Alumni of the IWC Water Leadership Program reconnect

By Dr Andre Taylor

On the 13th of October 2020, 43 IWC alumni who had completed the IWC Water Leadership Program (WLP) over the last 10 years participated in an online, half day workshop. The workshop provided an environment for alumni to reconnect with each other, reflect on the extent to which they are still managing their development as leaders, share valuable leadership resources, and plan what innovative activities they would like to tackle in the future. The workshop also included an interactive session on coaching skills for leaders which was led by IWC leadership coach, Wouter Lincklaen Arriens.

Commenting on the success of the workshop, Dr André Taylor, the IWC’s Leadership Specialist, reflected that, “the workshop was tremendous. Originally we had planned to run this event as a face-to-face workshop in Melbourne, but we had to move it online. In retrospect, that adaptation was a ‘blessing in disguise’ as it enabled us to engage a broader audience to discuss the nature of future alumni activities. We now have a clear direction for these activities.”

Highlights from the workshop included:

• Using a live poll exercise to explore the leadership development activities that alumni are using after completing the WLP. For example, it was terrific to see that 79% of workshop participants “frequently” or “often” take opportunities to help others to build their leadership capacity (e.g. they mentor others).
• The opportunity to share a wide variety of leadership-related resources (e.g. pod casts, books, communities of practice, videos) that alumni have discovered since completing the WLP.
• The opportunity to provide alumni with access to up-to-date WLP resources (i.e. a set of 27 one-page summaries of key concepts are currently used in the program).
• Planning future activities. For example, feedback from participants indicated strong support for routinely running half day, interactive, online workshops every six months to help alumni to continue to grow as water leaders.

A conversation with Sarah Watkins: managing Melbourne’s urban growth

Sarah Watkins has fond memories of growing up in Melbourne.

“When I was a kid, around eight years old, we would go down to the local creek in the Eastern suburbs, so a fairly well-established residential area, and we’d collect frogs’ eggs for school. We’d take them back to the classroom, watch the eggs hatch, look after the tadpoles and once they became frogs, we’d take them back to the creek and release them.”

But things have changed; Melbourne’s waterways have changed. “You definitely can’t do that these days,” Sarah says. “Tadpoles aren’t commonly found in our urban waterways anymore.”

Melbourne is Australia’s second largest city and has dominated Australia’s population growth for more than fifteen years, adding more than 50,000 people each year since 2003. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has projected that Melbourne could overtake Sydney – currently Australia’s largest city – in population at some point between 2030 and 2040.

Sarah says the change is clear. “We’ve experienced a lot of growth in Melbourne. There’s been a lot of change. Within the last fifteen or twenty years, I’ve seen that kids can’t go down to their local creek and find frogs during the spring. I can see the degradation and that’s just from going out and personally experiencing my local waterways and parks.”

A better way to manage water

Sarah is a Senior Planning Engineer at Melbourne Water, a Victorian government owned statutory authority that controls much of the water system in Melbourne, including the reservoirs and the sewerage and drainage system that services the city.

“I studied environmental engineering at university. I didn’t really know anything about the water industry until a couple of years into my degree. A few lecturers opened my eyes to the application of engineering into these real-world water problems and it made me think just how tangible those problems were for Melbourne – the impact of urbanisation of waterways, water supply. I liked the idea of trying to do things in a better way, of knowing there was a better to manage our water supply, to manage our population growth.”

After finishing her undergraduate degree, Sarah worked in a small stormwater consultancy, but knew she eventually wanted to work for a water authority. She says the move to Melbourne Water was inevitable.

“I think it goes back to the fact that I’ve grown up in Melbourne my whole life. It’s a great city and a beautiful place to live and I want it to be a beautiful place to live in the future. I thought Melbourne Water was the best place to get into the water industry more broadly, and it’s in a good position to drive change in the city.”

