Flemming Winther Olsen
Senior Advisor, Department for Environment, Energy and Climate.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark

"One of the biggest differences is that we have become increasingly aware that we have to talk with people outside the water sector. And that water is not really managed by water people, rather it is managed by the agriculture sector, by municipality governments. We have realized that we have been spending a lot of time talking to the converts and to each other, our closed circles, and realizing that while we are talking others are using the water.

We have been engaged in this nexus discussion since the Bonn conference in 2002, without saying it’s going to revolutionize the world. I’m not saying that this nexus is the answer to all the issues but it brought strong attention to the need to broaden the discussion. We moved beyond the notion of water people having to invite energy people, they really had to sit together as equal actors, and we had to realize that the energy people are one of the big water consumers.

And we are really trying to define a stronger role for the private sector because the private sector has always played a big role in water but very often as sub contractors only. We are realizing that many of the private sector players are increasingly seeing the need to engage in sustainable water resource management. It’s a business case for them now. So I think that that involving the private sector as a partner is something that we are working on quite seriously right now.

My hope for the future is that this trend of strong collaborations between different interests will continue. I’m optimistic about it because I think history shows that humanity has a formidable capacity to resolve issues and three thirds of the surface of the globe is water, so it’s really a question of preserving the quality of the water we have. The scope for saving water is so enormous."