The World Water Week in Stockholm (SWWW) 2019 was organized at the Tele2 Arena in Stockholm, Sweden from 25th to 30th August, 2019, under the theme “Water for Society: Including All”. 4,000 participants, 1,196 organization of 127 countries joined the SWWW 2019.

Outside of the Tele2 Arena	Inside of the Tele2 Arena

During the SWWW, Japan Water Forum, as the Secretariat of the Northern Water Network (NoWNET*) organized a session “Private Companies’ Roles Towards Water-Resilient Society, No-One-Is-Left-Behind” with the NoWNET members.

＊: NoWNET was jointly initiated by World Water Council (WWC), Global Water Partnership (GWP) and the Steering Committee of the 3rd World Water Forum, Japan. Its members are currently GWP, WWC, Danish Water Forum (DWF), Japan Water Forum (JWF), Netherlands Water Partnership (NWP), Swedish Water House (SWH), Korea Water Forum (KWF), French Water Partnership (FWP), Finnish Water Forum (FWF), Portuguese Water Partnership (PWP), and Swiss Water Partnership (SWP). JWF has maintained a role as the secretariat ever since its launch.

In the session, Innovative case studies of private companies in Africa, France, India, Japan, Netherlands, North America, and Sweden who have contributed to the disaster risk reduction measures including safe water access to the poorest and the resilience building of local communities were presented at the session. The speakers framed their messages within the context of “materiality”, “connectivity”, and “Scalability” in consideration of the SWWW 2019 theme of “Water for Society – Including All”.

In a panel discussion and in the interaction with the audience, the speakers discussed the necessary policy instruments and actions that facilitated the involvement of the private sector in the provision of water security in terms of disaster risk management. They also discussed ways to mobilize the private sectors’ resources and know-how to address the challenges. The discussion also covered methods to insulate the private sector from non-natural disaster risks, such as political risk, and ways to enhance partnerships between the private and public sectors to enable the effective mobilization of resources to the necessary places.

This session concluded highlighting the following points.

• It is important to find ways to de-risk the private sectors from factors derived from non-natural disasters, such as political instability, through regulation and financial capital guarantees.
• Provision of some financial support from the local and national government is necessary to enable small-scale private business sector to provide their locally tailored service to local communities, so as to supplement the service delivery from the national and local government.
• Building Public-Private Partnership, as well as Private-Private Partnership through the policy dialogue, is important as a means of building trust as is the necessity to enhance public awareness about water value.

 

Presentation Documents
https://www.worldwaterweek.org/event/8512-private-companies-roles-towards-water-resilient-society-no-one-is-left-behind

Panel discussion	Group photo

(Reported by Yumiko Asayama, Manager)