they faced, and the legacies they have left behind. order your copy today. c-span's "the presidents" is now available as a hard cover or e-book at c-span.org/thepresidents. next, a look into ways to improve water infrastructure and sanitation services around the world through the u.s. government's global water strategy, which was released in november of 2017. >> thank you, everyone, for complying with the 10:00 a.m. start time. let's transition to our first panel. i have the distinct honor of introducing very briefly because

full bios are actually in the agenda and in the packet, so let me do a quick introduction of each speaker. each speaker will have between seven and eight minutes. i may have a question or two afterwards to just prime the discussion. then we really want to encourage your participation. so let me just quickly give a brief introduction of each speaker. to my left is tim petty. tim is the assistant secretary for water and science at interior where he oversees water and science policy and has responsibility for the bureau of reclamation and the u.s. geological survey. also i must say that tim, and i share the fact we're both alumni of the university of fairbanks, alaska. that's a blatant pitch. i just wanted to own that. jonathan richard is apparently not an alumni of the university

of alaska. serena vinter is the acting director for policy at the cdc. jeff goldberg manage's u.s. aid's requirements set forth in the 2014 water for the world act. so please welcome our panelists for the morning. maybe tim, we'll just start with you. >> i think that'll work well. thanks, mike. always a privilege to be up here with a fellow alum. i just wanted to take a few minutes and have some opening comments but looking forward to a lot of interaction and dialogue, good questions. a great panel up here. i think a lot of the work that takes place is an important aspect of working together, especially in the federal and private sector. so just a couple comments. the sound management of water resources is key to the

department of interior in its mission. interiors hosted by a diversity of eight different bureaus, each with their own focus, but water is a resource that connects all of them together. not only is interior committed to the sound management of water and other natural resources within the united states, but it also is committed to providing our expertise internationally to both give and take in support of the u.s. foreign policy goals. our international programs at both bureau of reclamation and the u.s. geological survey is an exchange. these programs benefit both the counterparts abroad as well as the department of interior as a whole. throughout its history, interior has been a collaborative international management natural resource honoring cultural heritage, supply of water, and energy, and advancing in scientific research on behalf of the american people. the resources we manage and

protect within natural disasters we prepare for and respond to each of those per request. we look forward to being able to give in scientific research as well as we conduct all of these international endeavors. as the assistant secretary for water and science, i oversee, as mike said, both the u.s. geological survey and the bureau of reclamation. i have the experience of firsthand of international engagement while working at the interior even in the past bush administration, i led several different delegations to areas of guam in the pacific as well as in vietnam, as well as to libya in energy, water, and environmental impacts in those different areas. globally, the u.s. department of interior is committed to working together with the two bureaus i oversee. i want to highlight two examples of items that are important to

us but first a framework of how reclamation and gs work together. one is to enhance the efficiency and sustainability of water-related infrastructure. two, encourage effective and sustainable water reuse as well as even the administrator at epa had communicated. and three, promoting cooperative and shared water resources because of both canada and mexico. we all work together and water interchanges obviously without borders. whereas usgs is also a continual implementation of the global water strategy, its three primary goals internationally is to strengthen scientific and technical understanding of international water supply and demand. two, to help improve global monitoring and management of those water resources. and three, promoting and providing scientific support. so out of that, i want to give

two quick examples. both of these examples, actually, are part of the website that the ambassador also communicated today on the water website. the first example really highlights some of the things that the u.s. geological survey and reclamation are doing with brazil and their water resource management. this working collaborative has been going on for multiple years and we support the state department as partners with brazil in the national water agency, also referred to as nwa. we conduct multiple technical and working relationships technically and training wise between the two of them. the partners we utilize comes also from epa, u.s. army corps of engineers as well as usda. all of them working together is how we're able to partner and partner with these other international groups. in one of the programs you should the mou, is reclamation

and usgs working together in multiple areas, even in africa. so far this has included one study tour and workshop with brazil where reclamation and usgs experts tour both the san francisco water conveyance projects, the brazilian counterparts, and one of reclamation's lead study tours of the united states. we took them to the project in nevada as well as the central california water project, the cbp, that so many people here in the united states are very familiar with. these programs will be followed up by workshops in brazil in 2020 where the observations and ideas spur these studies and tours together in partnership. the second example that i want to just highlight is where usgs has been doing a support ground water explanation that the ambassador actually talked about

earlier in her comments on the assessment in not only drought stress regions in africa but these strategy priorities encourage the sound management in protection of fresh water resources. with funding provided by usaid, the u.s. geological survey and its partners are using geospatial data with traditional hydrological and geological technology and methodologies in areas in kenya and ethiopia that are a part of the global water strategy. its primary goals is to locate and quantify ground water audiocasset aquifers. one of the things that i specifically want to highlight is that usgs working in this area of remote sensing gives the coordination of local fresh water agencies the ability for these studies to take effect. in both areas, the success rates

before they were able to do drilling for wells was in the neighborhood of only 30% efficiency where they were only hitting water 30% of the time. using these new technologies and new methodologies, the u.s. geological survey has been able to develop ground water potential maps in these study areas that increase the drilling rate of efficiency to almost 90%. those type of technologies give really great capacity for these countries who are looking because developing wells and resources is an expensive endeavor. the u.s. also has located partners not only in ethiopia and kenya, but their goal is to develop and to train the trainers on how to use these technologies, and we're committed at the usgs to help facilitate those ongoing relationships. this strategy promotes and identifies this safe drinking

water supply resource capability that is so important. so in my conclusion, supporting the global water strategy is an important part of interior, bureau of reclamation, as well as u.s. geological survey. a part of that is having surface capability and storage, which means reservoirs and dams. bureau of reclamation has an international team that works with the state department and u usaid for all the countries in the world to be able to come and interact and how we go through our training for dam development, where reclamation alone has 492 dams responsible for those reservoir storage surface water. we have spent decades working on how do we continue to increase dam efficiency. so many times we hear in the news of dam failures across the world, even in this country on how we need to continue to be

diligent and have oversight on those responsibilities. so i look forward to more of your questions as this continues, along with the great panel that we have here before us. >> thank you. jonathan? >> thank you for the opportunity to participate in the event today and speak on this panel. first, i thought it might be helpful to say a little about mcc, who we are and what our model is. i often find many people aren't familiar with us as they are with many others. mcc is a small agency. we were actually established back in 2004. we're still fairly new as far as u.s. government agencies go. we have a singular mission. our mission is poverty reduction through economic growth. what this means is we target our funds in a way to catalyze economic development and growth to address what we call the binding constraints to growth. one of the first things we do when we engage a country when they're selected by our board is deploy teams of economists, do a constraint analysis, and

identify what that binding second s sector. in this case, we'll talk about water. the second thing worth flagging here is we don't work everywhere. so we only work in lower income countries and only in countries that meet our strict eligibility criteria. those are based on a set of third-party indicators that measure a country's performance on things like economic freedoms, good governance, and investing in people. the third is we provide grant funding. it's not loans, it's grants. these are large-scale grants that we call compacts or thresholds. these are packages of projects. the compact of the larger of the two, they are on average about $350 million in a given country, although we've had some as high as 700 million. the threshold, as the name implies, don't quite meet eligibility for a compact, but they're on the threshold of doing so. those programs tend to be on thethe

order of about $35 million to $50 million. our programs are country led. what i mean by that is the countries propose solutions, propose projects consistent with the constraints in the sector we've identified. then the countries work with mcc to develop and implement these projects. mcc plays an oversight role and i think also a very strong support role to carry these projects out. the last thing is that we have a five-year timeline to complete these projects. we're doing a lot of heavy infrastructure. i'll talk more about that in a moment. but after spending about two to three years preparing projects, developing them, there's a strict five year timeline to carry them out, at which point shovels down, hands it over to the government, and anything that's not done is then on the government to complete. ideally, we complete everything within those five years. it's not always very easy to carry out such strong infrastructure programs on that kind of a timeline. in terms of our portfolio big picture wise, since our inception in 2004, we've

actually signed 35 compacts in i think about 29 countries, totaling about $12 billion. much of this has gone towards infrastructure and large-capital projects in the sectors of energy, water, agriculture, ir grags, roads, ports, schools, et cetera. it's important to note we don't just do infrastructure. it's a big part of what we do, but we take a holistic approach. we couple our infrastructure with what we believe are the necessary policy and institutional reforms to ensure the project is sustainable and meets the high standards, environmental, social, and technical. with respect to our water portfolio, mcc has invested about $2.8 billion since 2004.

overall, our investments in the water sector have included things like urban and rural water supply, waste water collection and sanitation, waste water treatment, both municipal and industrial. i think one other piece perhaps to highlight in this regard is that some of our investments are really targeting what we sometimes refer to as the water energy nexus. looking at ways to use treated water for power plants, plants that might otherwise be drawing fresh water for use in cooling. the water agriculture nexus, so where we're taking waste water and using it for agricultural production or water transport ne nexus. looking at productive uses of water as well. so since the launch of the global water strategy in november of 2017, mcc's completed three projects that i

thought would be worth highlighting here today. the first is a $275 million project in jordan where we actually installed more than 1100 kilometers of new pipelines for water and waste water in an area just outside of amman. and supported training for people on water conservation practices and good water management. the second project is a $355 million project in zambia. this was completed in november of 2018. so fairly recently. the program in zambia improved the water supply, sanitation, drainage infrastructure in the capital city. although, here, too, again not just the infrastructure but some complementary institutional

strengthening activities working with the sewage company to improve their asset management, solid waste practices in the city. lastly, just to flag a third program, $41 million project. here we supported reforms in the water and sanitation sector and established an independent utility operating on a commercial basis. we also had infrastructure in this program and expanded some water and sanitation infrastructure on several islands. so perhaps a few more elements just to note regarding mcc's approach. some of these aspects have been touched on by earlier speakers today. the first is private sector engagement. mcc recognizes that donor funds are not sufficient to meet the grand needs, development needs facing us. so we work across our portfolio to catalyze private sector investment in a way that we call in and around our programs. we want to leverage or blend our

limited funds with the funds of others, private sector, donors, et cetera, to achieve a bigger impact. one of the most significant public/private sector participation projects we've zone the jordan project i mentioned where we expanded a plant initially supported by u.s. aid and brought in a private sector operator for a long-term concession contract. the second piece to flag is we really have a strong emphasis on results. evaluations are integral to everything we do. we have a strong commitment to accountability, learns, transparency, and evidence-based decision making. so we have independent evaluations conducted by third-party independent experts for all of the projects upon their completion. these results are published on our website. in fact, i should say that all of the programs we support can be found on our website as well. lastly, and this has been a theme, i think, this morning. coordination and collaboration across the u.s. government with

other agencies is really important. we work with a range of organizations. mcc is small. we want to play to our strengths and work with others in search of bigger outcomes, stronger impact. we do a lot of work with the u.s. army corps of engineers. they provide a lot of technical assistance. we've collaborated with the u.s. epa. u.s. aid is a regular player and collaborator. i mentioned the jordan project a few times. also, i heard usgs come up. we've worked a lot with them. a lot of the remote sensing capabilities looking at water resources. thing is an area that we have done a lot of collaboration, but looking forward, and this event, i think, is an example of it, really looking to do more collaboration and coordination with others across the u.s. government. i think that plays to everybody's strengths. thank you.

