leadership very well this is the kind of people we need we don't need all the academics if I would have applied now I applied in 81 after 10 years with a contractor worldwide I would not have been selected you are not academic enough you are too practical you have too much experience my point of view my question is shifting too much to become a kind of university or whatever should we not shift back to become more a practical institute that train the leaderships we need the personalities the mindset we need in the field thank you so there's a couple of possibilities here you are not speaking on behalf of UNESCO IHE in the direction that we should go but we welcome your perspective on this of where you see the institution being most effective and which balance there but also if there's anyone from IHE staff and the leadership that would like to respond you are also most welcome you look ready to throw that to me yes it turns itself off when you throw it which is very nice yes I would like to get the oh you want this too oops I also have a question me what is the prospect for me being a female being a non-engineering person trained at IHE in your institution after I finish my PhD of course none in in warpole or in yeah in warpole waterboard it depends on the person doing the hire in the director general if she's a woman that's the reality now say this is an irony that water development board water sector has many PhDs I know two from both I was instrumental to have them PhD from IHE but I mean this has no value in the hierarchical management administration management and in Bangladesh now if you can I mean others can particularly development partners they realize but they also I mean follow the tune of the government most of the time unless they have their own interest very strongly but you have future development honestly I'm telling you I don't mind but in the field of consultants or I NGOs NGOs I don't have much idea about the NGOs I NGOs international international NGOs yes again they are also political my question is why still the focus is on being an engineer when IHE teaches so many professionals with an integrated approach on water issues maybe yes can I quickly supplement that yeah first thing is unfortunately at this point what you call is the hegemony of hydrocracy is still with heavily top-down engineering discipline it is still the engineering institutions or the engineers are dominating the water sector still but I see it changing so this is a good sign that there is a trend in change because now we are talking about participatory water management there is a new official government document on participatory water management so the concepts and approaches are there so the mindsets are changing so this is a good thing I see in there so I hope very soon we will have opportunities for female non-engineering candidates have very important positions in organizations like water development board does she have a place in the Buett or IWF Buett is open you can very easily have a place in Buett but it is an important topic and I do think that ultimately of course we want equal opportunities for employment across government, private sector NGOs and the like I would like to try to keep the focus on our audience during this limited amount of time that the audience has and perhaps we will follow up on that exact theme you are more than welcome to but I wanted to come back to Ronald's question and invite Nicole if I may UNESCO IHE as a partner for INM where do you see that balance in the value of our academic strength as well as our practical strength first I would like to make a personal response if you have too much experience and practical skills for academia please come and work at IEATSTAT we always need people with lots of experience but very seriously speaking I believe that the origins of IHE were in hydraulic engineering knowledge and passing that on and then came the question how do we make the knowledge sustainable for the receiving organizations not only the engineering knowledge but also applying it to the organizations so the element of having to balance between those two interests has always been in the history of IHE and I would strongly recommend that it stays in both my own preference from the IEATSTAT point of view is innovation is very very very important given the enormous size of the water management problem worldwide and also in the Netherlands but I do believe that you can't apply knowledge when there is no common ground no basic exchange of knowledge and field situations field conditions so I do believe don't choose do both but within the right combination I believe that we as an institution recognize that that's one of our strengths that we understand and we operate effectively in the academic as well as the applied community but certainly those applied skills are distinctive and something that we must hold on to and I'm sure there's greater perspective on that also from other folks from IHE but I did have another question indicated so here it comes that was my fault that was my fault oh thank you you'll be next thank you I would like to endorse what was spoken before maybe don't use myself I'm Joseph van der Noven I am an alumnus from 1970 and so I was in the stage that it was practical I want to go back a little bit further in 1960 I had to decide about what to study I want to go abroad I was 16 I want to go abroad I want to be useful because we are talking about the contrast between poor and rich countries and that's all I am more attracted to human sciences but if I want to be useful later on when I go abroad I better go to a technical study to be useful I went to Delft hard time to be technical finished that work with United Nations and there I found