Across large parts of India, agriculture is under growing pressure. Years of monocropping, intensive use of fertilizers and pesticides, and declining soil health have made farming increasingly difficult for many communities. In some of the country’s most vulnerable rural regions, farmers are now looking for new ways to restore both productivity and ecological balance.

One initiative addressing these challenges is the project “Agricultural Transition to Productive Biodiversity”, supported by the Dutch Government, Partners for Water programme and implemented by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO). The project focuses on nature-based solutions that help farmers restore soil health, reduce crop losses and strengthen biodiversity while maintaining livelihoods.

At the centre of the project is Meghna Mukherjee, Programme Manager at MetaMeta Research, a Wageningen-based consulting organisation specialising in water management, climate adaptation and agricultural development. Originally from India, Mukherjee has spent the past eight years working at the intersection of water management, agriculture and social inclusion. Her role combines programme management with a strong focus on gender and community engagement. “We work on practical solutions that can be implemented directly in the field,” she explains. “The aim is not only to test innovative approaches but also to understand how they can be scaled and adopted by communities themselves.”

A global research network

MetaMeta Research was founded in 2004 in Wageningen and has since expanded into an international organisation with offices in countries including Bangladesh, Indonesia, Ethiopia and Yemen. The company collaborates closely with governments, NGOs and local communities to develop water management and climate-resilient solutions. “What makes us unique is that we combine research with on-the-ground implementation,” Mukherjee says. In 2024, the organisation became part of the German development consultancy GOPA, expanding its international reach while maintaining its focus on water and climate solutions.

Water, gender and daily realities

One of Mukherjee’s core research interests is the relationship between water access and gender. In many parts of the world, women are responsible for collecting water for both household use and agriculture, often walking long distances under difficult conditions. But the issue goes beyond physical labour. “There are also social norms and power dynamics,” Mukherjee says. “Even when water is available nearby, women are still expected to collect it.”

These dynamics also appear in everyday tasks such as laundry, which is still largely performed manually by women in many regions. The water used can contain chemicals or contaminants that cause health problems, yet this aspect of hygiene rarely receives attention. Despite growing awareness, Mukherjee believes much work remains to be done. “In some cases, women’s voices are heard but not included in decision-making,” she says. “In others they are not even heard at all.”

Connecting institutions and communities

Addressing these challenges requires cooperation between many actors. One of the project’s key strategies is therefore to connect stakeholders that normally operate separately. “Different institutions often work in their own ‘boxes’,” Mukherjee explains. “Water departments, agricultural authorities and gender programmes rarely coordinate their activities.” The project aims to break these silos by encouraging dialogue between government agencies, local organisations and farming communities. “When these groups come together, they begin to understand the problems from different perspectives,” she says.

Another important element is evidence building. The project documents result and shares them with policymakers and development organisations through reports, social media and professional networks. “We try many different strategies,” Mukherjee says. “Sometimes you don’t know which one will work, but together they help create awareness.”

Three nature-based solutions

The project focuses on three main interventions that aim to improve agricultural productivity while strengthening biodiversity.

Reviving traditional hedges
The first intervention involves reintroducing hedges as green corridors along agricultural fields. “Hedges used to be a common feature in farming landscapes, both in India and in Europe,” Mukherjee explains. “But over time they disappeared as farmers tried to maximise cultivation areas.”

The project is now reviving this traditional practice by planting species such as pigeon pea and acacia along field boundaries. These hedges serve several functions. They protect crops from animals, improve soil stability and help retain water. They can also generate additional income when crops such as pigeon pea are harvested. Research has also shown that hedges influence the microclimate of agricultural fields. “We are observing temperature differences of up to 2.5 degrees Celsius between fields with and without hedges,” Mukherjee says.

Ecological rodent management
The second intervention addresses a problem that farmers often face but that rarely receives attention: crop losses caused by rodents. “Rodents are responsible for significant pre- and post-harvest losses,” Mukherjee says. “But people rarely talk about it.” Instead of using chemical rodenticides, the project promotes ecologically based rodent management (EBRM). Communities use techniques such as improved storage systems, hermetic bags and coordinated burrow control. The results have been striking. “In the last three months alone, more than 200 households have participated and over 90 rodent burrows have been closed,” she says. For many farmers, recognising the scale of the problem has been a revelation. “Some of them told us nobody had ever asked about rodents before.”

Water-efficient rice cultivation
The third intervention focuses on rice production through a method known as alternate wetting and drying. Traditionally, rice fields are kept continuously flooded. However, research shows that rice can grow well without standing water. The new method alternates irrigation with dry periods, reducing water use and improving soil conditions. “It requires a mind-set change for farmers,” Mukherjee says. “But once they see the results, many become interested.”

Working with farmers

The design of these interventions was strongly influenced by farmers themselves. For example, during discussions about hedges, farmers suggested the species best suited to local conditions. “They know the land much better than we do,” Mukherjee says. The adoption of alternate wetting and drying also began with a small group of inventive farmers. “In one village, two women farmers decided to try the new method,” she explains. “Their success encouraged others to follow.”