>> thank you, jonathan. serena? >> great. thank you to the wilson center for hosting today's event and for inviting cdc to be part of it. since everybody's talking about how long they've been around, i guess with the 50th anniversary, cdc has been around for about 70 years. we are very much focused on the public health and keeping people who live in the united states healthy. i think our tag line is protecting americans 24/7. i think we have a long history of working on global health issues, whether cholera control efforts in the 1950s, working with partners on global smallpox eradication efforts in the 1970s and the global hiv/a.i.d.s. epidemic. we also have always been on the front line, leading the response to infectious disease outbreaks. whether novel influenza viruses, corono viruses and the more recent ebola and zika outbreaks. we recognize if we want to

protect people living in this country from all health threats, as we claim to want to do, we can't do that if we just work in our own borders. we really have to look at this concept of global health security. i think it complements the concept of water security nicely, and we need to work with partner countries so they can build and strengthen their own abilities to detect, prevent, and respond to infectious disease outbreaks. so how do we fit into the global water strategy? as i mentioned, cdc is a science and data-driven agency. we aren't making large grants or cooperative agreements or contracts to do this work. we really rely on our in-house science and technical expertise. so we have these world-class scientists, public health leaders who are implementing disease activities, who are training the work force of the future, who diagnose novel and re-emerging pathogens, both in tlanlt at o atlanta at our state of the art labs, and in other capacities so they can diagnose whatever

pathogens they're trying to control. we do have the ability to monitor threats 24/7. we have sort of a global disease detection center in atlanta. they're tracking anywhere from 35 to th45 outbreaks every day. a lot of these could be related to water. they might not turn into something like the ebola outbreak we're seeing right now in drc or the worst one we saw in 2014 in west africa. these are just outbreaks of concern we pay attention to. we have both forward deployed staff, about 1700 staff who work in over 50 country offices around the world. we have about 500 staff at cdc who are credentialed and ready to respond so if there's a situation where another international partner is looking for support in controlling or responding to an outbreak, we have folks who can do that. our work in support of the global strategy is done through this public health lens and falls under the objective. it's preventing, detecting, and

responding to water related disease, identifying the most effective interventions. we provide technical assistant to scale up interventions. cdc will use technical assistance, maybe private sector or public seed money to do initial work on a project. if the results are promising, we can then try to hand that off to a partner, like somebody sitting to my left, who might have deep pockets to fund the interventions that could be effective at controlling some of the water borne disease

outbreaks. i think at the end, our goal is really to build global capacity to better prevent and respond to water related health risks. i think the way cdc supports implementation of the global water strategy is through that technical assistance and collaboration. it's really working with partners on the ground to design, implement, and evaluate interventions and leverage resources. we are always looking to strengthen capacity through training and also through global guidance. so whether the world health organization, unicef, academia. so i think we've had a really interesting opportunity over the past five years. i mentioned this concept of global health security and cdc received a large emergency supplemental in 2015 following the ebola outbreak in west africa to really expand our efforts in this area, working with countries to give them the ability to have stronger laboratory systems, have better disease detection capability so

that they could do a better job of controlling infectious disease outbreaks in their countries. i think our representative, tom cole, had a great quote. he said, i'd much rather fight ebola in west africa than west dallas. that's one of the underlying tenants of this concept of global health security. we want to make sure countries that we're partnering with do have the capacity to respond to whatever threats they identify. and these could be water related threats. cholera is a big concern in a lot of the countries where we work. with this global health security agenda resources, they're very flexible dollars. by that, i mean they're not tied to a specific disease. at cdc, a lot of the funding we receive is very much tied to working on hiv/a.i.d.s. or polio eradication. they build this underlying capacity. within global health security, the wash package is aligned with the antimicrobial resistance

package. so we've been able to do a lot of work and to look at wash and really see how that is essential to the concept of infection, prevention, and control, or ipc, which is essential to patient safety and can really control the spread of antimicrobial resistance. if you have people not needing to be put on antibiotics, that's great. so we have been able to do wash assessments. we have been able to invest in improvements in health care facilities in africa. i think there's a great example of some work that we've done in liberia with this global. so i think folks well remember that bye leliberia was one of t countries at the center of the ebola outbreak in 2014. so once that outbreak was controlled and even while it was controlled, cdc was there both

working to control the outbreak and start to work with the liberian government to build up their health system, their public health system. cdc led an initial training on assessing wash conditions in health care facilities. we were then able to continue to provide technical assistance with a local ngo partner and other partners, including the ministry of health and they developed, planned, and implemented ideas. this included new water storage towers, new septic systems, new laundry to mortuary facilities and renovating medical waste disposal facilities. at the end, the pictures are really amazing, sort of the before and after. it was really exciting work. i think some have argued that maybe this was a special case. you know, it's post-ebola. there was a lot of attention. cdc was flooding the zone. we were in liberia with a lot of money. we had the resources to do the work. but i think there are those of us at cdc who really think it's an opportunity. there's a model for really integrating our wash work into

this broader concept of global health security, especially when we look at it from this lens of infection, prevention, and contr control. i think as we look to the next five years of this global health security agenda and we were pleased with the president's budget that included an increase for this work, we're optimistic we can continue to integrate wash into some of these larger initiatives and make a difference. i'll stop there. >> thank you. great. so i just want to similarly thank the wilson center for hosting this event. been really inspiring to have this open. similar to my colleagues, i wanted to zoom out a little bit and contextualize usaid's work.

usaid oversees the implementation with colleagues at the department of state. i just really can't understate the collaborative effort that it took with our colleagues in state oes and the entire interagency water working group to produce the global water strategy. it's really just a huge pleasure to be up here representing the work of many people throughout 2017 to put this together. i believe this was the first whole of government strategy that was released in this administration as it pertains to foreign assistance and diplomacy. we're very, very proud of this work. it's very exciting to be here. i often talk in the interagency water working group about usaid's role and u.s. in particular here in d.c. as

representing a much larger architecture. so i thought it would be useful to con tech chulize that. it really, as they say, does take a village. bonnie spoke a little about usaid being an enabler of all of the great work we're seeing here in the interagency, in many cases, and the team here really is an an enabler of all of that work that goes on across our different missions. that includes our current list of high priority countries and aligned countries. the agency has a direct appropriation pursuant to the water for the world act on water

and sanitation that is up to $435 million now. that doesn't even represent the totality of everything that we are doing on water. my colleague at cdc spoke a little bit to the public health lens through which cdc views water and sanitation in the agency absolutely similarly looks at safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene through that health lens. we also know, though, that water is incredibly cross cutting. it's impossible to talk about water without talking about the other development outcomes it impacts. from economic growth to women's economic empowerment to education, water just touches so many different parts of the agency. our job is to really represent the cutting edge resurgery that's coming out and making sure our programming in the field reflects all of that. it's a big task, but we're very happy to be doing it.

just in terms of where we are in this moment right now, a year-plus since the release of the global water strategy. there's obviously a strong foundation in history of water and sanitation programming within the agency that we're standing on. we've reached well over 30 million people with access to drinking water and over 20 million with access to sanitation since we first started receiving appropriations in 2008. while those numbers are really impressive, they don't tell the whole story. our deputy administrator talked a lot about this new appture that the agency is looking at all of our programming through. that's this journey to self-reliance. we've talked about that a lot throughout the course of foreign assistance, that we need to work ourselves out of a job. directly inserting that as an organizing principle in terms of how we do all of our programming is something that is really,

really being hammered home. in many ways, i think the global water strategy was quite -- to be able to sustain those services and facilitate the journey to self-reliance, we need to be working on a much larger suite of issues. so that's where i personally think it's quite exciting that we have this new strategic objective on governance, finance, and institutions in our agency plan in particular, we're calling out governance and finance and water resources finance management to underpin the sustainability of our investments. i think just from an overall strategic standpoint, the global water strategy is very much on track with the larger policy

agenda that's going on with usaid at the moment. then timing couldn't be better. we have worked over the past year on developing new standard indicators to be able to track governance and finance and water resources management. so while we have historically reported on the number of people gaining access to water and sanitation, we now will be very proactively working with our missions to report on improved institutional strengthening, number of dollars mobilized as a result of our foreign assistance, and then the number of people benefitting from improved water resources management as well. it's an exciting time to really be rounding out this portfolio in response to the changes we see happening. so that's a very high-level framing of just where we are in this moment. but i just wanted to give some texture to these top line

results. our deputy administrator did a fantastic job talking about a plethora of examples of different countries we work in and the contributions you all in the interagency are making. in those countries. just to go through a few, i think it's always good to drill down and note we very much agree with administrator wheeler's point that we need to move beyond pilots. i'm excited -- i feel that we really are working right now to work at scale. a great example we like to talk about a lot is our work in kenya that we think is really hitting on all cylinders across in new strategic framework. if you think of kenya as a continuum of some very fragile areas in the area north to much more mature service providers in

other parts of the country, we've tailored our programming to be able to be responsive to those different types of contexts. in the north, we're working on an activity called kenya rapid. through a much larger integrated platform. it's just -- that is an area of recurrent humanitarian crisis. actually introducing a development activity there that seeks to work directly in partnership with counties through the def lugs process going on in kenya right now has really been transformative. we're starting to see those investments really pay off. so in the 2017 drought that took place in northern kenya as compared to earlier droughts in 2011 and earlier in the 2000s, we saw significantly reduced need for emergency water trucking, which we know is hugely expensive. so really pushing this type of

development work in highly fragile areas is one part of the continuum. as has been mentioned throughout the morning, we are relying on our interagency partners as well. so the u.s. geological survey, in addition to the work in ethiopia, is also working in kenya to map aquifers up there, really looking at that to improve the efficiency rate of drilling, as was mentioned earlier on the panel. so some really exciting examples there. as i mentioned, kenya is geographically diverse, and there's some really exciting opportunities going on in other parts of the country with this devolution agenda where the national government is delegating to the county levels. we have two larger activities there. one is our kenya integrated wash activity that is working directly with counties on

utility reform and performance to enhance their ability to manage their own service delivery over the longer term. to date, that's reached over 600,000 people. we're very, very proud of that. then you'll hear a little more from my colleague, sam houston, from our water sanitation hygiene financing program later on in the day. there are robust financial markets in kenya as well. there is the ability as administrator wheeler was talking about before to leverage private capital and use our foreign assistance strategically to unlock longer term sources of domestic capital to fund the water and sanitation sector longer term. so that's one example that we really like to showcase a lot. i think it shows the full range of context that we're working in. and the power of our interagency partners.