“And I actually feel like I’m working for the five million people of Melbourne. It makes it really easy to get out of bed every day. Even when it’s challenging, and when its complex and when its uncertain, it still easy to turn up because I know I’m working for the people of Melbourne, to create a better future for everyone who’s currently here and for everyone who’s going to be here over the next twenty, thirty or fifty years.”

While she started in the organisation as a stormwater specialist, she says her role has changed over time, as the organisation shifts to meet new challenges and increasingly looks for more integrated approaches to water management.

“When I started with Melbourne Water, I was working closely with local government on water sensitive urban design initiatives, both capacity building projects and on-ground measures, building rain gardens and water harvesting systems, for example. My scope and remit have expanded from there. I started working on water supply projects and sewerage projects, as well as stormwater projects.”

“Over time, we’ve started to see that there were some big opportunities in alternative water supplies. We’ve got water shortages, we’ve got all this excess stormwater and we’re really starting to merge projects to build opportunities, to really tap into that integrated systems thinking.”

Sarah gives the example of a project to develop an integrated water management plan for the suburb of Sunbury, a large, high-growth area north of Melbourne.

“On that project, I was working closely with the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, with local councils and with the retail water companies. It was just a great experience, to meet people from these different organisations, to hear what their challenges were and to genuinely work together to try and solve those challenges, which were often common and interrelated.”

On the cusp of significant change

Sarah thinks the next decade will see more water-related projects being approached in an integrated way and believes the water sector is on the cusp of the next big step change. She says the water sector and the broader integrated water management field need to be ready.

“They say necessity is the mother of invention. Drought is a big precipitator of change. We have to do something and I think everyone realises that now, and there’s a general acceptance that our business as usual approach to water management probably isn’t going to serve us [into the future], probably isn’t what the community wants and probably isn’t the best way to go about it. So, we need to be able to come in with alternative solutions.”

“There’s water security issues in Melbourne. We’re seeing rapid growth, rapid change in terms of urbanising the landscape. I think with continued population growth, a changing climate and a continued strain on resources, it’s going to take us to the point where we have to make some big calls.”

She says Melbourne Water has done a lot of work over the last ten years, including retrofitting urban waterways, working to protect catchments, and conducting technical investigations around the feasibility of large-scale stormwater harvesting systems and exploring ways to maximise reuse of stormwater. “We’re getting a lot more comfortable technologically and building a sound knowledge base.”

But she says there’s more work to be done to be ready for the step change. “I think what’s key for the water sector is being able to identity opportunities and then being able to seize them. We talk about the burning platform and I think that’s something the water industry really needs to capitalise off. We hear about big changes around the country, such as water shortages, and those are a big opportunity to promote innovation, to promote change.”

“People are willing to change sometimes when they’re forced to,” she says. “But to make that change, I think we’ve got to be ready, with ideas on the table, with answers, with a plan, and be ready to execute that plan.”

Building integrated water management capacity

Sarah is a graduate of the International WaterCentre’s Master of Integrated Water Management (MIWM) program. She completed the program in 2018, studying part-time, remotely, while working full-time at Melbourne Water.

She said she was surprised to find a degree dedicated to integrated water management. “The concept of integrated water management is leading edge in many ways and there’s not a lot of people you can lean on to get that knowledge and experience, or networks you can to tap into. The fact that there was a master’s degree on the topic was great, and when I looked at the subject list, I thought wow, this is something that would really fit with my current role.”

“I could see that my job had a really good alignment with the MIWM program. It was clear to me that this was an area I was interested in and wanted to learn more about.”

She said the option of being able to work full-time and study part-time fit her career and life. “Doing the program part-time worked well. It meant I could learn a bit, then test a bit in my work. I could take it all at a slower pace and savour the learning experience.”

“For me, the applicability of the way the degree is structured and how it’s delivered is so useful. You’re genuinely learning skills and all the time thinking: I’m actually going to be doing this in my job or this could work in a project. It made it easy to keep pushing through because I could see why I was doing it.”

Sarah chose the urban water specialisation of the MIWM. “The water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) stream looked really interesting, but I chose urban water. I knew that was the field I was going to continue in and I thought investing so much time and money into doing a masters, I really wanted to align the program with my future career.”