Building trust with communities took time. But partnerships with local organisations such as PRADAN and FES, which have long worked in the region, helped establish strong relationships. “At first there was some scepticism,” Mukherjee says. “If someone tells you that what you’ve been doing for years can be improved, you won’t immediately believe them.” Today, however, many farmers are sharing experiences with each other through WhatsApp groups and local networks. “It’s become much more organic,” she says.

Looking beyond pilot projects

The project currently operates in three Indian states – Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal – covering several districts within what is known as the Central India Tribal Belt. These regions are home to many vulnerable communities and smallholder farmers. The next challenge is scaling up successful interventions beyond the pilot areas. “We now have strong evidence that these approaches work,” Mukherjee says. “The question is how to integrate them into larger programmes and policies.” This requires collaboration with government authorities, donor organisations and international partners. “We are already discussing these ideas with district agricultural departments and water authorities,” she says.

A long-term perspective

For Mukherjee, the most rewarding aspect of the project is seeing different groups come together. “My role is often to act as a bridge between the field teams and the donors,” she explains. “I help translate local realities into strategies and policies.” She works closely with a local team that plays a key role in implementing the project on the ground. Pratik Ranjan focuses on ecological rodent management (EBRM), Shubham Jain works on the restoration of hedges and Arpan Mondal supports the implementation of alternate wetting and drying in rice cultivation. Although each has specific responsibilities, they collaborate closely, discussing challenges together and carrying out activities as a team.

Although the project itself will eventually conclude, its impact may continue through the networks and knowledge it has created. Farmers are already sharing techniques with neighbouring communities, and manuals developed during the project can be adapted for other regions. “These solutions are simple and flexible,” Mukherjee says. “That means they can potentially be used in many different countries.”

In the end, the goal is not simply to complete a project, but to initiate a broader transformation. “There is still so much potential,” she says. “But what we are seeing now gives us hope that agriculture can become both productive and sustainable again.”

With the Humans of Partners for Water series, we showcase the people who are involved in and benefit from our projects. The Humans series highlights the stories of the people with whom and for whom Partners for Water works, and on how water affects their lives. Discover how Mario Ciono’s dedication to his community in Cartagena is helping restore the city’s rivers and protect its neighbourhoods from environmental damage.

Meet Mario Ciono Fuentes

Meet Mario Ciono Fuentes, President of the Community Action Board of the Villa Rosa neighbourhood in Cartagena, Colombia. As a community leader, he represents the voice of his neighbourhood in efforts to improve the local environment and protect residents from the impact of pollution and climate-related hazards.

Water as life

For Mario Ciono, water is not simply a resource, it is the foundation of life itself. Living in Cartagena, he sees first-hand how pollution and the effects of human activity are putting pressure on the city’s rivers and natural surroundings, and how urgent it is to protect them.

“Water is a natural resource…it is life, it is the most beautiful thing that nature could give to humankind. We take care of it, we conserve it, and we work for it.”

Dutch-Colombian water cooperation

Colombia is one of seven delta countries in the Partners for Water 2022–2027 programme. In Cartagena, the programme finances the Water as Leverage Cartagena initiative, which develops inclusive and innovative climate adaptation solutions together with Colombian, Dutch and international partners.

Partners for Water collaborates with Colombian national and local governments, the private sector, NGOs, academia and community organisations to enhance water security and climate change adaptation in the country’s delta cities and agricultural regions.

Community voices such as Mario’s are an important part of this process, helping to ensure that solutions for cleaner rivers and a healthier coastline reflect the needs and realities of the people who live there.

Beyond Cartagena, Partners for Water also supports projects across Colombia through its subsidy scheme, enabling Dutch and Colombian organisations to develop and test innovative water solutions, such as initiatives to address freshwater scarcity and soil salinisation in the Magdalena Delta.

Get involved in Colombia

Are you currently working on water projects in Colombia or exploring how to do so? Or just interested in participating in Partners for Water initiatives? Here are some ways for you to get involved:

• Apply for our tenders focused on innovative solutions in delta countries like Colombia. Find more information on our news page.
• Join our annual Colombia platform meeting or one of the other Partners for Water events. Check out our events page for upcoming events.
• Follow us on LinkedIn and subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated on our tenders, activities, events and projects.
• Get in touch with our Project Advisor for Colombia Robert Proos.

Waterproof 2026 brought together more than 400 water experts, policymakers, academics and innovators in The Hague to collaborate on solutions for global climate action, water security and sustainable development ahead of the UN Water Conference.

The future of water security was the theme for the events final roundtable specifically how can innovations become lasting practical solutions on the ground. Water engineer Dorien Lugt of HKV opened the session with a direct challenge to the sector: innovation only succeeds when paired with transparency, honest self-reflection and realistic implementation.

The Reality of Urban Flooding

Lugt highlighted the growing pressures facing rapidly urbanising cities such as Accra, Abidjan and Nairobi. Rapid population growth and land scarcity continue to push vulnerable communities into building homes in flood-prone areas, including riverbeds while drainage and waste systems struggle to keep pace. Blocked drains, expanding paved surfaces and more extreme rainfall combine to create devastating floods that can occur within hours.

While Dutch water experts frequently respond with advanced technological solutions, Lugt warned that technology alone cannot solve these challenges. AI forecasting systems, satellite imagery and predictive models may hold enormous potential, but they are often introduced into environments struggling with unstable internet access, unreliable electricity, limited maintenance budgets and high staff turnover.