i would be remiss if i did not mention sanitation. we are leveraging our complementary skill sets. so cdc has invested a lot of market research into a kenya limited liability corporation that is seeking to transfer human waste into fuel. they've done a lot of research on how to make that viable. then through our usaid work, we have issued a grant to develop a larg larg larg larger fecal sludge treatment plant. so i think that's a really nice example of the interagency using our respective skill sets to make a larger difference. two other super quick examples that i thought just would be nice to talk about to showcase the full range of activities that we're involved in.

the water for the world act, in addition to interagency collaboration, really calls for the agency to more deliberately leverage and coordinate with our other donor partners as well. so this is something that we haven't talked about as much today. but in nigeria, there's some very promising work. it's early stage right now. just to kind of paint the picture, nigeria is one of the only countries we've seen since the global baseline on access to water and sanitation where access rates have actually declined. so access to piped water in urban areas have declined from 32% in 1990 to just 7% now. skbrus just a shocking figure. we, in response to that, have awarded this past year a large $60 million technical assistance package working with state water boards on utility reform and

turnaround. i think what's cool and important to highlight about this is we didn't just go and select six state water boards. we put out a tender seeking to -- with key criteria for selection of these state water boards, chief among them being their own commitment to co-invest in the process and their political commitment to utility turnaround. that's all taking place within the context of our multilateral partners coming in with very, very large infrastructure investments. our technical assistance on utility reform stands to leverage millions and millions of dollars in multilateral assistance. so i think this is just another really nice example of what we're doing under the strategy with our donor partners as well. on that piece of infrastructure or in relation to infrastructure, our

collaboration with mcc, i think there's a lot of strong potential there. it was mentioned earlier on the panel that there's a very strict five-year timeline on a lot of these compacts. we face that too in a lot of our programming. excited to note that in the wake of this large compact, our mission is looking at longer term technical assistance to make sure the government has the capacity to manage and finance and maintain that infrastructure longer term. so those are just three examples. i mentioned there's 40-plus missions we're working in. certainly just wanted to give a little snippet.

in alignment with the strategic framework we've put out in the global strategy, we know there are significant portions of the world where access to water and sanitation services lag. so principally in sub issaharan africa. that can have significant drags on economies. to get to higher levels of service is hugely expensive and requires host country ownership to really facilitate that journey to self-reliance. so we are similarly committed, as was mentioned by mcc, to private sector engagement, institutional reform and governance, and financing. really just a commitment to learning from all of our programming so there's a strong feedback loop in making sure we can improve our programming moving forward. >> thank you, jeff. appreciate it. well, i appreciate all the panelists. i have some -- we have some time

for some questions. i have questions as well. there are 32 of them. so i'm not going to ask any questions. i want to come right to the audience. we have microphones on both sides. if you have a question or two, let's do that now. we've got about 15 -- 10 minutes or so. to my right here, there are two questions here. >> so my name is linda. the question is this. as you all have stated, water knits it all together. at the same time, every detail is also very important. in the news today, there are two items within a five-minute newscast about the midwest and the flooding and the typhoon, the scale of the wind of the typhoon in africa. when will the water sector act

in a way that scales up the activity with each of you that's to detailed and so exkwquisite d accurate and right on in terms of working with counties, working with water boards. using your intelligence, when will there be a way to scale up the activity to meet the reality of what's happening around us, costing billions of dollars and affecting people all over. i wonder if the role of science is important, getting the science out to more people, or if there's a way to bill a bridge to the tech firms that have so much money and that are equally concerned and functioning well in a functional world that we scale up the way we get our funding to maximize the intelligence with which each of you and everyone in this room is contributing to the success

in the slow way we get there between sustainable development goals in the international community to the global water strategy here. it's brilliant. it needs to be scaled up rapidly. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> tim, can i impose upon you to take that first? >> sure. i greatly appreciate the question. my first response is how better do we equip the people on the ground? wherever those are at, we can think in theory o long way away. in the midwest, right, the flooding that's going on there, and at the same time i'm dealing with drought in other regions that are not that far away on a map, but yet it's a lifetime for people and where they're at. i think a big part of what both bureau of reclamation and u.s. geological survey are doing is trying to provide the science and technology, the forecasting, that modeling to really start to

equip the experts on the ground on how then do they actually -- because they're there -- to really resource the people in those different situations, whether it's drought, whether it's flooding, and/or whether they're in the middle of an in between. how can they manage those water and those resources they're equipped with? >> let me impose upon jonathan as well, maybe some brief comments. then we'll move to a second question. >> sure. maybe just briefly building on that. for mcc, you know, our model really dictates where we work and what we do, but where we are intervening in a sector, even if it's not the water sector, we do take steps to make sure we draw from the experience and knowledge, you know, in the u.s., in other agencies to integrate climate resilient infrastructure, looking at capacity on the ground to deal with some of these things. knowledge sharing is a big thing and also learning from our, peern

peer -- experiences and what worked and what didn't. >> i know we had a second question here as well. please. >> good morning. at the wilson center, >> good morning, john upton. i have a difficult question. to your panel, dod isn't here, the white house counsel isn't here, the intelligence community isn't here, so what's your angle? we heard from president wheeler this morning the president saying it's very important. how do we get people interested? is there a global security angle? is there a weaponizing water angle? i'm just throwing things out here. second, serena mentioned cholera. what more could you guys do from an interagency perspective to not just sort of react and respond to cholera or other related diseases or figure out

where they might happen, figure out where they will happen and get ahead of it. >> on maybe the cholera question first. we've had conversations with the world health organization about making sure we're utilizing the oral cholera vaccine when we do have outbreaks, but i think that in many ways is the band-aid. there is an underlying issue that's contributing to the cholera outbreaks. if we ignore what we need to do in the wash area, we're just going to keep having the cholera outbreaks come back. there is agreement we need to address the underlying issue. i think how to use data in a more effective fashion is something the agency is also very interested in. the previous questioner talked about tech companies, this concept of big data. there is so much data out there. is there a way to use it, analyze it so you could be more predictive and get ahead of a cholera outbreak before it really turns into an outbreak? i think that's something our agency is very interested in.

the cdc director has made it one of his priorities for his tenure to really think about bigger and better ways the cdc can use all the different surveillance systems that we have, which, like a good federal government agency often has very specific systems tied to a funding line, but how can we make sure that data is shared and gives you a better picture. >> yes. on the nfc question, i think that the political prioritization, irrespective of whether it's here in the u.s. or any of our other high priority countries, or any country for that matter, i find that having worked in the water sector for a while now, our propensity is to talk very technically. we love to kind of get in the weeds and talk about the technical nuance. but i think that for this to be elevated and prioritized in the way that it needs to be, we

really do need to work on some event messaging. so whether that is the typical health security agenda, i think the quote i'd rather work on it in africa than dallas, my mind instantly went to the world banks' high and dry report that came out last year that noted, we referenced this in the global water strategy, that economists could see their gdp shrink from 8 to 6%, thereby decreaincreasi state fragility. that's what we need to do better as a community putting out there. on the cholera question, and certainly echoing that, i think we have some really strong instances of great collaboration. my colleague rick gelting is in the audience and my colleagothe

colleague and i did work to transition from programming by the nisd. that's one example, but i think there are longer examples we could build on as we look at it the. cholera is present. >> john, i think we'll be following up on that a little further, so i look forward to maybe talking with you off line. let's take a question from that side of the auditorium. thank you. >> hi. thank you all so much for being here. my name is katy lackey with the u.s. water alliance. administrator wheeler mentioned that the water issues we're facing today many people attribute to climate change, but the roots of those issues actually go way deeper and have been around for a long time. i agree with that, but i also know and have seen that climate

change creates a whole different ball game. it drives up the costs of the water issues that we're facing, the risks, and it brings incredible sense of urgency to our infrastructure and the water challenges you all are working on. can you speak a little about how you see climate change factoring into the u.s. global water strategy and/or your work f? for any of the speakers. >> i'll leave it to the first. >> i can take that. we know that shocks and stresses that are faced throughout many of the countries we're working in are all water related. drou droughts, floods, it was laid out in the introductory remarks. they're having too little or too much water. we know that is becoming

increasingly acute. the current trajectory in the agency is to look at this through a resilience lens and how we build the resilience capabilities of households, communities and systems within countries to withstand shocks and stresses. so this is something we are very, very much working on. as far as climate data, too, this is integrated into a lot of our programming, so in the philippines, for example, our be secure program is working directly with water utilities on efficient use of water services through use of climate data. so there are lots of examples of where we are using climate data to improve service delivery, but then also looking at how we can use the aperture of resilience through water structures. it's definitely on the forefront of our thing as we're designing and implementing programs.

