We will award prizes of US$1,000 each for the most innovating water and sanitation projects in the Americas. Winners will have a chance to present them at the World Water Forum
“You need ideas to wage a war,” goes a popular saying in Spanish. And our region is waging an all-out war against a chronic lack of water, sanitation and solid waste handling.
In tune with the proverb, rather than big weapons this war requires big ideas to solve the problems faced by 34 million people who have no access to drinking water and by 106 million lacking access to proper sanitation.
The best scenario to present these ideas will be the World Water Forum, the biggest global event in this field, which will take place March 2018 in Brasilia.
Latin America does have an arsenal to fight this war against water and sanitation shortages. Today we want to hear about these ideas, turned into research on water, sanitation, and efficient handling of solid waste issues. Consequently, we are offering 20 prizes of US$1,000 each for research projects in order to help generate fresh ideas to improve the lives of millions in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Inter-American Development Bank, along with the Caribbean Development Bank, UNESCO’S Hydrological International Program, Global Water Partnership, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture and the National Association of Water and Sanitation Companies of Mexico, will be the institutions coordinating the regional process of the Americas in the runup to the Forum.
Great ideas turned into best practices and experiences of the kind that we hope to collect through this call can provide excellent results to issues such as: providing drinking water, improving water service quality, building or improving existing sanitary networks, promoting wastewater reuse, launching intervention models for rural areas, designing new technological solutions for individual sanitation, conserving the water resource, tackling droughts, or handling solid waste in a sustainable fashion.
The deadline to present research projects is this coming Aug. 27. Finalist projects will be announced in early September, so their creators will have all September to flesh out the details of their research. The authors of the best proposals will be invited to present them at the Forum’s regional sessions for the Americas in Brasilia.
This is a unique opportunity for researchers in the field, since the Forum is held every three years and, given that this time around it will take place in a Latin American country, the eyes of the world will turn to what the region can offer to improve peoples’ lives in terms of innovative water, sanitation, and integrated solid waste management projects.
The research projects we are looking for should explore specific topics of the World Forum’s themed process. These topics are: climate change, users, sustainable development, urban development, ecosystems, finances, shared knowledge and citizen participation, shared technological capabilities, and governability.
Do you have a project that brings fresh ideas to this sector? If you do, you are invited to submit your research proposal through this portal. The war on scarcity of one of the most vital elements in our hemisphere is raging. Your ideas can help us win this war.
Leave a Reply