The resilience of the Pacific’s water services is not just about climate proofing existing and future infrastructure, but also ensuring the appropriate technology is being put in, and that there are the right people on the ground to maintain and run it.
That’s the view of Paul Cobbin, a Director of the Pacific Water and Wastewater Association (PWWA) and CEO of Hydroflux Pacific.
PWWA members are meeting in Palau at the end of August to discuss ‘Resilient Water and Climate Change’. Since their last gathering, Pitolau Lusia Sefo-Leau has been reappointed as PWWA CEO, and the Association has been focused on capacity building within utilities.
Like many other industries, the water sector is feeling the impact of labour mobility schemes to Australia and New Zealand, which are seeing skilled and experienced workers leave Pacific Islands utilities to work in neighboring countries, often in unskilled or semiskilled employment.
While the remittances provided by workers on these schemes have proved critical for island economies, it is a double-edged sword when those workers exit—even temporarily—their skilled positions.
“It takes years for people in the sector to be trained and gather the right experience,” says Cobbin.
The water and sewage sector has been affected by the same geopolitical manoeuvers as other infrastructure sectors in the region, Cobbin observes. He says there is a need to be vigilant about not only the appropriateness of the technology and solutions coming into the region, but also maintenance and how supply chain challenges and skills on the ground can ensure their sustainability.
He says good providers “will use local staff to do projects, train them up and then leave a legacy behind, but [other] vendors will come in, they will install the equipment, they will finish their warranty period and they will disappear after that.”
Cobbin believes the provision of training and ongoing support to manage assets—particularly in a context where more extreme weather events can make that difficult in any case—is “where you really get that resilient infrastructure.”
Asset management also extends to audits or “people understanding what they have in essence” and planning to maintain and upgrade in a strategic way, as the cost of replacement can be high. PWWA collaborates on a diagnostics report for Pacific water utilities which gives an overview of the challenges faced in maintaining hard assets.
Another development Cobbin identifies is the shift to ‘nature-based solutions’ in this (and other sectors), for example, in planning for formalisation and service delivery to Fiji’s informal settlements. He says while in principle, this is positive, the geological and other characteristics of Pacific Islands, means it is not always appropriate. In some cases, a “footprint that uses both natural and mechanical solutions” is necessary he says, and this needs to be understood particularly by external donors and entrants in the sector.
Similarly, while there is a need for more data collection across the sector to enable strategic planning for resilience, Cobbin says: “I think the priorities need to be considered [as to] what data is appropriate?” He adds, “There is a significant cost [to data collection, transfer and analysis] that is not necessarily considered.”
When it comes to innovation in the sector, Cobbin says there are some interesting activities happening with small-scale desalination plants—technology which converts sea water to potable water. Companies from Australia and France are now introducing desalination plants that run on solar energy—tapping into two of the most plentiful resources at islands’ disposal, and overcoming issues around guaranteeing constant, reliable energy sources to run these systems.
The PWWA meeting is on August 28-September 1 in Palau.