“The majority of the world’s population live in urban centres like Melbourne. They need water, they need sanitation, they need cool places to live and refuge from the hustle and bustle of life as much as anyone else. Just because there’s existing infrastructure in urban water management doesn’t mean it’s something that doesn’t need attention, or doesn’t need creative thinking. There’s a whole host of legacy challenges that come with that.”

“Our cities are the places where so many people live and we’ve got to look after them. I think about the future and I think about how much change has happened in Melbourne and I want to influence that change, to creature a better future for the people who live here.”

Sarah is a graduate of the Master of Integrated Water Management program. To find out more about the program and the scholarships available, visit the program page. 

A conversation with K M Ulil Amor Bin Zaman: preserving the world

“All that is happening in the environment, especially all the bad things, are the consequences of human activity,” says Master of Integrated Water Management student K M Ulil Amor Bin Zaman.

“So, in the water sector, it’s the same. Things like pollution are happening because of human intervention. Water is not a single part. If the water becomes polluted, then the environment gets polluted, and people get affected. To preserve the world, everyone has to do their part.”

Ulil is one of 164.7 million people who call the South Asian country of Bangladesh home. And as one of the most densely populated countries in the world, Bangladesh has its fair share of water issues. The World Health Organisation estimates that only 40% of people in Bangladesh have proper sanitation, while a staggering 60% of the population lacks access to safe drinking water.

Ulil’s father worked for the government, and growing up, Ulil travelled often; he and his family lived in in various cities across the country. Over time, Ulil says he began to notice the enormous impact from the expansion of urban areas, particularly as it related to water management and pollution.

“The sanitation problem is not as bad in the urban areas, but is predominantly bad in the slums. The main reason for this is the pollution. Industries are violating rules by not having enough water treatment plants.”

Armed with an undergraduate in architecture, Ulil is particularly interested in the way that urban developments contribute to Bangladesh’s rapidly increasing water crisis. He also wants to learn more about governance and water leadership. He says he’s become aware of the difficulty of policing water regulations in his home country with such a dense population. He attributes this to the high level of corruption within the water sector and the degraded state of local waterways.

“In the affluent areas, the water quality is okay, but the management is not good … because in the rich areas, people are constructing illegal lines without proper monitoring.”

After he completes the Master of Integrated Water Management with the International WaterCentre, Ulil hopes to return to Bangladesh with a new perspective on integrated water management, to help him better understand and manage the country’s water crisis.

A conversation with Pablo Andres: fighting for Chile’s water

“In my country, people live their lives quietly on their own. People don’t share their problems, and so they don’t share solutions. People are not interested in improving if it doesn’t benefit them. But it should be about how improving benefits all, because we don’t live alone. That applies to everything: water management, scarcity and the rest.”

Pablo’s career as a lawyer in his home country of Chile has seen him work in private consultancies; as a liaison for policy advisors, engineers and geologists; and as a university professor. He is passionate about increasing his water management knowledge, so he can educate others and influence those with power within the water sector.

“In my country, in Chile, water is totally [controlled by the] private sector. The government doesn’t have power to apply limits on water. Water regulations are about the economy and about the free market. It [water policy] does not include the social aspect, or the environmental aspect, and it definitely does not include the human aspect.”

A vocal proponent for environmental change, Pablo has written extensively about Chile’s unbalanced water regulations and governance. He personally holds great concerns about his country’s lack of water recycling or water reclaiming; he believes it could be beneficial to preventing further water scarcity. Chile is currently in the grips of the worst drought in 60 years.

“We generate [talk] a lot about the reuse of water, but it is not totally applied. Chile needs to improve on this.”

But Pablo believes shifting the government to improve reclamation infrastructure will be difficult. He says the Chilean government is a representative democratic republic, a political system where the President is both head of state and of the government, and of a formal multi-party system. He believes that there is a lack of interest by the government for change.