“Technologies alone don’t solve issues,” Lugt stated, emphasising that if a solution cannot function under real-world constraints, it was never a true solution in the first place.

To truly transform innovation into sustainable impact, Lugt identified three major areas where critical thinking often falls short.

Three blind spots in implementation

To transform innovation into sustainable impact, Lugt suggested that the sector needs greater transparency and self-reflection about how projects are designed and delivered.

The first challenge is defining the problem itself. While participatory approaches are increasing amongst the Dutch water sector, practitioners often accept stakeholder narratives too quickly without verifying whether they reflect local realities.

Lugt recalled a flood forecasting project in Ethiopia where a municipal officer described challenges using language that perfectly matched the engineers’ expectations. The team later discovered that the officer held a PhD in disaster risk management and was unconsciously repeating academic frameworks rather than offering practical local insight.

Lugt stressed that practitioners must question where information originates to avoid solving theoretical problems rather than addressing actual community needs.

The second challenge is project design. Even when problems are correctly identified, projects frequently fail of competing institutional pressures.

The private sector must protect profitability, researchers pursue publications, NGOs advance advocacy goals and donors focus on measurable KPIs. Lugt noted: “While these motivations are understandable, they are rarely discussed openly so projects become shaped by hidden incentives”.

The third challenge is projects becoming trapped in process. While governance, inclusion and stakeholder engagement are essential, Lugt warned that projects can become trapped in endless consultations and assessments. Communities facing severe flooding need more than reports, they need real implementation. “Move”, she urged warning that projects risk becoming bureaucratic exercises rather than meaningful climate action.

From Discussion to Action: The 2030 Breakthrough Plans

Lugt’s closing summary to be critically of how the sector defines problems, designs solutions and evaluates impact served as the perfect springboard for the afternoon’s roundtable discussions.

Inspired by her insightful and moving speech, the roundtables explored how to co-create a “2030 breakthrough plan” capable of accelerating progress toward balanced water security. Many of the ideas that emerged directly reflected Lugt’s call to confront infrastructure gaps, financing structures and operational realities.

Redesigning Project Management
Participants called for project frameworks that prioritise rigorous local problem definition from the outset and called for greater decision-making power to be placed in the hands of local communities, civil society organisations and grassroots actors.

Long-term monitoring and evaluation, they argued, should be integrated from the outset rather than treated as a final reporting exercise.

Learning from Failure
A major theme throughout the discussions was the need to normalise honest conversations about failure — or “failing forward.”

Participants argued that the sector learns too slowly because organisations are often unwilling to publicly discuss unsuccessful projects. One proposed solution was the creation of platforms dedicated to sharing “beautiful failures,” enabling institutions to openly learn from operational mistakes, ineffective models and collaboration breakdowns.

Building Financial Sustainability
Many water projects collapse once international funding ends. Participants stressed the importance of embedding maintenance plans, operational financing and clear exit strategies into projects from the beginning.

Local institutions, they argued, must be trained, funded and positioned to independently manage infrastructure over the long term.

Reforming Funding Models
Experts also called for more flexible and patient financing structures. Rather than prioritising short-term, high-visibility technology pilots, funding models should support slower, context-driven implementation and long-term scaling.

Participants encouraged greater investment in rural water access, circular systems and nature-based solutions alongside cutting-edge technologies.

Connecting Technology with Local Reality
Finally, participants explored how advanced technologies could better support local needs. Suggestions included open-source data systems, shared digital twins and collaborative platforms capable of connecting international technology providers with local governments, NGOs and researchers.

The goal, participants emphasised, is not simply to develop more technology, but to ensure that innovation is grounded in operational realities serving local realities.

Conclusion

The conversations at Waterproof 2026 made one thing unmistakably clear: the future of international water security will not be determined by technology alone, but by a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths about how the sector operates.

Forecasting systems, AI models, satellite imagery and digital tools all hold enormous potential — but only when grounded in genuine local needs, supported by sustainable financing and paired with honest collaboration throughout every stage of implementation.

Lugt’s call for transparency challenges the Dutch water sector to move beyond polished strategies and theoretical innovation toward practical, accountable action. That means questioning assumptions, openly acknowledging institutional constraints, learning from failure and ensuring communities remain empowered long after the project ends.

If innovation is to create lasting impact, success can no longer be measured solely by the sophistication of technology or the ambition of project plans. It must instead be measured by whether solutions continue functioning years later — under real-world conditions, in the hands of local communities and in service of long-term climate resilience.

The path forward is not simply about building smarter systems, but building more honest partnerships and more durable structures that are sustainable long after the pilots and funding cycles end.

In western Kenya, the Nyando River catchment is caught in a cycle of flooding, land degradation and failing harvests. Trust 2 Impact, supported by Partners for Water, is working to break that cycle. Not by fixing isolated problems, but by addressing the system as a whole and ensuring that those who restore the land share in its benefits. Co-founder Victor Langenberg and Kenya Country Manager Professor Humphrey Oborah explain why that distinction matters.

