Water as Leverage - new
Water as Leverage
Academy • Initiatives • Factory
Climate change-induced floods, droughts, pollution, starvation, diseases, and conflicts are fundamentally related to water. Coupled with rapid and unplanned urbanization, these issues threaten the resilience of life support mechanisms on earth. Cities worldwide face water-related challenges, growing population density, and urban expansion. Siloes between science, national and local governance, communities and financiers of urban infrastructure and housing development is causing a disconnect and is hampering sustainable urban development. Thereby often aggravating water and climate risks instead of mitigating them. But cities can become part of a solution when water is a lever and a unifying force for sustainable urban development.
The global Water as Leverage (WaL) initiative is based on this conviction. By connecting long-term urban planning with short-term innovative transformations, ambitious climate adaptation plans with bankable projects, and water system knowledge with the construction of resilient cities can become better places. Integrating science, research, design, and finance and combining implementation practices with inclusive urban partnerships enables allows for the transformative change that is needed.
The objective of the global Water as Leverage programme is to advance urban water resilience through the development of transformative and inclusive projects in and with communities at risk, and with the partners that need to see through the implementation.
“Water as leverage is all about resilience. As citizens we will feel the impact of climate change. If we want to have liveable cities, we have to leverage water through engaging communities.”
Meike van Ginneken, Special Envoy for International Water Affairs for the Kingdom of the Netherlands
For more information see the Water as Leverage Guidance:
All photographs were taken on location by Cynthia van Elk. If you have any questions, please contact wal@rvo.nl
Water as Leverage
Academy
The Water as Leverage (WaL) Academy is a core pillar of WaL’s scaling strategy, alongside WaL initiatives in cities and the Multilevel Climate Action Programme.
In March 2023, the global WaL partnership committed to strengthening the capacity of water practitioners and changemakers—both urban and rural—through the WaL Academy. The goal is to foster inclusive, transformative climate adaptation and water security by enabling application of the WaL approach in cities.
WaL Academy key objectives:
Evolve Water as Leverage as a living cultural approach—resilient to change, adaptable to different contexts, and proactive in meeting future needs.
Scale the WaL approach to advance global urban water resilience.
Inspire a global community to overcome challenges such as fragmented approaches, political divides, and historical patterns of replication in urban water resilience.
Water as Leverage Academy
Initiatives
Semarang • Khulna • Chennai• Cartagena • the Wadden Sea • Nakuru • Prayagraj • Bangkok
WaL initiatives are undertaken in cities, following the WaL approach, to develop and deliver transformative and inclusive projects through different stages of project development.
WaL Asia Inspired by the Rebuild by Design competition held in New York in the aftermath of hurricane Sandy, Water as Leverage for Resilient Cities Asia (WaL Asia) was developed as the first initiative of the WaL programme by the Dutch government and global partners.
Following a call to action on World Earth Day 2018, six multidisciplinary teams of international and local experts developed innovative solutions for three cities in Asia: Semarang (Indonesia), Khulna (Bangladesh), and Chennai (India). In May 2019, the teams submitted 24 project proposals, each tailored to address the specific resilience challenges of these cities. In Chennai, this culminated in the inauguration of a demonstration project in 2023.
WaL Initiatives Since WaL Asia, new WaL initiatives have been developed in Cartagena (Colombia), the Wadden Sea (Denmark, Germany, Netherlands), Nakuru (Kenya), Prayagraj (India), and Bangkok (Thailand).
Factory
The WaL Factory provides opportunities to run WaL initiatives in urban landscapes in different countries, provides process guidance to larger partners to drive their own WaL initiatives, and mobilises funding and finance.