>> any other comments? >> i was just going to add, i think at cdc there is a lot of work that does look at the relationship between climate and health, and clearly it's not just water issues. you can look at vector-born issues, food, security issues. i think there is a lot of work that goes on to better understand that dynamic and hopefully use that to better inform programming. >> maybe just a few things briefly. for mcc, we do systemically screen all of our programs for impacts related to climate change, both in terms of how our programs may effect climate change and how climate change may affect our program. with regard to infrastructure, we want to make sure it's resilient. we have a good example from the philippines where we integrated climate change considerations into a coastal road that was later hit by a typhoon. it actually survived because we integrated larger drainage systems that then became a

conduit for supplies post typhoon. so we try to do that in our infrastructure, but where appropriate, we will also look for ways to build capacity into the governments, the institutions that are managing the infrastructure and carrying out the programs, whether that's providing support for data gathering, monitoring, water resources, water levels or other, you know, other climate-related data as it relates to what that organization's goal is. >> i'll just make one final comment on that. the importance of at least within the united states governments to be working together with the state and local governments, all of these areas that deal with climate, you have some agencies that are focused on trying to deal with flooding, so they're trying to move water out of the system, and you have an agency or a bureau like reclamation which is you want to hold as much because you're trying to offset drought. so working together becomes critical on balancing all of

these aspects of infrastructure, on climate and climate variability. it's all going to be part of that constantly. you're interacting and then you have to take it to that local level. that's why over 99% of reclamation staff are actually across the whole western united states in those 17, 18 states are critical for that interaction. >> thank you. a sign of a wonderful panel is that you want more. i know i want more, hence my 30-something questions i'll be sending in an email. i will not do that. but what a fantastic first panel for the morning. we have the second panel coming up. but will you please thank tim, jonathan, serena and jeff for an outstanding presentation. >> thank you. >> now i'm going to switch to the podium and we will continue the program.

we're switching to the second panel. i'm going to introduce the moderator of the panel. the moderator will then introduce the panelists as we switch out here. while we transition, please allow me to introduce our next moderator. our moderator is tom harvey. tom is the chairman of the global environment and technology program foundation, a non-profit foundation he founded over 30 years ago, which specializes in environment environmental technology, commercialization and water access solutions. prior to starting his own company, tom spent 20 years in a senior position at the white house, national security council, department of defense and congress. please welcome to the stage mr. tom harvey.

tom? [ applause ] >> well, good morning. it's been a great morning so far. i thought the first presentations were absolutely superb. substanti substantive, meaningful, and you could tell the visitors really cared about this topic. this is an enormous topic. that's why we're here. we're going to get our panelists up here shortly. i'll tell you a little bit more about them in just a bit. but first i also want to thank, on behalf of not just our organizations, global environmental technology foundation, the u.s. partnership and the global water challenge, but all the organizations that are participating in this important topic. i want to thank aid and state and wilson and epa for bringing

us together. actually following up on it to see if anything is happening? that's really important, and there's so much more we can do. i have to congratulate the administration for getting this done. it's hard to pull these things together. it's hard not just making recommendations but trying to find consensus. and to have 20 organizations that came together and made their inputs and made this happen, that's really significant. and we shouldn't lose sight of that. and what we do with the strategy now, that's the key question. how do we take it and how do we really make it come alive? one thing, and all of those that are participating from the administration that i would recommend and we've been recommending for a while, is let's make the u.s. water strategy part of the national security strategy of the united states. when you elevate it to that level, everyone is paying attention to it. so we've got a great start, but let's take it that next step.

it's really important to do that. it's hard to keep our focus on the global water crisis when there's so many other things happening. there's so many other crises happening. we see them in the newspaper and in the headlines all the time. but we have to keep our focus there because the water crisis isn't going away, it's only going to get more challenging. the crisis is real, and we can make progress. this strategy is progress. and we should celebrate that and use that. one of the really satisfying things that we've been able to do with our group is to be part of this u.s. water partnership that was started seven years ago. secretary clinton started it. it was intended to create a platform for collaboration, for government and private sector to work on global water challenges

together. and so we've been able to do that, and i'm just going to shout out chuck shadevitz, who was our first director, made a huge contribution and now he's taking that work over to the u.s. chamber of commerce. so we're spreading it even further with chuck's help. and we ever chris rich as our new executive director of the u.s. partnership. we're very excited where the partnership is headed from here. we have 120 members. we are bringing the u.s. government and the private sector together to bring the in ingenuity and the skills that can make a difference on this issue. one of the panel is in the water experts program. and three of those panelists

have been part of the water experts program. it's significant. we've been able to help countries and communities on four couldnntinents meeting the water challenges. you'll see from some of the experiences our panel has had that they've made significant contributions. i would now like to ask the panel to come on up front, if you wouldn't mind, and we'll get going on the panel. you heard just before about what happens on the ground. these are the folks that know what happens on the ground because they're out there every day making this work come alive and helping communities do even better. we will have a chance for questions after, so i'd like to get right to it. i want to take a minute and talk

about each of these panelists as i introduce them, because their experience you need to understand. these panelists have a broad range of experience and they brought it to the benefit of the water challenge program and they're making a difference in meeting these global challenges. jerry bailiff on my left is the director for hydraulic science. he's a former chief scientist of water at the usgs and spent 25 years in managing the north carolina water science center. in 2016, he led a u.s. partnership hydrology sustainability and water quality data workshop in south africa. and he's currently engaged in the lower macon initiative river program and will be making a deal on behalf of the water partnership.

we really appreciate your help over the years. meghan is at the state college in colorado and is critical in teaching across the area. she's worked throughout the world with indigenous peoples using participatory mapping approaches. as a water expert with the u.s. water partnership, she worked to improve the u.s. partnership in nairobi, kenya. in 2018 she conducted a watershed assessment in java, indonesia, for the u.s. partnership and will be going to ethiopia in may to conduct a similar project on the zobaba river. thank you for your contributions over the years. we brought sam here on purpose

because of his significant experience as a partner with a.i.d. and other organizations in finding business solutions to help improve the water systems across the globe. sam's got 15 years of project manager experience in water supply, infrastructure, financing, urban sanitation, utility reform, business planning, corporatization, resource management -- it goes on and on, the list. and presently he's serving as the chief of party, as jeff mentioned, for u.s.a.i.d.'s water sanitation and hydrogen finance wash fin project. last but not least, barney, it's great to see you. thank you for coming. barney has worked in the field of water resources for more than 25 years. if you add up all this experience, it's pretty impressive. specializing in water supply

planning, hiydrology and hydraulics. he's formerly director of the texas water board and he's now ceo of agua systems. in 2017, barney was a u.s. water expert in morocco where they were focused on improving water quality. jerry, i'm going to ask you to kick it off. they're going to talk for 7 or 8 minutes and then we'll have the time for questions. please hold your questions until that time. jerry, please. >> so this experience with the u.s. water partnership has been a great one for me personally and i think for many of my colleagues. i was told that i was the second participant in the water experts program and that i likely will be the last participant in the water experts program when i go

to laos in may. i think the program is transitioning to a new format. so this has been really good for me. i went in 2016 as chief scientist for water usgs and now go in 2019 representing more than 130 universities in the u.s. and internationally that conduct education and research and water activities. south africa, a country of about 59 million people, about twice the size of texas. about a fourth of the people don't have access to clean water. you've heard about the drought in capetown that seems to have ended, but, you know, capetown's city water managers use a very effective approach to count down to day zero, right? so if you were following this, every day is like 100 days to day zero, and it got down to

maybe 30 or 40 days to day zero when there would be no more water in capetown. so there was a crisis there. part of the issue was a three-year drought that was would be expected to occur once every 300 years. part of it was just water management because capetown essentially doubled in size in the last 20 years, but their storage capacity had not changed. so my mission was to work with some water agencies in south africa on kind of a data system. the u.s. has a science and technology exchange committee with south africa focused on health, space science. south africa is really important for space science because of their location on the globe and telescope systems.

advanced materials, energy, agriculture and water. so this science and technology exchange which had been underway and they were meeting, you know, b dir biannually was a really key part in launching our activity in the country. we went over, it was me and a colleague from the corps of engineers, went over to meet with the water research commission, the council for geosciences which is kind of like the u.s. geological survey in the u.s. they had a focus on water quality and mining. the department of water and sanitation and then the council for science and industrial research. so the issue was kind of how to stand up a water and climate data system for the country. in south africa and not entirely unlike in this country, data

systems are just kind of a boring old measuring water in its many forms and its many places. it's difficult to sustain. so in the last 20 years, for example, in south africa, the number of stations measuring rainfall decreased from 4,000 to 750. a dramatic decrease in the number of stations measuring rainfall. sustaining data, which is kind of the theme of what i -- you know, the point i want to make here is difficult. i've seen new administrations come and go and they have their missions and this is all great. sustaining water collection is not particularly sexy, but it's expensive, and so, you know, it's not a new initiative. there are new ways to measure water, but, you know, in terms of a whole new initiative, it's

difficult to convince people that we need to maintain these systems and that we need to maintain the infrastructure to allow the systems to be robust and to allow the data to be used by whomever. so we worked with these issues with the two major programs in south africa, we worked with them to help plan a road map for the requirements of water data collection, their experiences and our experiences and best practices to strengthen r&b cooperation between the two countries and then to develop a path for this water data center. one of the outcomes of this meeting, of this event, was a follow-up with south africa with u.s. experts at usgs and

reclamation and other places during this intense drought in the southern part of the country. so there was some payoff there. so, you know, kind of back to the data idea. water data sharing really is a path to understanding, a path to diplomacy among countries. while i was with usgs, i know usgs is involved with sharing data on the island of cypress which is divided between greece and turkey. this water data sharing activity helped in diplomacy. the u.s. helped facilitate water data sharing between israel and jordan, right? so sharing data across countries' transparency really improves understanding and diplomacy. i was at a meeting in central asia in 2015, and all the

central agent countries were there. uzbekistan didn't make it because of travel difficulties, so imagine having all of these central agent countries where water is really an issue because of higher prior development, because of climate change, but having them all in the room talking about water data sharing. so if nothing else, making water data transparent, i can see yours and you can see mine, is really important. i worked in a country in southern asia, which i won't name, and we were trying to help develop a flood forecasting system, and the agency that clegtd t collect the rainfall data and the agency that collected the streaming data would not share