that United Nations was like 30 people in the field 60 people in the offices they were not very effective after a while I left them I did not think they would solve the problem between the contrast poor and rich so I saw what is another problem this was environment so I joined EIA in Delft IAC sorry in Delft and at that time was a senator and I was the only Dutchman so I came back in the country and I was only among foreigners which was a great time then I got the opportunity to study in the United States at Harvard which is reasonable known and after a while I thought this is a sterile institution they really think we are great as Harvard and they are maybe great but they were sterile in a certain way they were not inspiring they were really self congratulating so I saw if I want to use my experience as a civil engineer if I want to use my experience as an environmentalist and if I want to change the world I shouldn't go with the government because they don't do too much I shouldn't go to the universities because they are a little bit sterile maybe I have changed so I would go work with the industry and try to change the world and sometimes you lose sometimes you win it's always a fight, you are lonely but I think I could achieve more there so that is a little bit to endorse all what you were saying before we need to be practical we need to be academic but we have to have this combination now my question now for the impact it was more the background I didn't know what I was to say all this but okay, you know how it is about the impact is what I miss in all conversations and I mentioned a little bit about government policy for me authorities and politicians should be long-term thinking because normal people are short-term thinking what is in practice is that politicians governments are short-term thinking they look for their own elections, you look at the United States everything is being changing and so so more and more we people are long-term thinking people and if you want to have impact really for change if I see that there is still contrast between poor and rich and we talk about gender we still talk about it it is not changing so if you really want to have an impact as an institute I think we should change the politics we should more have impact on politicians and things so thank you well done thank you for those points I'm going to share the microphone here but we have the first question and remark from here if you will pass it up after yourself thank you Mike my name is Heather Murdoch I'm from Canada and I'm a master student here I have a quick comment and then a question I was really interested in what was being said about the diversity of change and I think actually what Shenor was saying ties into a lot of this there's a group of us from the Water Youth Network that went to World Water Week in Stockholm last year and it was about the capacity gap in the water sector and how do we address this and what's the youth perspective on this and I think some of the things that you pointed out gender issues in the sector as well as people from a diversity of backgrounds different areas of science or social science or the arts contributing to the water sector is a challenge in addressing this gap that we need to value the diversity of skills to help address the gap in fact that's how that's one of the ways that we're going to to close it and I come from a country with a very strong strong set of professional institutions so if you want to do any technical work related to water you better have an engineering license but a lot of people who have a lot of skills that can contribute to those types of projects that I think sometimes aren't included so I think we also have work to do I mean Canada leads in some ways with respect to water but we also have a lot of work to do in this integrated approach so that's sort of my comment and then my question is related to this question of scale I would say that from my perspective it's important to think about appropriate and sustainable scale how do we do that because I really see the success of IHE bringing students to the Netherlands that have professional experience in their home countries building that capacity and also building the network which I think a lot of people in this room would agree is very valuable because that also contributes to lifelong learning you have that resource of the network so how do we do that I think that that's happened in some respects but how do we really scale in an appropriate and a sustainable way and do that successfully into the future so that's my question so ideas, responses on scaling, yes Marco I think it's a very valid point and I think one of the problems of IHE is that there are too few IHE professionals in the world there should be much more of them and I personally think that upscaling or replication is something which is sort of it's almost a theory word I think change always starts with a person with an individual who is trained and that person can inspire others so what I would say if there would be a future direction for the IHE if I can say anything about it then well we have currently about 200 MSE students well that should go 5 fold to about 1000 MSE students then we will start talking about influencing politics putting people there who are IHE professionals who have indeed unlike Ronald said applied knowledge practical knowledge how to change things because change comes from persons from individuals thank you, thank you so I also agree with that that each individual is an enormous potential source of change as they work through their careers as they work up through the chains of influence that they have other perspectives about other maybe levels to engage on the scale impact question