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Profound new challenges and opportunities are abruptly confronting our discipline in the beginning of the 21st century.

How do we, as environmental engineers, hydrologists and others in the water space, prepare for, adapt and flourish in the next 50 years?

Water, Climate, and Bugs:  As leaders in the field, educators and mentors, are we sufficiently aware, and mobilized to address the two big game-changers to come in environmental engineering in the next 50 years?

Presentation and Discussion Abstract

The field of water science and engineering is infamous for two contradictory reputations – one being the single largest contributors to extending life expectancy since the industrial revolution (~70+ percent compared with pharma), and the second being one of the slowest industries to perceive and perhaps shape the future of a complex life to come on related to water and planet earth. 

Accordingly, while we as a profession plod along the trodden path of everyday professional life, be it as a professor, a practitioner at a utility, a consultant or a regulator, the appear to be two bolts of lighting and thunders that appear to have escaped our headphone aided perspectives and night vision googles.

1. Climate change, which will and already is affecting EVERY aspect of water engineering. This mega force should be thought as a threat/challenge of unimaginable complexity.

2. Engineered water-related biotechnologies as THE primary tool in the future for most version of water treatment (drinking water, wastewater, environmental remediation). This field has almost unlimited opportunities, but happily, also providing economic benefit to those who can create and economically harness these breakthroughs.

Put together, these two forces will fundamentally shake up the past century of our knowledge base, research agendas and effectiveness and costs of what we do.

Speaker Biography

Paul Reiter is a leading figure in international and regional water issues and now serves as the President in his strategically-focused consulting company, ReiterIWS Ltd (HK) and ReiterIWS LLC (US). Paul and his partners help clients cope with the increasingly challenging set of issues facing the water community and other environmental infrastructure providers related to growth, urbanization/densification and climate change. Paul speaks around the world about these challenges and the potential innovative solutions needed to meet them.

Paul served as the Executive Director of IWA for more than ten years – an organization that serves as the global network for water professional with 10,000 members in 130 countries. Paul and his team of Ryan Yuen, Tao Lee, Rose Lang, and others, worked together to build the IWA Asia-Pacific network that we know and appreciate today.

Paul has over 30 years of experience in water industry knowledge brokering, utility project innovation and utility management in the areas of water, electricity and solid waste. Through this period, Paul has worked as a utility leader, private consultant and association director.