information. it is really seen as a priority. it's really important, regardless of what we do, making our water data transparent and shareable, as we like to say, making water data fair which is findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable, right? that's kind of the message that i want to convey here. that's the reason we're going to the macon river commission and engaging them, is to encourage countries, organizations to share their water data. >> thank you, jerad. that was excellent. mel? >> i think i have to stand up. >> whatever. >> i'm embarrassed to say i'm the only one with a powerpoint,

but i am a professor so i think that gives me that right. thanks so much for the opportunity to talk about my experience as a water expert in the water expert program for the u.s. water partnership. i want to talk about two different projects that i've participated in, one in the nairobi river basin in nairobi, kenya and one in the river basin in indonesia. these are two water sheds with severe water problems related to waste management, water quality, river basin management, industrial locations and formal development, unplanned urban activities. on the left here you can see the nairobi river basin, one of the tributaries to the river there. this is plastic and you can really walk on water. you can walk on water because there is so much plastic in the river system. on the right you can see the factories right on the river

where water is directly discharged into the river system despite rules and regulations to say this shouldn't be able to happen. this is the context that we're talking about and the profoundness that i think is reflected in this slide. so i was asked to conduct a watershed assessment and determine how best for communities to participate and for the programs being implemented based upon an extensive water management planning that had been undertaken in both watersheds. there had been a very strong program in place, a lot of discussions had been done by communities, by ministries, by external international aid organizations coming in to say, here's a water management plan that we want to implement. so many of the recommendations and basin activities are closely linked to the u.s. global water strategy, so i've tried to highlig highlight these throughout this presentation. in the first instances what we looked at was assessing the institutional capacity. i think this has come up several

times this morning. looking at the issues of water reform. how do we really understand how to work with local leaders and government agencies to discuss these projects that are being undertaken and to ensure that key elements of a successful institutional capacity is evident here. so things where we're able to have communication between government offices where we're looking at a higher level of community engagement and how to make that happen, ensuring that we have upstream/downstream collaboration because we know there are linkages between a stream system. local government commitment, how strong is it? and again, looking at how this links to our overall strategic approach in terms of engagement and diplomacy. an important part of this, and again, this comes through all the presentations we've seen, is conducting research and doing scientific analyses. so conducting research on key issues within the basin, looking atwater quality, water flows, do we have enough gauges? are there essential baseline

data and where do we find that baseline data? everything you said, jerad, resonates with me, and i happen to think data can be really sexy, so let's really get at it and really think about how we can manage this data issue, because that's what it's all about if we're going to be able to do this sort of planning thing. so ensuring we have good partnerships with universities, developing internships for those students at universities to have some pipeline between the universities and governments where we're developing the next generation of water managers. and then the whole issue of data development in terms of identifying these complex data sets that are meeting but also building on the technology that is needed to build these data sets. are we looking at open source data? are we looking at open source tools? these sorts of things that facilitate how we can manage and develop data and engage the

community in collecting that data which is something that's going on around the world. this is really -- to be able to have these kinds of data sets is essential for doing comparative analysis and signs where we can look across different cities, different countries, different locations to figure out what do we know about the water there? what's working in one place and isn't working in another place? these sorts of things are what we can pull out of these kinds of projects that have enabled me to go to these different sites. building upon technical partnerships where we're looking to look at the relationship between government, universities and community to develop all these different sorts of issues. this is complex and this is a lot of stuff. and this costs a lot of money. so we're looking at infrastructure, we're looking atwater quality monitoring, which means ta long-term investment. we're looking at how we manage wastewater treatment as well as storm runoff which often is treated differently in these countries. and again, the importance of

data management. something that hasn't been discussed as much but i think underlies a lot of what we're talking about is ensuring that we look at the river system as a key participant as well, who speaks for the river, who understands what is needed for that river to function and provide for the services so important to our human health. what are our ecosystem services? what do we need to ensure flood plain management? are we developing riparian zones? are we looking to the rivers and parks to provide some of these things? if the river is jammed up in one place, what happens to those upstream/downstream relationships? looking for -- really looking at a community engagement, and this is something i work a lot on with participatory mapping and understanding what are the issues of the local communities? are the government programs, are these big river system projects, management across the entire watershed doing their due

diligence in talking to local communities and really understand what their issues are and how they need to be engaged and included in this effort. if we don't include the community, then it makes for a more difficult way to implement some of these activities. and then this relationship with not only schools but how can the industry benefit from the energy derived from lakes and rivers but how we can make a relationship that's longlasting? i would have to say with respect to thinking about this, we're able to look at the relationship of water with local data with these communities to understand the role of civic technology, civic technology meaning the technology in the hands of the communities and how they can participate, looking at identifying common problems as well as shared goals, and how we might talk about this.

it puts me in a very good position to be able to go to different places and share these results and outcomes from these different programs and to be able to say, this is working in one place and these are good lessons learned and benefits derooid derived that we might be able to discuss for the particular location we're looking at here. just a few closing comments that solutions are cyclical, they are not linear, that we need to look at identifying these waste streams and how to manage these multiple waste streams, how we can really engage the communities and engage local businesses as well as ensuring we have trans-agency collaboration. a long-term commitment is essential. most of these programs that i've assessed to date have a 7-year timeline on them. and they think that's long term. do you think that's long term? i don't think that's long term enough. so we need to really think about what is the timeline on this and what is the funding that's available to be able to

facilitate these programs to make these things be implemented and to have something important come out of them. we need to also ensure that there is accountability and responsibility at the different levels to ensure that the deliverables are made on a timeline and a basis that's being met so that everyone can see there is a return to this and something that's coming out of it. and finally, these projects have the potential to build trust in government in locations that do not have trust in government. so this is something really important and something that has not come up in some of the other presentations, is the role of corruption across governments and how we can ensure that this is being addressed in some way so that we can build the trust that's needed to facilitate these programs and make them successful. thank you. [ applause ] >> melinda, thank you. that was terrific. thanks for the slides.

it really pops it up when you see a picture. it's amazing. sam, would you mind being next? >> thank you very much for inviting me to be on the panel. i represent the u.s.a.i.d. funding project which stands for chicago financial aid project. we are a program that's mobilized on finding greater financial resources for the sector. with the ultimate goal of closing the financial gap for the sector, which is a pretty significant and sometimes overwhelming objective. just to put some perspective on the development challenge there, it was reference ad a few timesn opening remarks, but it's been estimated that $114 billion, billion with a b, annually is required between now and 2030 to reach universal access for water and sanitation. that's three times current investment levels, and that's a pretty significant amount of money to begin to think about,

and it's something that needs to be put in perspective. because what's quite clear is business as usual is not going to fill the financing gap for universal access. so thinking about this a little bit, there is not a single country in the world that has reached universal access without significant public investment into water and sanitation. now, many of those examples from oecd countries that have reached universal access have complemented that public investment with private sector investment, whether it's going to the bond market, bpp models or crowding in private sector and investment in one way or another has often come pplement the sector but it has always been driven by the public sector. so they're looking for solutions on closing the financial gap by

mobilizing and encouraging public investment but also looking for opportunities to blend in and expand the utilization of private finance for sector infrastructure. so we have a portfolio of seven country activities. our typical technical assistance program includes a small team of technical advisers in each of our countries. we have programs in senegal, south africa, kenya, mozambique, nepal, cambodia and the philippines, and today i'd like to highlight just two examples. i'll start out with the sanitation example from senegal and they have a water example from the philippines before i wrap up my remarks. so our program -- or one of our activities in senegal is focused on providing transaction facilitation to private sanitation service providers in the country. so the government of senegal has made investments in non-sewerage

sanitation infrastructure. this is wastewater and sludge disposal facilities. those facilities have historically not been very well managed and inefficiently operated, and the government has recently decided it wanted to transition the operation of these facilities to private operators. so we're working with these private operators to help them respond to government tenders and business opportunities to expand their business, and also opportunities to expand their businesses to serving more household customers. so in order to be able to do this, we're working with those service providers to flesh out their business systems, look at their balance sheets, look at their capacity to take on local debt and facilitating the process of them submitting loan applications to local banks for local currency borrowing in the country. so so far this has resulted in us working with providers to

submit loan applications for over $3.9 million and we have potentially another $5 million in local lending transactions in the pipeline. so that's an example of the types of things that we're working on in the sanitation space. and then moving on to the philippines example where we're working with the government of the philippines to help them operationalize what they're calling the unified financing framework. so the government of the philippines a couple decades ago, in their effort to begin to mobilize resources for meeting the millennium development goals, started steering their creditworthy tools toward financing infrastructure. this ultimately resulted in the philippines water revolving fund. this fund, with assistance from both usa to south africa

included international examples including the u.s. state revolving funds but also some pooled bond mechanisms that u.s.a.i.d. had supported the rollout of in india. so that experience sharing created the framework for the creation of the philippines water revolving fund which became 2008 and 2015 mobilized an estimated $200 million for investment into the sector benefiting over 6 million people. the pwrf informed the long-term financing policy for the government of the philippines, and the government's thinking about how to evolve that thinking to expand access -- or to work toward the goal of the universe, so ak swhaes they are calling the unified financing framework. the unified financing framework

objective that we're supporting the government on continues to leverage private sector investment. but it also includes some additional aspects including i viability gap. if an organization only got 80%, the government would come in and supply 20% to match the funding requirements from local capital markets. that's the second example i wanted to highlight today. just a few takeaway messages as i wrap up. when we're thinking about private sector engagement into this -- for the sector, we also need to think about private capital. there seems to be quite a bit of

private capital sitting on the sideline not invested into the sector because of perceived risks. those risks are often real, and working on those risks is critical to ensuring that capital is unlocked for sector investment. so u.s.a.i.d.'s journey to self reliance matters not only to water and sanitation providers, but it also matters to investors. incorporating finance require not only buyers, it requires sufficient lenders. the flow of funds often depends on perceptions and realities of increasing levels of financial autonomy, governance and sector capacity. so if you don't mind, as i wrap up, i just wanted to go tlut underlying principle p, because

they quite clearly contribute to uchl u.s.a.i.d.'s government objectives. we laid out service providers that are fundamental to unlocking government for the sector. models are most efficient for expanding and offering services. building creditworthiness improves sectors for the officer. private planning is subject for both private investment. the company needs to be strong for the culture, ask finall-- a

finally, thank you very much. >> sam, thank you very much for that. it's clear if we're going to make sustainable progress on the water crisis issue, finance has got to be a critical, upfront situation. how are we going to pay for it? thank you very much. barney? >> thank you. i'm going to talk about iraq and my experience over there, but before i started i wanted to offer just a quick correction. you introduced me as the director of the texas water board, and i actually was just a director of the surface water division, not the entire agency. >> always looking for a promotion for you. >> the former director is a good friend of mine, just in case he's watching. >> thank you for the correction. >> by the way, i love that title of water expert. water experts are a great title to have. my parents usually introduce me as a water expert, normally while rolling their eyes. i think i'm going to get a business card developed with water expert on it.