“We have three main parts to our government, but the power is to the right side and they don’t want to change. Some people are happy with the way things are, but they are the minority.”

While Pablo’s concerns remain strong, the Chilean government has moved to tackle water shortages and drought, with President Sebastian Pinera recently creating a working group of government agencies, academics and industry players to look at ways to manage water resources more effectively. The President has also pledged $58M in tapping more water sources and trucking water into rural areas.

While government action is a step in the right direction, Pablo believes it’s up to the people like him to bring a fresh perspective to his country and to create unprejudiced policies for water use. It’s for this reason that Pablo enrolled in the International WaterCentre’s Master of Integrated Water Management program, to learn how Australia manages water in the face of scarcity.

Thinking about his career after the Master’s program, he says: “The most important thing about being a lawyer is not the law, it’s about [knowing] how can you make a solution for the people who need it and about how we can work together to find a solution. My aim is to learn more about the processes of water [management], so this can generate another view for when I am working for policy advisors in Chile.”

A conversation with Rosie Sanderson: working to protect our water resources

“We only have the one [planet], and we’re not going anywhere yet. My perspective is about having a conscience of equity, and this reflects my approach to the world, particularly surrounding water, sanitation and security. I believe that an equality of opportunity is very important.”

Although Rosie grew up among the farms of rural northern New South Wales in the south east of Australia, she’s no stranger to an overseas adventure. Her career as an environmental engineer has seen her work across the world – from India to Sudan, Bangladesh to Uganda. But she believes now is the right time for her to return home to Australia, to share her experiences and insights, and to explore ways to leverage her knowledge to better protect our local water resources.

“I think I had a very idyllic childhood, growing up in the bush. Mum was a teacher and Dad was a lawyer, so they weren’t farmers, but we were surrounded by farms. We loved it when we were young kids … and now that I’m older, all I want to do is go back.”

Having grown up with a quintessential Australian landscape at her doorstep, it’s unsurprising to learn that Rosie enrolled in a Bachelor of Environmental Engineering at The University of Queensland after finishing high school. While she was studying at university, she also took a part-time job with an environmental consultancy and volunteered for the non-profit organisation Engineers Without Borders (EWB).

“In my first year [at university], I was very close to quitting engineering … but then I met Engineers Without Borders at uni, and once I met them I realised, yes this is where I’m headed.”

As a fresh graduate, Rosie travelled to India with EWB, where she worked on waste programs to help improve the safety of disadvantaged local women. After her time with EWB in India, Rosie returned to Australia for a few years, but it wasn’t long before she found herself deployed abroad again, this time with Doctors Without Borders (also known as Médecins Sans Frontières). Her first deployment was in South Sudan, providing sanitation and waste management strategies to rural villages. She then headed to Bangladesh during the Rohingya refugee crisis and finally to Uganda during an outbreak of cholera.

In 2018, Rosie was awarded the IWC-Ken Thiess Memorial Scholarship with the International WaterCentre to join the Master of Integrated Water Management program. Leveraging her experience of working in crisis situations, Rosie now aims to learn more about emergency and disaster responses as they relate to water.

“I wanted some way to tie all the pieces together, and get a bit of time to reflect on where I’m at, and this program looked like a good way to do that and to supplement it all.”

Rosie said that she chose to start the master’s program to learn from the experiences of her peers, to build on her knowledge of natural and societal systems and to explore ways to be more effective in protecting our water resources from contamination. Ultimately, she wants to bring all that the she’s learnt so far together – in her career and study – to champion equal access to water for local Australian communities.

Rosie Sanderson completed the Master of Integrated Water Management at the International WaterCentre and IWC-Ken Thiess Memorial Master of Integrated Water Management Scholarship recipient. 

A conversation with Morgan McPherson: from between the hills of Adelaide

“You can pull it all apart, but really, at the end of the day, we’re a biological, moving bit of carbon and that’s all we’ve got.”

Morgan McPherson has spent his life immersed in nature, advocating for its rights and protection. His links with conservation started early; his mother often brought him to Greenpeace rallies and meetings as a toddler.