Why fixing one thing is never enough

As a systems thinker and water expert, Victor Langenberg has spent four decades working on water systems in Africa. During that time, he has seen forests planted that never survived, water pumps that stopped working, and agro-programmes whose effects faded within five years. “When I travel through Africa, I see the remnants of projects where 80 percent has simply evaporated,” he says. “That is heartbreaking. ”

The reason, in his view, is structural. “Deforestation leads to soil degradation, soil degradation leads to flooding, flooding destroys harvests, destroyed harvests drive poverty, and poverty forces farmers to overuse the land,” he explains. “For lasting success, you cannot fix one part. You have to flip the system; step in together and turn that downward spiral into a cycle of restoration, resilience and opportunity.” That conviction is what led him to co-found Trust 2 Impact. “We aim to go about it completely differently.”

A view from the inside

Professor Humphrey Oborah brings a different but complementary perspective. Born and raised in the Nyando River catchment area, he knows this landscape from the inside. Four years ago, he joined as Trust 2 Impact’s Kenya Country Manager. “As a native of the region, I can speak with the community in their own dialect and align with their sufferings,” he says. “But I also wanted to bring my international connections and education in cultural and human science to find a lasting solution.”

Together with a dedicated team, they are now developing a long-term landscape restoration programme in the Nyando River catchment – combining agroforestry, water management and innovative financing to restore both ecosystems and livelihoods.

For background on the project and its wider context, see our earlier article Restoring Kenya’s Nyando River catchment: how Trust 2 Impact connects landscapes, livelihoods and long-term finance here.

Seeing the connections

To get to grips with what is happening in the Nyando catchment, Trust 2 Impact starts with maps. Causal loop diagramming is a systems thinking tool that charts how different factors influence and reinforce each other. It reveals where a well-placed intervention can trigger a chain of positive change. “We map the feedback loops between water, soil, agriculture, income and governance to find where small interventions can generate large effects,” explains Victor.

“When we looked at the Nyando River catchment systemically, deforestation, soil degradation, flooding, poverty and weak economic alternatives were all feeding into each other,” says Humphrey. “So instead of simply planting trees, we integrated landscape restoration with livelihoods, regenerative agriculture and local economic empowerment – because communities are more likely to protect ecosystems when restoration also improves their income and resilience.”

The knowledge is already there

Working closely with local communities is central to the programme. Victor is sometimes frustrated by the gap between knowledge and action. “The knowledge of how to work with the land – how to prepare seeds, read the landscape and the water, restore it – is there, but it’s hidden,” he says. “It needs to come out and be taken seriously. It’s often locked inside communities and academic papers, but there is no structure yet to connect it to financing and markets.”

Humphrey recognises the same pattern. “In many cases, communities already understood changes in rainfall patterns and soil fertility decline long before formal data confirmed it,” he says. “What was missing was a structured platform connecting that lived experience to financing mechanisms, restoration science, and economic opportunities.” Trust 2 Impact aims to do that.

This connects to a broader assumption Humphrey has consistently challenged: that communities resist change. “People are not resistant to change, they are resistant to exclusion from the benefits of change,” he says. Once communities see a credible pathway towards resilience and economic inclusion, their response shifts, and the numbers bear that out. Today, more than 20,000 community members are engaged in the programme – a strong foundation for the 60,000 hectares of agroforestry and riparian restoration the team aims to achieve across the Nyando catchment.

If it works here, what does it prove?

The Nyando catchment was chosen deliberately. It is one of the most degraded river systems on earth, but it also has high potential for recovery. “If we can fix the Nyando catchment area, we fix more than that,” Victor says. “Because what comes out of that river ends up in Lake Victoria. Improve the catchment and the whole lake system benefits, including the three countries surrounding it.”

“If this approach succeeds, it proves that climate restoration can simultaneously become an environmental solution, a poverty reduction strategy, and a green economic development model,” Humphrey says. “Carbon credit and climate finance projects work best when they are rooted in community ownership, systems thinking, and inclusive economic participation, not isolated technical interventions.”

A model worth repeating

Replication across the Lake Victoria basin would require long-term financing, local capacity-building and transparent governance. But above all, a shift in perspective. “Most importantly,” Humphrey concludes, “replication requires seeing ecosystems and communities not as separate issues, but as one interconnected living system. That is the real lesson emerging from Nyando.”

This is the second of a series of three articles. Read the first article and stay tuned for more in-depth insights.

At the Waterproof event by Partners for Water, over 50 tables of water professionals spent the day tackling one of the sector’s most persistent challenges: not the lack of solutions, but the lack of conditions to make them work.

The gap between policy and practice

A recurring theme of Waterproof 2026 was the critical gap between water governance and climate action on the ground. While advanced climate and water policies exist, translating them into local implementation remains highly contested and complex.

The opening discussion focused on the central theme that the UN has declared an era of ‘global water bankruptcy’. With 68 water projects on display at the event, it was clear that the ideas are there but scaling them remains a colossal task. Success depends on having the right policies and regulations in place, ensuring fair and accessible funding, available and trustworthy data and making sure the right people have a seat at the table.

From pilots to systems

Participants argued against the tendency to fund isolated experiments that never scale. One table noted that only doing a pilot is affecting the livelihoods of real people and there is too much focus on solutions and not on the necessary systems.

The output from the enabling environment session captured this consensus: Partners for Water’s next programme should prioritise facilitating local champions to convene actors and drive systemic change, rather than managing projects from a distance.