but on my background at the texas water development board where i was director of the surface water division, i was in charge of a number of different programs all related to water. basins, streams, lakes and also part of the planning initiative that the state implements and runs. that whole program is interesting for a number of people interested in droughts. texas has been doing this for about 60 years and has seen a 180-degree shift in the way they do water supply planning. although that shift didn't come about because of me, i was there to experience that shift and the reasons for that shift to better be able to implement water strategies to address drought. in fact, that's something other states are interested in as well. back to iraq. actually, before i went to iraq,

i went with this same program to morocco and talked to them about environmental planning and water flows and things like that. it was a very interesting interaction i had with oni, the agency that i spoke with. but in iraq, let me paint a picture real quick on the water resources situation. many of you probably know this already, but iraq as a country is fairly water rich, certainly for a middle eastern country. it has much more water than any other middle eastern country, primarily as a result of flows from the tigress and the euphrates basin. however, those basins originate out of the country. they originate in turkey and iran, to a large extent. but over 90% of the surface water that iraq receives originates from out of the country. as you can understand, that's a situation that makes them very vulnerable. turkey and iran are building

dams at a great rate, and they are, in some instances, diverting rivers into large swaths of now agricultural land, and that's resulting in less and less water coming into iraq for their availability. in fact, if you look at the hyd hydrologic trends on both of those rivers, the trends are alarming. there is a very rapid decrease in the amount of water that iraq is receiving and is then able to use. they do not have access to much groundwater. there is a little bit in the northern part of the country, but as a whole, groundwater is not a viable alternative. so with that in mind, i was invited to deliver a series of 19 workshops over a period of 14 days, kind of a whirlwind tour of the country. started in baghdad, went down to ezra, down to earlville. they were held in government

agencies, they were held in town halls, they were held for members of the public to participate. i also spoke with some farmers unions and some other people. a lot of very interested, very engaged people participating in those workshops typically had q and a systems that landed. how do you mean -- in order to be water sustainable for your region. it's another to get the funding and get the permits in place to actually be able to construct one of those projects, particularly in a place like iraq. you know, what's very, very obvious when you tour the country there is that they had an enormous brain drain that started in the early 1980s.

a lot of the people that knew how tht, and the water resources of the country are no longer in eye remark, able to function and able. they still have investors treating the. let's go back to the water resources situation in iraq again. tiger in the euphrates business in, most of that water. that's a big deal. when i found out, i couldn't believe it. apparently there is a memo. that memo is not followed. turkey has said, well, when you guys start using your water more efficiently, then we'll make sure you get enough water.

in some respects, it's hard to argue with that because iraq still uses flood irrigation to irrigate their crops. they're not doing it very efficiently, they're paying attention to soil health, they don't have serious irrigation systems in place. remember, than any other middle kirnt to do with many. they're exporting agriculture because they're using rg. there's room to fwhork iraq to make more efficient use of their water, but we have to get there. it's going to require significant data collection, significant mord, which is the

federal level agency r. they're like, we had a model. the corps of engineers built us a reticent model but nobody knows how to use it anymore, and by the way, it's out of date. so they're using monitoring at certain gauges that are in operation. many of them are not the operation anymore. when will i was doing my tufr arpd the country -- actual, prior to that, i was looking for the management in and there's

not any data. couldn't find any models, couldn't find any data. i insisted on doing a couple field trips while i was doing my tour, and i was able to shut out the river between the euphrates and the tigress. i have a better perspective that they're dealing. many. sometimes that's treated, sometimes it's chblt sometimesly. 130,000 hospitalizations due to gerardia. when they have a dry civilization, and it pushes it

back up into those water intakes. i had a meeting this morning with the state department to talk about possible solutions for bozra. but when i went to the northern part of the country as well, i was fortunate enough to visit one of the rivers and there is a huge landfill site there that is slipping into the river. and so all of that waste as it's being piled on top of the pile is sliding into the river, and of course that waste, and there's industrial waste that the landfill will accept as well and that's not containing, it's also going to the river and the communities downstream. this is a tributary of the tigress river. they do not have good management of either solid waste or liquid waste. that's another one of the challenges they're dealing with. those water treatment plants and wastewater treatment plants are frankly dilapidated.

many people in the southern part of the country have not finished elementary school. that is the level of education of the folks that are providing safe water to the community, and that's one of the other reasons that are fine if. no one has offered them any training and they don't know how to run these plants effectively. i know i'm running out of time. i wanted to say that since my trip to iraq last summer, someone in the workshop suggested i work as a technical adviser on the program they have running over there. it's a five-year program in theory. since my series of workshops iver been providing technical support on that program to the iraqi government. at the moment particularly focused on bozra.

but for me it's been very rewarding to be able to, after that series of lectures, go back and work with the iraqi government and u.s.a.i.d. at finding solutions to the water crisis, particularly in the southern part of the country, but also throughout the rest of the country. >> that's great. thank you so much, barney. thank you. [ applause ] >> we have time for some questions and we'll follow the same format in front of us. if you don't mind telling us your name and who you're with and we'll go from there. right there in the middle. richard, i'll get to you. i'm sorry. >> hello. i'm lucas. i'm a graduate student from c y copenhagen and this is a fascinating place for me to be. talking both about the water and

education sectors working together, it was discussed in this panel and the panel before. i would like to know what you see are the chances and challenges in these cross-sector approaches to solving the crisis in the water. >> thank you very much. mel, do you want to start with that one? >> cross-sector approach? >> yeah. >> sure. i think a cross-sector approach is essential, and i think building it on a sound database is one way to do that. i think geospatial data provide a great platform to intersect data we have not been able to intersect before. having said that, i think it's absolutely essential to look at the appropriate scale, and this local scale data is what's missing in some of the work that we do. we're pretty good at getting global data sets, looking at regional data sets, but getting down to the local level, i think, is essential to be able to look at these cross-sectoral

issues that come out of this nexus approach. >> anyone else want to comment further? >> i'll just say that governance is absolutely critical for investment. what's frustrating about looking at the sector is the requirements for infrastructure are overwhelming and quite expensive, and what you hear from private investors is that there is a lot of capital sitting on the sidelines. it's not by mistake that the safest investments in the world are investing in japanese utilities and some of the worst are investing in nigerian utilities. the government underpins everything. the capital is there on the private side, the question is can we get the governments to unlock some of that money and blend in public investment to make that money affordable for rolling out finance for the infrastructure we need.

>> i'll get to you right in a second. richard? >> my name is rick gelting. i work for the centers of disease prevention now, and part of what i did with stream gaugi. and when i would talk to people, sort of, you know, well, that's kind of interesting. you get to work outside. but what's the point? so that began my career explaining what i do to relatives. but i mean what i would tell people sometimes every time it rains and you drive your car, you're relying on that data to not get flooded on the road how so how do weet g get the public realize this data underlies all of our infrastructure, not just water and it is couple bling not only here but other countries as

well. how do we engage that conversation? thanks. >> do you want to address the question? >> i think when agencies talk to policy makers, that the policy makers here are self-interested at some level, right? if i'm usgs and i go to congress and talk about stream gauging, i'm seen as not as an unbiased third party. so i think that, you know, we need, we, the water community, need advocates across the community that can communicate this and so i think that's why the u.s. water partnership, and now chuck's work at the chamber of commerce, having the business community, having the emergency management community, having them speak to the value of this information, it probably resonated more than, you know, the people who collect the data, going to ask for more money, to collect more data.

so i think that's a key piece of the activity. >> thank you. >> i'm going to add something to that. it's particularly important in countries like iraq where they're making really important decision, well, it's true here of course, but they're trying to make really important decisions wut that data and without the numerical models that that data feeds into, but when you talk to the policy folks, it is hard to make that argument and it's not to start by i need this stream gauge, i need to build this model over here, and the question is i need the scream gauge because it will save you money or prevent a water crisis or something like that. they need a more tangible output, more tangible connection to that data, for it to sink in and for them to appreciate it. >> right. thank you. we had a question here in the front. >> matt smith, i'm a consultant.

looking at the pictures of younger people getting engaged in this, and then also, barney's comments on how they've lost all sorts of technical expertise, is there any thought of maybe investing in the next generation of water specialists? i don't see the department of education here, but something, you know, i see a lot of infrastructure, but do we do training of people? do we build up capacity of countries to understand how important water is, you know, human sustain ability is my, might be something to really think about. thanks. >> really important. >> each of you have experienced this in the different countries you've gone to. who would like to bring that up? you want to talk about that? linda? >> yes, absolutely. if anything, that's one of the strongest things that's come out of the various projects i work on around the world, that there is a strong investment in youth in terms of getting them educated and trained.

