Global Water Summit

Overview of Global Water Summit

The Global Water takes place in London in April 2024. Attracting high-level executives from the industry, municipalities, international water companies and academia, the Global Water Summit is billed as the place where global water leaders meet, strategize, and connect.

The theme of 2024’s conference is ‘Security for a Changing Planet’ and delegates are expected to discuss strategies and plans to increase water security in uncertain times in the context of the SDG 6 roadmap.

The SDG 6 (Sustainable Development Goal 6) is the United Nation’s development goal on water and sanitation, seeking to ensure safe drinking water and sanitation for all by 2030.

The summit is organized by Global Water Intelligence, an industry leader in publications, databases and market research.

The Importance of Water Security

Nowadays, water security is becoming increasingly important. Only a couple of decades ago, water security was hardly considered. Then, water was treated as an almost limitless resource and was low down on most countries’ security concerns.

Fast forward to today and the importance of water security is high on every government’s agenda.

In 2024, over 3 billion people worldwide depended on water that crossed national borders. According to the UN, only in a small number of countries (just 24) is there an agreement for shared water from transboundary sources. Inevitably this risks the continuity of water supplies being used as leverage.

How Can Water be Managed Sustainably?

A combination of wars and territorial incursions, natural disasters brought on by climate change, the COVID pandemic, and an increased population leading to greater urbanization, have all shown the fragility of many countries’ water supplies.

Put bluntly, without water, industry will grind to a halt and populations will eventually starve.

So the focus for every water professional in today’s landscape should be conservation and reuse.

Water Stewardship in Times of Risk

In a time of greater risk and uncertainty, effective water stewardship – especially reducing water waste and ramping up water recycling are both vitally important.

Efforts to reduce water waste and leakage are already on the increase. Many utilities and water companies in Europe (where municipal systems are generally older) have targets to reduce network leakage by as much as 50% by 2050.

But even more pressing is the need to recycle increasing amounts of water from agriculture and industry. And recycling of that water requires a range of treatments to ensure it’s suitable to use again.

Preventing loss and water reuse are the two keys to increasing every country’s water security.

2024 Global Water Summit

Following on from the 2023 Global Water Summit organized by the UN in New York, the 2024 Global Water Summit must show its relevance in these troubled times.

2023’s United Nations-organised conference (the first global water conference in almost half a century) concluded with the creation of a new UN envoy for water and the setting up of a new scientific panel on water. It also resulted almost 700 non-binding pledges from delegates, that should they be fulfilled, would move the world closer towards universal access to clean water and sanitation as laid out in SDG 6.

This follow-on conference in 2024 needs to show that real progress is being made towards those commitments.

Wastewater Recycling

Wastewater from a myriad industrial processes worldwide is currently being discharged direct to sewers and watercourses. Especially in territories with less stringent regulatory frameworks, a lot of this water contains pollutants like endocrine disruptors, carcinogens and PFAS.

Without resorting to incineration, it’s perfectly possible to reuse a vast proportion of this water, increasing water security and conservation.

Currently, advanced electrochemical processes are showing the best results, with one advantage being the compact equipment can be sited in-line with individual industrial processes and carefully ‘tuned’ to remove specific pollutants, before wastewater is mixed with that from other processes.

Arvia Technology, based in the UK and China, is currently in the vanguard of industrial wastewater treatments utilizing electrochemistry with its patented Nyex technology, offering a range of advanced, cost-effective solutions to remove many recalcitrant compounds from water – often down to parts per trillion.

Industrial Water Treatment

Many regulators, municipalities and major industrial water users are still unaware of the amazing results delivered by electrochemistry in the shape of Arvia’s industry-leading systems. In 2024 Arvia will also launch a new range of treatment reactors specifically optimised to isolate PFAS.

One of the keys to worldwide water security is effective recycling of polluted water. At Arvia, we applaud every effort to spotlight this important issue to a world audience and increase industrial wastewater reuse.

For more details on Arvia Technologies see the website here

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