Local ownership

Perhaps the most consistent theme across all rounds was the need for genuine local ownership. Participants argued that climate adaptation works only when it is local, community-owned and built on mutual interest and respect from the start.

Enhancing that was the conversation around the value of indigenous and local knowledge. Participants suggested that many communities already have their own adaptation strategies, making the case for supporting and amplifying those ideas, rather than replacing them.

Neha Mungekar of IHE Delft Institute for Water Education reinforced this from a governance perspective. The main obstacle to implementing water solutions, she argues, is not technology, but human behaviour. Participatory platforms tend to invite the wrong people: “We fill rooms with experts and representatives, but rarely with those who experience the problem.” In Bhopal, India, she brought health practitioners and water authorities, the latter of which had been denying groundwater contamination. After a heated exchange backed by hard data, they eventually acknowledged it. “For me, this was a big win.”

Her broader lesson echoed throughout the discussions: “Sustainability without justice causes harm…change must be culturally situated and sensitive to loss.”

Finally, she emphasised that breaking silos requires “creating safe spaces for encouraging all voices” and getting “marginalised groups (youth, women, indigenous groups, etc.) driving the UN conference rather than just attending it.”

Finance and innovative mechanisms

On financing, the picture was sobering. With only five specialist water tech investors globally, patient capital remains scarce – 80 percent of investors have invested in water technology only once. Liza Faber of Pure Terra Ventures argued that the perception of water being unattractive to investors is a misconception. “The real challenge is that the problems are accelerating faster than the solutions can be deployed.”

Ferdinand Segers of Plan International noted that many companies underestimate how water risks will affect them, making them reluctant to invest proactively. Plan International is exploring blended finance that combine grants with private investment, using donated funds to absorb risk and attract investors.

Meanwhile, the World Bank’s newly launched Water Forward Programme secured commitment from 14 countries to establish budgets and create the right policy conditions to unlock SDG 6 funding.

A major funding gap remains for projects that are too large for small pilot grants, but too risky for institutional investors. Several tables called for a dedicated catalytic fund, with Partners for Water acting as a risk-taker to encourage private investment in water innovation and technology.

Other proposals included Watershed Investment Programmes where water users dedicate 1 percent of their water bill to watershed restoration and True Pricing, which embeds the full costs of water into product prices to build financial capacity and educate communities about the real cost of water use. A more radical economic proposal involved forgiving foreign debt of low-to-middle income countries to fund mitigation and adaptation without creating new debt burdens.

A recurring structural obstacle is governments keeping water tariffs artificially low for political reasons, undermining the financial sustainability of water services.

Data, AI and the politics of information

A conversation emerged around data. New national laws in countries like Vietnam are actively prohibiting open data exchange, while, as one participant noted you can’t adapt to climate change if data is not being shared. AI was welcomed as a tool for early warning and coordination and for preserving institutional memory, but concerns rose around its energy and water footprint and the risk of data being weaponised by governments. Paradoxically, AI is both a heavy water consumer and a tool for solving the very crisis it contributes to. Participants argued that data should in the long run be democratised and accessible for all citizens.

Long timelines, structural commitment

The Dutch Diamond model, bringing together government, business, knowledge institutions and civil society, was praised and scrutinised through examples from Vietnam and Ghana demonstrating successful local initiatives that struggle to be adopted more broadly.

The Netherlands’ Delta Fund was highlighted as a model of structural commitment embedded in law and therefore largely insulated from political change. On a broader scale, there was a call to create an EU Water Strategy and a water availability Directive to coordinate efforts and share lessons learned.

Unambiguously there was agreement that attention must extend beyond delivery to maintenance, monitoring and long-term follow-up.

The final call

The closing call to action captured the spirit of the whole day: “By 2040, fund community-led water adaptation through ethical AI, transparent data sharing, youth leadership and local knowledge and de-politicise water.”

The 2030 breakthrough plan added further urgency calling for radical public awareness of water security, through for instance a worldwide International Day Without Water to personalise the crises.

Three clear priorities emerged for Partners for Water’s next programme: facilitate local champions to drive systemic change; act as a catalyst by providing a de-risking fund that bridges the gap between pilots and scale; and commit to long-term programme timelines that cover the full project cycle. The conditions for change are understood. The question is whether the structures will follow.

Julia Watson, an Australian-born landscape architect well known for her approach to the challenges of modern societies in relation to nature, was the centre of attention at an event last week organised by Partners for Water and the University of Delft. Watson inspired students and other visitors with her enthusiastic message about the importance of “knowledge that is being ignored, and the intelligence lying around us.” 

A different kind of technology

The morning session at the faculty of architecture was hosted by Steffen Nijhuis, professor of landscape-based urbanism at TU Delft. His work aligns with Watson’s view that sustainable cities must be rooted in living systems and local knowledge, rather than imposed on top of them. He describes this approach simply as “landscape logic” for sustainable urban planning.

The term Nature-based Solution (NBS) has become too technical, he argued, reduced to planting a few trees and ticking a box. His team at TU Delft is proposing a shift towards landscape-based solutions, treating the cultural dimension of a landscape as inseparable from the ecological one. Landscapes, he reminded the audience, are not just natural systems. They are the product of centuries of interaction between people and their environment.