first you Nicole then also in response to the heartfelt remark of the speaker about the long term efforts to diminish the difference between poor and rich and the environmental impacts also one of the parts of the ambition of our current government is to help other governments think of long term planning facing water management water management problems our minister Schultz who was here to assign the MOU she has made a personal effort trying to help other countries think of long term water management funding so that it doesn't just happen water management efforts when a flood is taken place or when a flood is unavoidable but to think of it in advance as the costs for reducing the the risks are smaller than those for mitigating the damage that has taken place and I think it's a small scale effort but it requires a lot of policy effort to spread the message this is the thing that our government is doing and the IHE is an important partner in spreading this message that was also emitted by our prime minister and so the point of scale isn't necessarily lots of people doing it although I strongly believe that the more people are educated and have scientific knowledge the better but it's also about where to address the message and how do you team up as the institute with the people who may help you to bring the message abroad it's not all about doing it yourself because then we would need an IHE that would cover the Netherlands or any country as big as ours thank you and Anid did you want to contribute I wanted to push back a little bit to your theory of scale Marco because I think that that's where we tend to think about one times a thousand people take to scale and American foundations have invested a little bit over the past ten years or so in their strategies around what works at scale and they won't fund those kinds of efforts they won't fund the one times they won't fund the replication types of efforts some of them right it's obviously varies but they say the ones that they try to look for where people are being I guess strategic is the best word about where the leverage is and sometimes you don't need the engineer or the non-engineer or the whoever the skilled person who comes out of IHE but you need to scale a message or you need to scale a practice it doesn't always have to be innovation either right because we lack the spread of just basic good practice and so then the question is well what do you want to scale in order to get the kind of societal impact that we're talking about so I think that's why we really need to be very thoughtful about that whole journey and I come back to the cow and its digestive tract is what are we assuming happens along the way in order to get to very very fertile fields right and so I think we've got to be careful that it's not just about replication but it's about leveraging the bits that you need in order to get to an impact on the ground it's a comprehensive response to the question and also we're moving a little bit from one topic to another here and I know that we're not spending sufficient time on any single topic but just so you know that there are three people in the audience who are gathering or collecting information and taking the minutes essentially and of course this is being recorded so even these ideas and these seeds that are being planted with your questions your remarks and the responses here are all being recorded with the potential to build on going forward Ilyas my name is Ilyas Masi I'm a lecturer here at UNESCO IHE I'm also a program coordinator of one of the master program here water management I would like to underline three words I hear one is engaged research applied research and societal impact and I would like to share that at UNESCO IHE comes from Ministry of Foreign Affairs and through our DUPC program I say that we have a lot of opportunities what you said to engage with partners sit together with them prepare questions methodologies and really conduct research on the ground for societal impact and when it comes to PhD I think we try to do applied research but that element of engaging with stakeholders is a bit limited and now I come to the point as a master program coordinator we see a tendency that when it comes to balancing the cost of MSC programs we have 18 month MSC program where by 12 months are for taught part and 6 months are for research part some of the donors even don't allow people to go in the field and conduct field research but what we do also try to recommend to cut cost on that part and we as an institute has to take position because we are talking for the future would you like to give us some suggestions how to engage for example with the donors or what our approach should be because we master programs are also one of the pillar we have though their research is not effective but important drops in the ocean of applied research thank you Ilias and I realize that not all of our questions are exactly focused on your area of expertise but as wise advisors we welcome your perspective yes Dr. Khan I think there is no alternative for experience in the field for learning that is my experience so far with my students I think we need to invest there if I can use the word investment for knowledge and learning so that is a very good choice it should be encouraged and promoted the practical question is how if there is no funding from the government to support the field research component then I think there are many research projects coming up in IHE many NWO supported project have seen the opportunity for engaging students as fellows as research fellows, PhD or MSc students so I think that can be a practical alternative for that but that is not really a sustainable or long term solution I think for the long term