trends and future of sustainable development - TransEco

In this paper we will examine weak signals and wild cards in the case of sustainability of watersupply and sanitation services 1 . Water services provide an interesting case as sustainability of theseservices can be considered to be one of the key issues in human well-being. If something goes wrong, thiscan compromise significantly the well-being of many as was seen in the water crisis in the Finnish townNokia in 2007: some 6000 people were taken ill because treated wastewater was accidentally releasedinto the drinking water distribution system. Thus, the question is primarily not about financial losses incase a wild card becomes reality, but it is about human lives and functioning of societies. For that reason,decisions made on water services are typically multi-dimensional. Furthermore, one feature that makeswater services different from other services is that it is a natural monopoly (Pietilä et al. 2010). Weaksignals and wild cards are not about finding competitive edge in the markets, but about sustaining andensuring safe services to all.The water services system can also be described as a relatively static system. In essence, there hasnot been significant changes in the systems after the adaptation of centralised drinking waterdistribution or water based sanitation. There have been improvements to the treatment technologies ofboth raw and wastewater, and the materials and technologies used in piping systems have developed butin the end these changes have not really affected the big picture or the paradigm of water services.Furthermore, the life cycle of water services infrastructure is remarkably long, putting additionalpressure on the sustainability of decisions (Katko et al. 2006). The static nature has contributed to thefact that the sector is rather conservative: somewhat resistant to change and slow to embrace newtechnological innovations. One reason for this can be interpreted to be related to the fact that waterservices are a natural monopoly. As there has been no need to compete there has been no need forrevolutionary changes and innovations in the field. One indication of this conservativeness was aworkshop organised in March, by the Finnish Water Forum, in which it was to be discussed howeducation should be developed to meet the vision for year 2025. It proved obvious that most peopleworking in the water sector were not able to vision that their sector would be somehow different in thefuture. Instead, they were thinking about very minor changes and improvements even though thefacilitator of the workshop tried to encourage them to think innovatively and differently.Furthermore, water services are a somewhat engineer-oriented sector. As Nafday (2009) argues,engineers are generally dismissive of unpredictable events until they occur because they engineers usedto focus on specifics and do not feel comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity. In addition, Taleb(2007) argues that humans in general focus too narrowly on one’s own field of expertise andoverestimate one’s own knowledge. People tend to underestimate possibility of big changes in the futureand overestimate their own capacity to cope with changes.However, in the future and already today, there are several challenges facing the water servicessector and in worst case compromising its sustainability (Heino et al. 2011). In addition, to the identifiedchallenges, there might be some less visible but major changes looming around the corner that couldseriously impact the field. According to Dominguez (2008, 9), future uncertainty is increasing in the1We will use the term ”water services” to cover both water supply and sanitation services from here onwards.In addition, we choose to discuss “services” to highlight that we are not focusing only on the technical process ofproducing water services, but there are different stakeholders, customers at the forefront, for whose benefit theservice is produced, who can have a significant impact on the services and who must be taken into account. Thus,questions related to the management and governance of water services are central in this paper.411