Meetings with indigenous community leaders at COP16 in Colombia, where TU Delft hosted a pavilion with Partners for Water on indigenous water knowledge, showed how little Western institutions are only just starting to understand. To begin with; “water is alive”, continued Julia Watson, “it remembers, it warns and it teaches.”

To illustrate the point she has been making for many years, Watson used a bridge in northeast India, not built from steel or concrete but grown. The Khasi people of Meghalaya plant two fig trees on opposite banks of a river, then spend decades training their roots across bamboo scaffolding until the root systems touch, fuse, and become one living structure that can withstand monsoon floods and grow stronger over time.

“I’ve been there,” Watson said. “I’ve held these trees. You knock them, and they resonate – because there’s water inside. It’s living tissue. It’s growing.” A design philosophy she calls Lo-TEK: Traditional Ecological Knowledge with “Lo” referring to low-tech as opposed to high-tech industrial solutions, taking into account the accumulated wisdom of indigenous communities who have engineered living systems over millennia.

Humans should be returning to their relationship with nature, a connection that seems to have been lost, in the belief that technology can solve everything in modern cities. Instead, we should work with nature not against it. “Many indigenous people don’t even have a word for nature. They don’t see themselves separate from it,” said Watson.

Five examples

The alternative Watson proposes is not a rejection of technology, but a radical re-definition and a different way of thinking. Drawing from her book “Lo-Tek Water, a field guide for TEKnology”, elaborately described and explained with infographics, at TU she described five examples from around the world, to show what this looks like in practice.

Clam gardens

Firstly, the clam gardens in North America. For 4,000 years, indigenous communities along the Pacific Northwest coast have built shoreline terraces by stacking rocks at low tide, creating warm shallow shelves where clams thrive. The efforts on Quadra Island in British Columbia have truly paid off, as the Kwakwaka’wakw Nation have turned 35 percent of the coastline into a productive clam habitat, feeding not only the human community but also the otters, minks, and waterbirds around them.

Today the Swinomish people of Washington State are reviving the practice, constructing the first such terrace built in the United States in over 400 years to protect shorelines from storms, erosion, and rising seas.

Kelp farming on Long Island

Just two hours from Manhattan, the Shinnecock Nation is running the first indigenous-led kelp farm on the entire East Coast. The community has maintained a relationship with the sea and with sugar kelp for around 13,000 years. Their operation cleans the heavily polluted waters of Shinnecock Bay, sequesters carbon, restores biodiversity and generates income by selling harvested kelp to local farmers as a replacement for synthetic fertiliser.

Organic rooftop in Bangkok

Designed by landscape architects Landprocess, the organic rooftop garden of Thammasat University covers 22,000 square metres and is modelled on traditional Thai rice terraces. Students harvest food which is sold in the campus cafeteria. The building collects its own irrigation water, cools the surrounding air, and runs on renewable energy, creating a “food-water-energy nexus” built on ancestral logic.

The Chinampas of Mexico City

In the southern districts of the capital, a pre-colonial agricultural system is struggling to survive. But farmers still use shallow lake beds and plant willow trees along the edges, with a few harvests a year. The system also filters wastewater, lowers local air temperatures, and buffers against both floods and droughts. They are still proof of what cities can do with water, but are slowly being lost to urbanisation and the pollution that comes with it.

The Mulberry dyke system of the Yangtze Delta

In this Chinese system dating back centuries, farmers plant mulberry trees on embankments between fishponds. Silkworms feed on the mulberry leaves, their waste falls into the water and feeds the fish, the fish fertilise the pond bottom, and once a year farmers dredge that rich silt onto the dykes to nourish the mulberry trees again. Nothing is wasted. The system also forms an intricate network of canals that protects the city of Huzhou from flooding.

The city as a sponge

Perhaps the clearest proof that ancestral knowledge can directly shape contemporary urban design comes from the late Chinese landscape architect Kongjian Yu. When developing his “Sponge City” model – now replicated in nearly 100 cities worldwide – Yu drew directly from the Chinampas and the Yangtze Delta dyke systems. Sponge City uses a different urban drainage system: instead of expelling water as soon as possible through pipes and drains, it absorbs and retains it, then slowly releases it, putting it to use in much the same way a landscape does.

The panel produced a few examples of how abandoned ancestral systems were recovered in the 1990s, when researcher Stephen Lansing created a computer model simulating how the water temples in Bali coordinated water flow across the island’s rice terraces. He showed that the priests were managing a sophisticated, landscape-scale pest control and irrigation system. Examples from the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Denmark and Italy showed that Europe has its own long-neglected traditions of working with water, many of which are preserved in monastic landscapes or were only recently rediscovered through aerial surveys.

Students at TU Delft are increasingly drawn to these topics. One graduate asked what ethical principles should guide working with indigenous communities. He referred to multinational companies like Nike, which Watson has worked with as a sustainability consultant. She responded that these relationships should be made more equitable and regenerative. A Smart Oath of Understanding (SOU) has been developed as an alternative to standard Western legal contracts, using oral agreements encoded in blockchain technology to protect indigenous intellectual property and ensure communities retain ownership and control.

