Water as Leverage - Wadden Sea Region

Water as Leverage for Climate Adaptation: Wadden Sea Region
1.3
Time and space for
collective pre-project
preparation by design
Process of pre-project preparation
In every sector – nature, water
management, agriculture, residential
development and so on – there are
investments to deal with climate change.
Today’s climate-related challenges are
fundamentally interdependent, as the
opportunities for development and progress.
Yet every sector formulates its own projects,
from one perspective, leading to mutually
counteractive effects on the ground and
often when processes have evolved too far.
There is no time, space or process for the
phase of integration of the different sectoral
needs into resilient, win-win solutions. That
is precisely what Water As Leverage brings
in: a common workroom where different
stakeholders are involved in the pre-project
preparation phase of integrated waterrelated
projects. At the same time, it is not
a theoretical environment: financing parties
participate from the start in order to develop
the fundability of the implementation.
A workroom supported by design
The approach brings in the capacity of
design to act as an integrator between
different levels of innovation. It is able to
combine technical innovation (integrated,
nature-based and climate resilient
solutions), social innovation (an inclusive
process), and financial innovation
(bankability of the implementation). As such,
it aims to formulate solutions that will be
replicable on many places facing the same
type of challenges (focus on scalability).
The example on the right (figure 4) is a
school pilot in Chennai designed by
OOZE architects & urbanists, City of 1000
Tanks team. Within the free space of Water as
Leverage, OOZE chose to start working on the
renovation of a school complex in which water
forms an integral part of the design. As a result,
they realize three interesting breakthroughs.
First, by choosing a concrete and ambitious
pilot project, they could move very quickly to
implementation, generating the confidence that
the trajectory can deliver. The result is a school
for 800 pupils, of which 300 resident students
and staff, that uses 27,000 liters water per day.
Secondly, this ambition is inscribed in the city’s
broader master plan (A City of 1000 Tanks).
The school is a first stepping stone in a broader
implementation project that can generate water
for 70,000 inhabitants and contributes to a citywide
plan with 14 million beneficiaries. Thirdly,
the project is also a pilot project as a school.
When scaling up this typology to the urban
education programme, 415 schools can easily
be reconverted. Scaled up to the national level,
the proposal even has a potential impact on 260
million students. Master plans made within the
water sector or within the national department
of education have never led to concrete projects
so quickly and have never incorporated shared
objectives in its design before.
By this design approach, Water as Leverage
avoids sectoral silos and vested interests.
Instead, it organizes innovation, transformation,
and effective climate adaptation impact through
the tools of broad collaboration, organized
deliberation, and design. The program identifies
needs and opportunities while building
partnerships across all layers of society, all
relevant institutions, and all programmes.
14
Call for action