“I grew up between the hills and the city of Adelaide – very green in winter, and dry in summer. Although, during the millennial drought from 2000 onwards, it became very dry, and people had to be very conscious and aware of water use. At home we were always funnelling off grey water onto the garden, using buckets in the sink and minimising waste where ever we could.”

He has since travelled the length and breadth of Australia, in search of a way to express his passion for the environment and conservation, and for a fitting career. He jokingly describes his career moves since graduating high school as ‘left, right and centre’.

One of Morgan’s first jobs was as a volunteer in the horticulture department of Adelaide Zoo, where he eventually landed a paid position. He then moved into varied roles, from conservation to horticulture and interpretation to customer engagement, which all influenced his decision to complete a Diploma of Conservation and Land Management. A desire to move away from tourism led him to other environment-focused roles, including a stint as a ranger in the Northern Territory, a life guard on the Great Barrier Reef and as a koala feeder at Seaworld on the Gold Coast.

“Going into my diploma was hands down, by accident, the best thing I have ever done. It gave me some skills, put me into the field a lot and gave me some good foundational skills”

With years under his belt in the field, Morgan became frustrated with the small ‘band-aid fixes’ often employed by conservationists who were more concerned with deploying what was the most cost-effective solution, rather than what was more effective and considerate of the long term.

“Coming from an ecological background, we work on the understanding that no part of an ecosystem acts without any influence on, or from, another part. [I think] it’s that understanding that makes me look at any management issues, especially ones as complex as water management, with a slightly different view than most.”

Frustrated with the ‘this is how we’ve always done it’ attitude, Morgan came to the conclusion that his knowledge and experience could be extremely useful as a leader, in both the conservation and water sectors. To help solidify his knowledge, Morgan joined the Master of Integrated Water Management degree at the International WaterCentre. He hopes to use the program to improve on his leadership skills and explore water management approaches to conservation.

“I would like to change people’s attitude of the environment, from being a stationary object that gets in the way, to one where we see it as a fantastic tool that can minimise work, reduce costs and thrive under our management.”

Morgan McPherson is completed the Master of Integrated Water Management at the International WaterCentre.

Written by: Dahna Morrisson

Ethical leadership: is there a crisis?

Where to from here?

The first step in addressing a problem is to acknowledge that one exists. Hopefully this article contributes, in a small way, to that process.

As part of ‘self-leadership’, we all have opportunities to improve the extent to which we engage in ethical leadership. The five principles of ethical leadership framework is a useful framework to reflect on the opportunities we have to better respect others, serve others, demonstrate justice, fairness, honesty and integrity, and build community. An ethical leader would aim to ensure that these principles are a prominent part of their ‘leadership signature’.

In terms of promoting ethical behaviour and leadership by others, we each have opportunities within our spheres of influence. In particular, leaders with significant power (e.g. executives, thought leaders and mentors) can model the way for others. Executive leaders can shape organisational culture to promote ethical thinking, ethical behaviour and reflective practice. Leaders who engage in education and coaching can help developing leaders to ensure that ethical leadership is central to their developmental vision, and they build their capacity to identify ethical dilemmas, engage in ethical thinking, deeply reflect and apply the five principles of ethical leadership.

We have much work to do, and much is at stake. I urge all my colleagues who are involved in leadership development as role models, educators, mentors and coaches to create space for discussions, reflection and learning about ethical leadership. Together, we share a precious opportunity to help leaders to grow their capacity to influence others while ensuring they also have a strong personal commitment to ethical thinking and practice.

A conversation with Kevin Chun Tek Lim: from Malaysia to Germany

“When you make discoveries, you generate more unknowns. The same goes for water management. You can implement something, but the after effect is still unknown until it occurs or a crisis actually happens.”

Kevin Chun Teck Lim hails from Malaysia’s Labuan Federal territory, a small island off the north-western coast of Borneo, known for its lush rainforests and picturesque beaches. He spent much of his childhood around water and he credits his upbringing to developing his appreciation of water.