Various students asked how ancestral knowledge systems can be scaled to meet the pace of urbanisation: 165 new cities by 2040, and half a billion potential climate refugees. There is no easy answer. But everyone in the room agreed that the transition must happen simultaneously at every level; education, governance, finance, legislation, and the way we gather proof. The biggest challenge is to measure progress not primarily through economic growth. “Then transition begins.”

Julia Watson is the author of Lo-TEK: Design by Radical Indigenism (2019) and Lo-TEK Water (2024). She teaches at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Julia Watson was also one of the guests in our podcast The Indigenous Voice.

Below you can watch the video of Steffen Nijhuis’ and Julia Watson’s lecture, as well as the panel discussion we held at the event.

At Waterproof 2026, earth scientist Philip Minderhoud opened his talk with an image of a church steeple rising from the sea. What followed was a 15-minute keynote address that reframed the urgency of climate adaptation and set fifty roundtables in motion.

What a drowning delta looks like

The audience at the Fokker Terminal in The Hague had barely settled when Philip Minderhoud shared a photograph on the screen. It was a church steeple. Surrounding it, was open water as far as the drone could capture. This was not a flood, but the permanent new reality of a village in the Philippines. “This is the people attending the last mass,” he said, “before they abandoned their entire village.”

Two crises

Minderhoud is an associate professor at Wageningen University & Research and an advisor at Deltares. He specialises in Coastal-Deltaic Land Subsidence and Relative Sea-Level Rise, in other words: the way deltas sink and what that means when combined with rising sea-levels. His participation at Waterproof 2026 was a call to look at both crises at the same time. The one visible and the one happening invisible happening under your feet.

That invisible crisis is land subsidence driven largely by one thing: the extraction of groundwater. When water is pumped from deep aquifers, the clay layers above slowly compress and reorient: an irreversible process. Groundwater, Minderhoud explained, does not just carry water. It carries the elevation of the land itself. Over extracting it and you pay with altitude.

Subsidence up to 20 cm/year

In the Mekong Delta, subsidence rates have more than doubled in fifteen years. In the Pampanga delta north of Manila – where Minderhoud conducted a field survey in September 2024 – the ground is sinking up to 20 centimetres per year. He showed what that looks like on the ground: schools with flooded classrooms that open and close with the tides; roads raised a metre and a half; special tricycles built taller to navigate high-water streets; a relocation site for a thousand families, itself partially submerged within years of construction and rice fields that turned to open water between 2020 and 2024.

77-132 million more people at risk

The scale of the exposure is larger than most risk assessments suggest. More than 90 percent of coastal hazard assessments use satellite elevation data referenced to a global geo-id model that, in tropical regions, significantly underestimates actual sea level. In parts of Southeast Asia, the difference is up to a metre. A paper he co-authored in Nature (Seeger & Minderhoud, March 2026) calculated that this systematic error means between 77 and 132 million more people are exposed to the impacts of one metre of relative sea-level rise than current projections show. “If sea level in reality is higher for your particular island or coastal city than was previously assumed,” he said, “the impacts will happen sooner than projected.”

Our responsibilty: the impact of a failed pilot

His conclusion was pointed: the sector spends its energy adapting to what is visible at the surface. However, the more effective intervention is to address the drivers underneath. Reduce groundwater extraction. Protect aquifers. Understand the system before you design for it. He closed on a slide that underlines the responsibility water professionals have: “A failed pilot for us may mean losing their homes for them.”

What water professionals would do about it

After the keynote, fifty roundtables were asked one question: what bold action should the global water sector take to accelerate climate adaptation and be ready to pitch at the UN Water Conference in December? The responses, collected live via Mentimeter, mapped the priorities of a sector in the middle of rethinking its own defaults.

Alternative water solutions
The most recurring suggestion was structural action on groundwater. Tables called for a moratorium on commercial extraction in vulnerable coastal zones, groundwater pricing modelled on carbon trading and serious investment in surface water alternatives, such as fixing leaking pipes (globally, around 50 percent of extracted groundwater leaks away before it reaches users), harvesting rainwater and scaling desalination and wastewater reuse.

Always consider systematic change
Nature-based approaches attracted both strong support and sharp critique. The emerging consensus: stop funding isolated interventions, start designing for systems. “From nature-based solution towards nature-based system approach” was one of the most submitted responses. “Don’t do a pilot – they are about the livelihoods of real people. Always consider systemic change,” submitted another table.

Include community and intergenerational knowledge
Community knowledge and local ownership featured prominently. Participants called for youth at the steering wheel of climate decisions, intergenerational knowledge in adaptation planning and local communities holding formal ownership over their own rivers and groundwater. One table asked a question that lingered: “What can we learn from our grandfathers and grandmothers?”

Scale up investment capacity
Regarding finance, one number stood out. Total global green bond issuance: US $3 trillion. Total blue bond issuance for water: US $15 billion. “If we’re really serious about water, we need to scale up investment capacity 100 times by 2030.” True-cost pricing, watershed investment funds and debt forgiveness for low-income countries were all proposed as mechanisms to move that number.

Look beyond the water sector
Across themes, one message recurred: the water sector cannot solve this alone. Proposals included requiring 50 percent non-water-sector representation at the UN Water Conference committee, bringing colleagues from finance, agriculture and tech into the dialogue and going to other sector’s conferences rather than only hosting your own.

Whats next?

