Questions & answers

Craig: I thought Junaid’s comment was one of the most interesting and we actually ended up talking a little bit more about that with Peter Gleick in the breakout group and that is his question of: “Whose hand is on the lever of water power? Who are the political masters of water power? Needing to answer that question before you can really go any further in planning for water security and I thought that was interesting because I don’t know that that question has really been answered for California, I’m inclined to say individual property owners collectively which is a tough way to govern but I’d be interested on how that compares to other places even nearby like Washington State for example.

Aleks: One thing I missed in the conversation was that we would talk of drought as if it is a fact but the reality is that for Southern California is getting between 10 and 15 inches of rain per year even now and a lot of the issues we have from drought both too much water or too little water have to do with the ineffectiveness of soils to absorb that water. Referring to the question that was posted just now, I think the authority does go back to the individual land owner and their capacity to manage their soils in a way that is more resilient, and that’s everybody’s job so we have to deal with issues of how industrialized agricultures compacting soils and things like that because those are the vast extensions that are not helping us right now and go beyond that and look at what can we do in all the areas that does not use agriculture, that are reserved or otherwise idle and look what we can do there. Because the surface is enormous, in 15 or 10 inches of rain on that enormous surface is just heck of lot of water.

Barbara: I would like to follow up on that suggestion that if we’re not going to use water to balance, to fix the water condensed to save water, what are his suggestions for new infrastructure?

Sandra: Hi, It’s Sandra Anderson here, my question is regarding subdivision development and building codes and pluming codes and the ability of using those to decentralize water systems.

Marie Chantel: Yeah, yeah. So, I wanted to pick up on the equation that was asked, I think, about the bank on the tension between developing countries and developed countries. I actually think, if there is one lesson we learned from the global crisis, was that, actually, the drought was quite driven by the developing countries and that would I think can change the way the whole development agenda is being seen.

Then the second part is actually it matters what happened in Mozambique matches to the US because at the end of the day, we are now one global economy to some extent. So I think that actually give us a new framework in the way we engage with our client. So, the way I would frame it is that on one hand you have the developed countries that has an interest to make sure that things I’m holding in the developing countries vice versa because we could see that you need growth to happen on one area to actually keep the economy going and I think those are things that are now based on evidence and that is actually the way we are engaging so in one hand when you are building infrastructure for example in country A whose doing that kind of services some of those people are coming from the developed countries, so you are creating to some extent the job in developed countries and that is how actually the whole frame is coming up and job of infrastructure today is job today but a sustainability tomorrow and that is what you need as global economy. And I think that is the way how this engagement is happening. The second finger will finish by is really the partnership, really building, you will be surprised to hear that we took some examples on how they manage sanitation in cold weather from Alaska to Mongolia, so this is the kind of advantage when you take an experience from the US and you bring it to China or to Mongolia, so this is that kind of relationship in institution like the bank who has the advantage of being global can actually bring together and actually seeing this as tension, you see this as complimentarily and everybody become de facto, a win win for both part.

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