solution you really need to have a good financial arrangement and budget for supporting field component of research but I truly believe there is no alternative for that for learning thank you and a topic of enormous interest to many of us for the future why don't you hold on to that what I would like to suggest is a final question because we are beginning to eat into our lunch hour and I know folks are hungry so Gretchen or who will be the final question or remark thank you to Maria I would just thank you very much to the panel I wanted to as well follow up on the scaling point with just the comment which I think Irene identified a little bit but I think it is a bit too simplistic to continue to rely on the education of individuals well that is absolutely very important but there are around the world in different countries and in different contexts limitations on those individuals so what I think IHE has an opportunity to do more of in the coming years is to try and link better an understanding of what capacity means not only at the individual level but at institutions and how do we link the capacity of institutions and of governments to the to the individuals and so I would just like to hear your comment on that because just going back to this one times a thousand model how do we really make that more sophisticated thank you I mean the question is a bit I mean certainly an army of well trained folks returning to a situation where they can't be effective for so many reasons is not going to be a very efficient process so yes you know thoughts on how to be building capacity at each level Mark you haven't had a opportunity to respond to the multiple arrows that have been pointed at that original comment so what would you say well I think of course if I can be a bit critical the question is a bit tedious because you were the word simplistic I like to work the word simply I like simple solutions so I like people I like to that capacity building of an institution or an organization or a governance structure is by definition really difficult really difficult and then I look at the task of IHC the resources it has the possibilities it has of my own organization I think it is very important to play our role as best as we can and therefore I think IHC is an educational institute and they educate professionals individuals and these individuals they need to inspire they need to bring the change other actors of course are also very important local governments, consultancies water operators, world bank a lot of people a lot of institutions and of course these institutions are filled with individuals so I would say the simple vision is to contribute to that and I think that's a very honorable task something you can be you can be invaluable in the water sector because I think very few institutions look at it that way because the unique element of IHC is that you have everything on the one roof in a very specialized dedicated committed way and that makes every IHC professional a unique person so I prefer the simple approach Thank you, that's a good response I think we all applause for that and I do think we all recognize that that is just a foundation of the institution and we always first refer to those 15,000 plus alumni that are in the world that we're so proud of and that we know are out making a difference and as we look to the future and the ways that we can increase our impact and distinguish ourselves further the issue about something being difficult something being very ambitious I think as we look for the future we're looking to do very ambitious things and we're looking to do very difficult things effectively because the more effect and impact you can have on those especially difficult questions the greater value you have the greater value you have in the world to your partners and the like it's an enormous challenge but one for us to take on if we can there are more questions out there but I also know that folks are hungry so please let's move into the restaurant I think that the lobby has been transformed into a lunch site and we will return at a quarter until two I believe so please continue the conversation outside and we'll come back in in a little less than an hour oh I'm so sorry Ruth we also of course want to thank our panel members with a small gift yes you have all contributed to the recipe of what hopefully will make delicious very nice thank you thank you thank you so much welcome back everyone I see the last few people taking their seats they should have been closed I hope you all had an enjoyable lunch stimulating conversation I was out moving among the crowd and I was just so impressed with the extraordinary collection of partners and representatives of different nations and members of the IHE family from our master's participants right up through professorial level that you've all taken the time to celebrate with us today celebrate 60 years of this institution taking the morning to reflect a bit upon some of our experiences with key partners and with new partners of what we've been learning during that time and how we can translate those lessons combining them with best practices from around the world to increase our impact as we look forward and that's the main topic of the afternoon so we were on the blue side for the morning and now we'll all flip to the green and we'll begin focusing on the future again with a series of interviews key presentations and panel discussions concluding with a question and discussion period involving you. Now as you look at the program now you'll see that it's scheduled that Flavia Slagel will address the assembly. Flavia is the assistant director general for natural sciences at UNESCO and a real strongly engaged partner with IHE Delft w