The outputs from the session will be carried forward by Partners for Water as direct input to the UN Water Conference agenda in Dubai on 8-10 December. Philip Minderhoud’s question – can a delta drownclearly answered at The Hague. The harder question is what the world does about it before the window closes.

On 19 May 2026, Partners for Water brought together almost four hundred water professionals in The Hague for Waterproof 2026. With climate change accelerating, geopolitical pressure growing and budgets tightening, the stakes could not be higher. Against that backdrop, representatives from government, the private sector, NGOs and knowledge institutions sat side by side for a full day of talks, a panel discussion and three round-table workshops to discuss solutions for a water-secure world. The outputs of the day will feed into the Dutch contribution to the UN Water Conference later this year – and into the design of Partners for Water 6, starting in 2028.

A room full of realists

The opening question cut straight to the point: “Are you optimistic that the water sector is moving fast enough to improve water security worldwide?” Almost nobody stood up. But as one participant put it: If you weren’t optimistic, you wouldn’t be here. And that optimism carried through the day.

Eva Schreuder, Head of Water at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Afke Mulder, Deputy Programme Director at the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, opened the day by acknowledging the scale of the challenge. Both ministries stressed that water remains a strategic foreign policy priority for the Netherlands and that the urgency is far from fading.

Collaboration and technology: both, not either

One of the day’s opening statements sparked a lively exchange: “The biggest breakthroughs in water will come from collaboration, not technology.” Most people agreed – though many added a “but”.

The general view was that technology is not the bottleneck. What lags is the coordination, trust, and institutional alignment needed to deploy it. Participant Johann Poinapen brought it together: “We are doing a lot of innovative work, developing technologies, looking at societal and legal readiness. But if we do that in silos, we can’t go far. If we keep collaborating, have a unified vision and – most importantly – unified action, then we will have more impact.”

One participant pushed back, noting that in the Netherlands, the emphasis on collaboration may be crowding out technology development. It was a tension that ran through the entire day. Dorien Lugt later captured it well: technology without context doesn’t work – but neither does context without implementation. As another participant put it: “Technology will solve a lot of things – but you still need people to believe in it. That’s where collaboration comes in.”

The funding gap

When it comes to scaling, the barriers are as much financial as they are relational. Liza Faber noted that 80 percent of investors who have put money into water technology have never reinvested. Venture capital expects returns in three to five years. Water, in many cases, needs five to seven. Her advice: broaden the financing ecosystem – venture capital is only one small piece, and the sector needs dedicated instruments that can reach local actors and small entrepreneurs.

Water for climate action: looking below the surface

Associate Professor Philip Minderhoud (Wageningen University / Deltares) opened the first round-table with a striking finding: in much of Southeast Asia, sea levels are already up to a metre higher than most satellite-based risk models assume. The result is that millions of people face significantly greater exposure to flooding than current assessments suggest.

At the root of this, Minderhout argued, is a largely invisible driver: land subsidence caused by groundwater extraction. In a Philippine municipality of over 100,000 people, tidal water now floods the entire city every day. Rice fields that were productive in 2020 are open water today. Reducing groundwater extraction, he argued, is one of the most effective actions available.

The tables translated the discussion into concrete directions: establish a buddy-to-buddy system for knowledge and technology exchange, embed water resilience targets in national adaptation plans to ensure accountability, involve non-water sector parties in leadership, build on local knowledge and the strength of communities, and make existing financial mechanisms functional, or create new ones.

Enabling environment: the human side of implementation

Researcher Neha Mungekar (IHE Delft) picked up where the earlier discussion on technology and collaboration left off. The barriers to implementation, she argued, are rarely technical. They are relational. “There is no scarcity of trust. There is a deep hurt amongst actors. The real question is: how do we get these people to listen to each other?” She argued the answer lies in designing spaces for genuine disagreement – addressing distrust, fear, and institutional fragmentation head-on, rather than hiding them behind participatory processes that look the part but avoid real friction.

The round-table outputs focused on what Partners for Water could do differently in its next programme: facilitate local champions who can bring actors together; act as a de-risking facility to bridge the gap between pilots and scale; and shift to longer programme cycles that follow projects from design through to post-implementation monitoring and learning.

Water security innovations: being critical enough

Dorien Lugt (HKV) argued that often, innovations fail not because the technology is wrong, but because problem definitions are too shallow, stakeholder objectives go unspoken, and projects drift into process without anyone implementing anything.

Her call: “Be more critical earlier in the process. Question the problem. Question the solution. Question your own role.”

When asked what innovations and actions are needed to ensure water security by 2030, the tables were concrete: honour existing global agreements and ensure the financing behind them holds, build radical public awareness around the true scarcity of fresh water, and explore what a European-level water programme could look like.

Taking it forward

At the close of the day, Partners for Water programme coordinaor Lilliane Geerling handed a USB stick containing every idea and insight gathered during the round-table sesionss directly to Jaap Slootmaker, Director General Water and Soil at the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management. As he put it: “Being more critical helps us put our scarce money and capacity where it is most effective.” Those inputs will feed into both the Dutch contribution to the UN Water Conference later this year and the design of Partners for Water 6, starting in 2028. As Jaap Slootmaker put it: “Being more critical helps us put our scarce money and capacity where they are most effective.”