and if anything, it's giving me more hope about the future, because there's a strong student body out there, and they are essentially our sustain ability drivers for the future. they are the ones who are going to make things happen. each of these programs that i have assessed have a strong youth component, as well as trying to build on this connection to government internships and opportunities for creating a pipeline from k-12, to university, to the governing structure. so i think there's a lot happening. i'll let mi colleagues comment. >> anyone else? >> so i would just say that, you know, in addition to what linda said, there's value in engaging the citizen, the citizenry, and science, right? and so i came from an organization that was very meticulous about data collection, and i'm in a different place now, so where

you stand depends on where you sit, right? but i think that engaging people in science, and in science activities, and volunteer monitoring, all of those things really, i think, build community across the board. across the generations. from the elementary school students, who have a rain gauge on the ground, you know, to citizens who go measure water quality in rivers. so i think that at least, you know, a component of it, it is citizen involvement. it's citizens with buy in. >> and real quick, the program that i participated in, the workshop, there was at least three of them that were sort of town hall formats, where members of the public were invited to see the presentation and ask questions afterwards. and almost exclusively, those folks were younger folks, you know, college kids, or thereabout, and those were the

most fun frankly, the questions weren't typically particularly technical, but they were very enthusiastic, very engaged, and i must have taken a thousand selfies during those things with those folks. and it's fun, and the program that i'm working on right now has a very strong training component. not only training folks how to run water treatment plants but training on other aspects of water, and looking quite carefully, or giving good consideration to training of trainers, you know, where the people that we train can then offer training to other folks, and i think that's going to be a very successful program. >> great. we have time for one more quick question. right there, sir. >> i don't have a question but i want to add on. >> please. >> i want to add on regarding the order of data and information, and how to really promote decision makers and

citizens on how to just collect data. we have worked for the past five years on hydromat information and improving hydromat information, and we have done in our work, practically had a socio economist who provides for each one, with the road maps for five african countries and afghanistan, for hydromat, and we have in the program, an assessment of the importance of the socioeconomic benefits of hydromat. and there is already a guide that was developed by usaid, wmo, and the worldbank, on how to just basically look at the benefits of hydromat data. we have practically, one of the investment, we looked at, there are more than 20 sector, okay,

that benefit from hydromat data, in addition to drm. and we have trained practically and given workshops on the results of the hydromat to decision makers, and we have put the long program on the road map on how to just basically promote just communities, the government, the public sector and the private sector, in sustainability. in tanzania, what usaid did, we are actually introducing the citizen science program, and as you mentioned, we are practically looking at volunteer partners who benefit from the data, like farmers, you know, health centers, schools, and this program now has been now two years, and we have actually assembled partners and trained

them on how to basically collect data and information for the water boards. >> thank you very much. i appreciate those comments. our time is up. we'd like to go on. but before i give up the podium here, there's just two other small points i'd like to make, one is last year, the u.s. water partnership had the privilege of giving our water leader award to president trump daniel oturk of slovenia for his work in the water space and particularly for the incredible document that the u.n. high panel for water and peace delivered that year, a matter of survival. we were very honored to have you here with that. but one of the things that won't be told probably in the introduction that michael gave is that 80-page document,

80-page-plus document, daniel wrote the first draft himself. and i want to say that again. he wrote the first draft himself. the former president of slovenia. now that's leadership. and we thank you for that. [ applause ] >> and you'll have an opportunity to hear from him yourself in just a second here. for those of you that haven't had enough of your water data itch satisfied i would like to highlight there are two more events this week, if you really want to spend more time delving no this. tomorrow, the global water challenge and partnership with the department of state and usaid will have a nearly all-day event at the department of state, and it's on women and water. one of the most critical topics, because if you want to get it done right, involve the women,

because that's, i've certainly found that to be true. so if you have an interest in that event, please contact any of the people that are helping us organize this one, we'll be happy to get you information, how to attend. and then friday, the chamber of commerce is going to have a small community water event, i think it's about a half day event, chuck, is that right? full day, null day on small water communities. so if you have interest in that, see chuck, i'm sure that he will squeeze you in, and i'd really recommend these, if you really want to find out some more about this important issue. so i want to thank our panel. linda, sam, barney, thank you so much for sharing your experiences. what happens on the ground is the most important. and you all have been part of that. so thank you.

[ applause ] >> thank you to the panelists and thank you, tom, for an outstanding job there. you're right. i was not going to highlight that the first draft of that document was written by the former president, but i'm so glad that you did. but i will fill in some blanks. we've had a wonderful discussion this morning, a nice foundation laid by the speakers early first. two fantastic panelists that have built on top of those themes and those issues. when you think about who should come in and provide some closing remarks, they're really not remark, they're thematic tie-togetherses, all roads lead to president turk for the reasons tom noted here and many more so we're honored here to have him back here at the wilson and perhaps you have been here to sane times we will give you a pass with your own wilson i.d. on that. let me briefly go over a

biography here that deserves a whole lot more time. as many of you know senator turk served at the republic of slovenia from 2007 to 2012, prior to his presidency he taught international law and human rights expert in slovenia and the united nations, and u.n. ambassador of slovenia from 1992 to 2000. most recently, from 2015 to 2017, president turk was chairman of the global high level panel on water and peace. we are delighted to have president turk with us today to give us some final comments. with that, please welcome to the podium, president turk. [ applause ] >> thank you very much for this nice introduction, your kind words that you addressed to me. and especially for offering me a

permanent pass at wilson center. i hope you will also add a floor plan of this building so that i can more easily find ways to different conferences. but of course, i do follow the work of woodrow wilson center and i am impressed by the intensity, by the high level of quality of course, from the web site, one can learn a great deal, and obviously, i would like to tell you, i am one of those people who have great admiration as woodrow wilson, a great united states president with has actually changed the world in the early 20th century. perhaps this is not a time when his ideas are most fashionable around the world but they are permanent. and the world will come back to them. so i think there are many reasons why woodrow wilson center sh should remain active and more and more center in international discussions. i would like to say that i was extremely pleased to listen to the discussion this morning and very grateful to the conveners of this conversation, the state department, the usaid, the u.s.

environmental protection agency, and above us, the u.s. water partnership, with tom, and a great friend, who betrayed some secrets of our work. and i would like to say, while it is in the so secret because he would understand it, somebody who has worked for the united nations, or with the united nations, for almost 40 years, which was my destiny, one learns at some point that in order to have a decent document, you have to have a single writer. i mean you don't get a good document if you ask 15 people to write together. i mean you get, you know, there are various ways of describing such processes. but i don't want it go into that. but it is absolutely clear that in order to get a decent document, you have to have a single writer at some stage, and then allow everybody to make amendments, to explain views, and then through a discussion, which is nowadays actually quite easy because we have internet, which we didn't have 20 years ago, and now we have it, and of course, the work can be done

much more efficiently. i would be very interested in learning of who was the single writer of the u.s. global water strategy. maybe tom will tell me about that more when we continue our conversations. because it is also very coherent and a very persuasive document. and we in the global high level forum on water and peace, we were slal excited to learn, when our report came out, in september, 2007, that very soon after, two months later, the u.s. global water strategy was published. so before the end of the year, tom and i were in correspondence and we learned about this. and then in january, we came here, to washington, to woodrow wilson center and that's how our current cooperation continued. i would like to tell you that i am not alone today with my colleagues, my friend and vice chairman of the panel, lazaro kasada a former minister of the

environment of coast rico who made a great kuks, very important views, very important views that allowed drafting much easier and francois michelle who is the director of the geneva water hub which is an organization, an expert organization based in geneva and link toed the university of geneva and the u.n. system like the world organization and many other agencies. i would also say that the geneva water hub served as secretariat of the global high level panel of water and peace and they convened i think two dozen expert meetings involving all together around 200 experts. so the amount of literature that was produced in the process of work on the panel was really large. now the challenge was, of course, to kind of synthesize this into a document which should be manageable. and for that you need a single writer and that's a technique which has been used successfully in the united nations before, so it was not a big innovation, i

must say, but somebody has to make a sacrifice. in situations like this, somebody has to make a sacrifice. what i would like to say, to start my concluding remarks is that i'm very excited about what i heard today. so much expertise. so much well-meant comments that we heard from different families and in the introductory speeches. and i believe that there is every reason to continue this way, to have an annual meeting on the implementation of u.s. global water strategy, so that this, so that themes could be discussed further. there were some themes that are really fundamental to everything, and we help come across those themes also in our high level panel of water and peace. for example, the whole sensence tist and complexity -- sensitivity and complexity of water data. unless you are working on this, you don't understand this. and of course we have come on this problem very soon in our work. we have a chapter on this question. and of course, we would like to continue our work. i will come to some more specific aspects in a short

while. the other thing is a need to give really good understanding to the idea, to the concept of comprehensive water management. again, this is a concept which is very often quoted but obviously as we have heard from our panel, it has specific elements. it's very diverse. it also requires very specific, very nuanced work on each of the elements it constitutes. it requires overcoming some really difficult problem which don't have to do with water, which has to do with corruption and quality of governance in general. and so forth. so this is a very serious question which has to be addressed one way or another. now, i would like to say that i have all this thought, when we were preparing the report, and afterwards, that we need u.s. leadership in this matter. the world needs the united states leadership. and i would like to emphasize this really very strongly. and i think that the discussion today showed that once again. the u.s. experienced the

enormous expertise, the technological capacity, financial capacity, this is an important and enormously important asset, to deal with a problem which is one of the fundamental problems, the fundamental crisis problem, of the 21st century. so we have to really put our heads together and figure out how to engage with the united states more. and obviously, this week -- yesterday, we went to the organization of american states. tonight, we are going to new york. and we will talk to the united nations. about sarhel and peace-building activities of the united nations, and very importantly, we shall have a special discussion on the question of water during armed conflicts. which is of course a separate problem. which was not discussed today. and i would like to emphasize very strongly, there is a delineation here, i mean we shouldn't confuse things but i mean of course, this problem of

water being used as a weapon of war, or an object of attack is a serious problem. which has to be addressed. our team has helped organize something enormative document, kind of an interpretive document, called geneva list. which is a kind of interpretation of the international humanitarian law focusing on water, and being there to have security counsel and individual countries to develop proper policies for protection of water resources and water infrastructure during armed conflicts. this is absolutely necessary. we have seen conflict after conflict, how this problems are very serious. and this is not only a question of when a particular water installation is attacked directly. we also have to understand the reverberating effect. because sometimes an object is, let's say electricity, but then this puts out an operation, water pumps, sewage system, management, and everything else. so one has to understand these things. and one has to do more.