“I lived in a pretty diverse region – different cultures, languages and religions. My Dad is Chinese and my Mum is an indigenous person of Sabah, in Malaysia. But I grew up like a normal kid. I think my interest in water really started early on and built more with my career.”

Kevin’s journey began with a Degree in Chemical Engineering from Universiti Teknologi Petronas in Malaysia. This led him to a graduate program with Continental Tyres. The program saw Kevin head to the other side of the world, to work in the Continental Tyres’ headquarters in Germany. Over the next three and a half years, he worked on a number of projects centered around European utilities. It was his experience working with utilities that made him want to know more about water resource management and conservation.

His time in Germany also opened his eyes to the importance of environmental management. After seeing the care and effort put into the water sector in Germany, and in particular the stringent controls around water regulation, Kevin came to realise how different it was to his home in Malaysia.

“In Malaysia, we don’t have the mindset of needing to save water. Eventually, we will be wasting water. And we also have leaks in piping everywhere because the water industry doesn’t care about fixing them, and this leads to big water losses.”

Kevin hopes to use his experiences to help change the mindset of the people of Malaysia, to improve actions around water conservation. Ultimately, he hopes to use his skills and knowledge to change the way Malaysia and its people see water as a resource – a challenge he is eager to take on.

Kevin Chun Tek Lim is completed the Master of Integrated Water Management at the International WaterCentre.

Written by Dahna Morrisson

A conversation with Andrea Salus: from the banks of Lake Michigan

“Everyone is so focused on their ‘now’ and not always thinking about the environment, which is longer term… So, we need to be better at looking after it. We need to think about everyone else, and not just ourselves.”

Andrea grew up in Milwaukee, on the banks of Lake Michigan, one of the five Great Lakes of North America. Milwaukee is surrounded by water, lying along the confluence of three rivers: the Menomonee, the Kinnickinnic, and the Milwaukee. Smaller rivers, such as the Root River and Lincoln Creek, also flow through the city. Andrea credits growing up in this environment to her early decision to study Environmental Engineering and Geology at Northwestern University in Chicago.

“We would often go down to the lake in the summer with friends, but even in the winter we’d be down there doing the polar plunge each New Year’s Day. My mum was also big about always getting us outside and picking up bugs and climbing trees, so that definitely influenced my decision to study it.”

After graduating, Andrea worked with an environmental consultancy in Milwaukee. She investigated and cleaned up spills, detritus and contamination in the surrounding lakes and rivers, preferring to spend time in the field, in the natural environment, rather than behind a desk. During her time at the consultancy, she found herself gravitating toward the practical aspects of water resource management.

“I’m really passionate about health and being proactive, and actually doing things … most of the work I was doing at the environmental consultancy was more back-end work – I was always cleaning up messes that had already been made, so I wanted to be to get into preventing these things from happening in the first place.”

Andrea believes that working on the front-line is the best way to understand the many different aspects of environmental conservation. Her goal is to become a liaison between stakeholders, to balance the often-competing science and economic sides of water management – something she frequently experienced during her time with the environmental consultancy.

“We’d be trying to clean up a site and the Environmental Protection Agency wants one thing, the client wants another, and the person who owns a house near the site wants something else. So being able to bring everyone’s needs together so that you can get things done successfully and sustainable without it being becoming a detriment somewhere else, can be very difficult.”

With a goal of pivoting her career towards the water sector, Andrea has begun studying the Masters of Integrated Water Management in order to gain an assortment of skills and knowledge relating to water management.

“What form this will take as part of my career, I’m not really sure yet. I’d love to work abroad, but I’m also aware that the US could use an integrated water management approach. So, I look forward to seeing where this will take me.”

Andrea Salus is a Master of Integrated Water Management alumni at the International WaterCentre.

About the author: Dahna Morrisson writes as a correspondent for the International WaterCentre, charged with exploring water challenges and the ways these challenges are managed around the world.