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Dr. Benno Boer: Urban Water Cycle Management and SDGs
Source: | Author:gfhsforum | Published time: 2018-11-16 | 1367 Views | Share:
Dr. Benno Boer, Chief of Natural Sciences, UNESCO Bangkok Office

The world’s human population has exceeded 7,65 billion people in 2018, in comparison to 3,2 billion in 1972. Considering these simple figures, it is not surprising that it becomes increasingly challenging to provide enough and clean water and sanitation to all, especially in the urban centres where the majority of people live. The targets in SDG 6 (Clean water and sanitation) clearly aim at proving clean drinking water (6.1.), adequate sanitation (6.2.), and reduce water pollution (6.3.). 

It is absolutely essential for sustainable human living to catalyse, test and implement good ideas, including on the platforms of science and education. The UNESCO Bangkok’s Natural Science unit annually celebrates World Water Day (22ndof March), and it offers a few practical  and academic interventions, trying to assist improving good urban water management via four concrete interventions, including UNESCO Green Academies, Floating Mangroves, The Plastic Initiative and a book series on ‘The water, energy, food-security nexus in Asia/Pacific’.

UNESCO has developed a concept called UNESCO Green Academies. These academies can be any buildings, preferably buildings with young people utilising them, such as kindergartens, schools, colleges, universities, and any other buildings. These green academies have a major supporting foundation, which are youth clubs, or youth groups, getting actively involved in environmental issues related to biodiversity, climate and water. The youth groups will learn about and apply rain-water collection, grey-water recycling, and black-water recycling, next to waste-management and biomass production. UNESCO Green Academies are urban places that function as examples to apply climate resilience.

UNESCO is one of the UN agencies with capacity in salt-water utilization. More than 97 % of water that is available on our planet is salt-water, such as full strength seawater, brackish water, saline waste-water, and saline ground-water. UNESCO has for example developed a concept on putting mangroves afloat on top of the tropical coastal oceans: Floating Mangroves. This requires no land, and no fresh-water for irrigation of these wood-producing plants. The wood can be used for the legal production of charcoal, and this can function to offset the illegal harvest and decline of natural mangroves.Floating Mangrovesreduce the pressure on limited freshwater for the irrigation of crops, an innovative method for the production of biomass, and they can provide significant amounts of environmentally friendly biofuel to urban and rural communities.


Plastic pollution has become omni-present at an alarming level. Plastic pollutes our cities, rivers, lakes, coastlines and the marine environment. Apart from its adverse impact on biodiversity, and unattractive and costly pollution of beaches and water-fronts, in the urban environment this includes the blockage of drainage pipes with plastic, which in turn leads to stagnant water bodies functioning as breeding habitats of pathogenic micro-organisms. Urgent global action is required. UNESCO is one of the UN agencies that takes the pollution of air, water, soil and biota very seriously. UNESCO has developed a new regional concerted action ‘The Plastic Initiative’ in Asia/Pacific, which is the worst plastic-polluted region, to be launched in Hanoi, in March 2019. The initiative aims at mobilising experienced environmental stakeholders, Governments, NGOs, the private sector, foundations, and especially young people, to submit proposals based on existing and innovative ideas to reduce plastic pollution, and to test and measure the impact of their ideas inside UNESCO Biosphere Reserves. The plastic initiative will contribute to keep the urban and rural ecosystems clean.

UNESCO has begun producing a book series with three volumes ‘The water, energy, food security nexus in Asia / Pacific’, aiming to provide new science-based information that allows better coordination of water-energy and food security management, and a few major take-away points:Risks and threats are already a reality, and not just in the distant future.
  • Viable solutions exist and they can be implemented including waste-water and salt-water utilizations, nature based solutions, new policies and technologies.
  • Integration across the water, energy and food sectors is obviously needed, but achieving them will be challenging.
  • There is a wealth of scientific data and some existing gaps that can assist decision making.
  • The books will assist all stakeholders, and managers and decision makers towards more coordinated and innovative urban management.
The above items do contribute to achieve the targets in the SDGs 6, 11, and 12, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 13, 14, 15, and 17.

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