we are supported by unicef in that regard. and i believe many of you are familiar with the excellent work unicef is doing in the humanitarian field. unicef is preparing a special report on precisely these questions, after having very, great, well, a terrible experience in various theaters of conflicts. and they try to get to water under fire. so i'm sure that unicef will add very important ethical message to this this whole discussion. now, coming back to the water and peace, we have to understand that water is an instrument of peace. and that's of course is different from what i just spoke about. so water as an instrument of peace. and here, i would like to tell you, as americans, if that you have to be more proud. and i was in jordan at the dead sea two weeks ago at the arab water summit where there was a big discussion about all kinds of water problems in the arab world, and the delegations were

coming one after another to the american assistance, the american role in the region, especially in jordan. jordan was quoted, and of course we heard about jordan this morning as well, as a place where water assistance from the united states was very meaningful and important for 60 years now. 60 years. it started with eric johnston's plan, the ambassador, and the water specialist, appointed by president eisenhower, and another great american president, and he it was simply a wonderful thing to do. of course he could not implement everything that had to be, that he wanted to implement, but still, i mean he created a platform upon which a lot of corporations corporation, cooperation is happening and now the whole discussion in jordan is no longer about the single water installation, but rather about sustainability of water management, comprehensive

approach to irrigation, and waste water treatment, inclusion of local communities. very complex questions of governance. and they are all discussed and usaid is seen as a critical important part in that discussion. so you have, in jordan, 60 years of experience. and of course, you have experience in many other places for about the same amount of time. now, this of course is not important only for jordan but for the entire region because wherever you go in the region, you will be told that, well, jordan is water stressed, perhaps one of the most water stressed countries in the region but it has the most sophisticated ways of water management including irrigation something iraq and many other water rich countries don't have. so it is an important example. things can be done. things can change. things can be done over time, and they have to change. now i mentioned this simply to say it is important to look at all of these questions of making water an instrument of peace, in

an appropriate time frame, and i believe that that should be a, the united states has this unique advantage of having long continuous and excellent history in this regard, and that should be taken advantage of. now, we of course have to ask ourselves, and i said before, that i would like to see this meetings continue, every year, it would be wonderful to have it continue, with our discussion, i hope this will be possible. and of course, it will be important to figure out what is the ambition level of these discussions. now, tom harvey spoke earlier on about making water strategy part of the security strategy and it may seem too much but it is not. it is necessary. and think about sahara region, and we will talk about that tomorrow in new york. and this is really a security issue. of first order. which affects the united states

in many ways. and it should be, you know, confronted head on. there is no reason why this should be seen as something unmanageable or something that the u.s. may not want to deal with. this has to be dealt with. i can talk about yemen. oing about all of the complexities, all of the politics, but we need expert report suggesting that the underground resources of water will be depleted in a few years. this would be a huge disaster, a huge humanitarian disaster and a huge exodus. national security again, for europe, for the united states, for everybody. so i think this is one idea. making sure that this is understood, and the ambition level is sufficiently high. i would also like to add three other ideas, which i think i'm quite naturally, from listening to the discussion today, one is

the importance of trans-boundary water corporation. we have heard this from various speakers. and you know, it's an interesting and important subject. trans-boundary water corporation. it is not an easy one. we heard about iraq, and problems that characterize relations between turkey and eastern over the tigris, and one could imagine the relations between iraq, syria and turkey over the euphrates would be even more complicated. so one should not expect uncomplicated matters here. but one should also be very careful to what is happening. because iraq has deteriorated so much, that right now, i was in turkey several times in the past month, in turkey, they are becoming very worried about outbreaks of cholera in iraq. this is not widely reported because it is inconvenient, and people don't want to talk about this. but if you talk to people who know the situation, high level political leaders, they understand that. and they understand that things have to go further. now, of course, the questions of

bilateral, for example, water measurement, the water data have been discussed for a long time. in countries like switzerland help in that regard. and however this has not quite become an irreversible success. and further work is needed from dats and cooperation. and turkey has appointed their former ministry of water and forestry, mr. eric lu, as a special envoy of president erdogan for iraq. now this shows that there is a degree of understanding there. they still see all of these questions primarily as bilateral, and not as regional. but with persistence, i think they have to be advised to move into the region. because the whole area would require a regional framework. and obviously, if you go to a place like the warfare summit in jordan, you will hear a lot of talk about the need of a regional arrangement. i don't want to go further into this but i would like to say

trans-boundary cooperation should be getting more attention in meetings like this in the future. the other question is auk auk fers. we have heard some about aquifers. and we have to understand most of the fresh water resources today are auk fers and underground water and some are severely stressed, some are repeate redepleted sometime soon and not renewable and i don't know how much can learn from remote sensing about the state of it, but maybe this is something that could be looked at. and finally, the third and last r-last idea, i don't want to bother you with too many ideas, i have many ideas, and if i put too many ideas before you, you think he is another u.n. guy who doesn't understand the difficulty of the problems we are dealing with. but i do twi to understand this. and the third idea relates to

the united nations sustainable development office. now, there is a goal which is specifically related to water, as say drinking water and sanitation for everybody. and here, we are now in an interesting situation. as far as the sustainable development, those are concerns as a whole. what happens is that now that it is a full year since those were adopted in 2015, and there is an implementation mechanism established and a great deal of work is going into the question of indicators to measure what kind of progress is being made. now, we heard today, how difficult it is to measure water. how difficult it is to handle water data. so you can imagine, when it comes to, as we see the global picture, then, it is enormously complicated. what i think is necessary at this stage is a series and also critical discussion on what is being produced. because we of course, the u.s. will certainly figure out that

we are lagging behind the objectives, that's easy to say. but how are we lagging behind? and are we sufficiently good in measuring our state of achievement. this is something that i would like to be more critically discussed and it doesn't require big political decisions, this is a matter, of how shall i say, more technical thing, although it can be a very clear political, how shall i say need behind that and the need i would define as something that relates to the quality of what global policies try to produce. and let me come to the beginning once again. this is not going to work without united states involvement. the united states is the only country in the world that has the kind of capacity, and with the kind of expertise and experience, and resources that can make a difference. so please, take my pleadings here as a serious matter,

because in a few years, the u.n. and all actors globally will be talking about how we are lagging behind as a sustainable development goes. and at that time, we shall need to have really serious and reliable analysis. and that analysis has to come from where it can be really produced. now, ladies and gentlemen, i spoke beyond my time. i admire your patience. nobody threw at me anything as yet. so that is good. we have, i have spoken for more than 20 minutes. i was supposed to say everything in 5 minutes. but as you can he is, i'm very passionate about this thing, so you will bear with me for this, you know, infraction for this. this violation of time limit, which was given to me. thank you very much for your attention and good luck with your work. [ applause ]

>> mr. president, i don't think anyone is in a position to keep a clock on your comments. they were simply spot-on. i made many notes about your calls to action. your charges and your recommendations. i made particular note that when we give you your badge and pass to the wilson center, it will come with a complete map. i took particular note of that. a few comments and then we're done for the day. mr. president, thank you for appropriately, accurately, and with passion, tying up our day for us. i can tell you that even while the first year, the first annual review is being planned, there was discussion about following up yet next year, and so we will take on that charge. we will think hard with our friends and colleagues about how we do this again next year. to do exactly as you have challenged us to do. none of that could happen, but without a couple of people who have made today happen, and you know who they are. but either way, i'm going to

spotlight them. lauren ricci the director of our environmental change and security program i will embarrass her by at least asking her to at least stand. [ applause ] >> everything that has happened today, lauren really has orchestrated through her professionalism, her relationships with you, and her expertise, and so lauren, thank you for leading this important charge. and you did take note of the president's charge for next year, right? okay. great, good. amanda king, please stand. amanda makes everything happen here related to this work so amanda, thank you so very much. [ applause ] >> without partnership and friends you cannot do a thing 0 so we would like to thank usaid for their support, the u.s. department of support, obviously epa and the u.s. water partnership. simply can't do this work without any of you. and in addition to tom's list of activities that are happening this week, lauren has asked that i highlight that here next week, because she says you can never drink enough water, we hope you

have joined us in this room again, on monday at 10:00 a.m., with the sustainable water partnership, to look at the important connections between water and food security, an issue we heard about today. so friends and colleague, thank you for spending this morning and into the afternoon on this important issue. we look forward to continued discussions throughout the year, and perhaps this time next year, we'll come back for a second year review. thank you so much. coming up later today, a look at china's trade and influence on international financial markets.

it is hosted by the johns hopkins school of advanced international studies, starting at 5:00 p.m. eastern, live coverage on c-span 2. from our lectures and history series, which takes viewers into college classrooms around the country, kent state university professor elaine france, teaches a class about the experience of being arrested from the 1850s to present day. this class took place at the trumable correctional institution in ohio as part of the national inside out prison exchange program which brings together college students and implements for classes. watch that tonight, starting at 8:00 eastern. here on c-span 3. before we move on to the supreme court, can i just say the ten topics are what you really immediate to know and here we go. write them down. foundations, federalism, public opinion, participation, political parties, interest groups, campaigns and elections,

congress, president, and courts. those are the big ten. the entire test covers those ten topics. >> are you a student preparing for the advanced placement united states government and politics exam? well, don't miss your chance to be a part of washington journal's annual cram for the exam program, on saturday, may 4, at 9:00 a.m. eastern, for a live discussion with high school government teachers and drew caneen and daniel lar sen from adel adelaie stevenson high school in illinois. >> log rolling and its something. >> it is a concept of vote trading. the idea if you're trying to get a big bill passed, a lot of times it happened to have some quid pro kwo. this for that. if you add this rider, if you add this pork projects, sometimes we call them earmarks, if you add that ear mark, you will get more supportive marks.

that's log rolling watch waerkz's "cram for the exam" on saturday, at 9:00 a.m. eastern, on c-span. the complete guide to congress is now available, it has lots of details about the house and senate for the current session of congress. contact and bio information about every saturday and representative. plus, information about congressional committees. state governors. and the cabinet. the 2019 congressional directory is a handy spiral-bound guide. order your copy from the c-span online store for 18.95. up next, a hearing examining the navy's various shipbuilding programs and funding neds. the senate armed services subcommittee on sea power heard testimony on fleet maintenance, submarine and aircraft carriers instruction, and work force training programs and threats posed by china. this is just under