Wet Breakthroughs!

[Music] [Music] This is Ritzker de Kraft. We're on a water taxi in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam, heading to a pier on the edge of town to something he designed called the Floating Pavilion. The pounding that you hear is the bow of the water taxi, hitting the surface of the river mass as it shoots across. Ritzker is an engineer for a company he co-founded called Blue 21. Sea level rise means flooding and real danger to every low-lying river delta country. Places like the Netherlands, Bangladesh, Singapore, and more. So what's Blue 21's solution? Floating cities. And they've even built a proof of concept. So this is the Floating Pavilion of Rotterdam. We designed it as an exhibition center, a conference center. Right next to the Hussmas Bridge. And then two years ago it was moved to this area. And actually that's one of the big benefits of floating buildings. Because floating cities can be moved. They rise and fall with sea level. And most importantly, they don't flood. This could be a solution to a future problem we all know is coming. March 22 is World Water Day. So we've gone out and collected a whole bouquet of innovations. In hardware and software, but also breakthroughs in social structures, governance, and our built environment. And breakthroughs are what this edition of waterproof is all about. I'm Tracy Metz and this is Waterproof, a podcast from Partners for Water. Partners for Water is a government program that shares Dutch water expertise with countries all around the world. This episode is called Wet Breakthroughs. My name is Ritgrit Graf. I'm a civil engineer by background. And I've been working for two decades to innovate in the field of floating urban development. As you heard at the top of the show, Ritgrit and his company Blue 21 work in floating urban development. He doesn't mean just a few floating houses. If you come to the Netherlands, you see house votes all along the canals in Amsterdam. But the truth is, there aren't that many houses that float. No, he means whole floating cities. I asked him, is this the innovation that's going to save humankind? What I've been focusing on in the last couple of years, a couple of years is the upscaling of floating structure technology to enable the construction of larger floating buildings as well as floating neighborhoods to enable eventually the step towards full-scale floating cities. If you look at the big challenges that we're facing as a global population at the moment, climate change impact, extreme weather events, but also rip and urban growth in low-lying delta areas are quite fundamental and challenged the way we are used to live in those areas. Our technology enables a mankind, humankind, to urbanize in these kinds of areas in a climate-resilient way without further increasing the flood risk. And I think that's a very important perspective. The Dutch are famous all over the world for their water management. Is this an example of new innovative Dutch water management? Yes, it's an innovation as well as a continuation of the tradition, I think, because we have been fighting the water for more than a thousand years, started with small windmill, small dikes and levies, all the way up to steam engines, lentric limation, and now the next step will be living on the water. The Dutch are convinced that we need solutions at the same scale of the problem, so big. If we're talking about a housing shortage of 500,000 houses in the Netherlands or we're talking about maybe a billion climate refugees, we have to make sure that we have a solution that can add up to those kind of numbers. So we need something on the scale of not just individual projects, but on large-scale urbanism. How do we make livable, attractive floating neighborhood with that technology? Because else, we're creating the next problem that we're having floating ghost towns where nobody wants to live, and we still didn't solve the problem. So I think that's also very important. People often react to his ideas with, oh, floating houses are just for rich people. He says, no. If we really scale this up, then it can be a solution for people with less means and more danger of being impacted by climate change. The next step is to make it also affordable for the global south, so that people that are affected most by climate change, that they also have a realistic chance to also benefit from these solutions. Because else, it just stays something small only for the very rich, and I think then it would not be a good solution. So I think it's very fundamental that we get these kind of technologies out of the innovation niche and really start to make it applicable at a larger scale that's relevant to the problems that we're talking about. So what you want to do basically is to make floating living the new normal? Absolutely. It's not the only solution, obviously, but I do think it's a very important part of the solution space and the strategy that we need in this century to deal with the problems that we're facing. You are working on a project in the Dutch city of Swola, which is a floating social housing. We're really trying to make this step from Watervilla towards a floating apartment complex with 45 apartments on one platform, so you share the cost of the platform with more houses and really try to get this under the social housing standard, so that it really becomes affordable even for the lower income groups. Perhaps some of you think this idea of living on water in giant floating cities is pie in the sky, crazy talk. And indeed, Retrhe has had many detractors over the years, but he truly believes that this can be done and must be done. And the only thing stopping floating cities from becoming a reality is ourselves. I think the biggest crisis is our lack of imagination. Doesn't this ever make you tired and cynical and want to give up? Sometimes it's a bit disappointing that it goes slowly. On the other hand, I also see a huge acceleration of acceptance of this technology. 20 years ago, people were just laughing at us that were crazy Dutch engineers and were talking about Donald Duck, all that kind of stuff. And now, it's seriously discussed at highest possible levels, at the UN level, but also on the national level, at the European level. At the same time, global challenges are not waiting. We urgently need to do something. We cannot just keep on talking about it. The Dutch government, at least, is not just talking about it. Rytcher and his company, Blue 21, are one of 34 partners in a major research project called, the name says it all, Floating Future. There are universities involved, businesses, nonprofits and the government. But to realize projects like this takes more than one government. It takes international cooperation. And that's where our next guest comes in. I am Mary Matthews. I am the Global Water Lead at Interim for UNDP, which is the United Nations Development Program. The UNDP is the largest arm of the United Nations. As Global Water Lead, Mary does the day-to-day work of making sure people in developing countries have enough clean water not only to survive, but also to thrive. She's all about innovating governance. That means getting ministries, ministers and civil servants to work together to make that happen. To me, that sounds like hurting cats. But everyone needs water, right? Honestly, the biggest innovation we really have to have is better water governance, better water policy, and better regulations. Water is really an integrator itself, because water isn't just for agriculture or for ecosystems or for industry. In 2016, the United Nations adopted a whole series of SDGs, better known as sustainable development goals. And one of those is SDG6. And the idea is that by 2030, there will be sufficient water for all, for sanitation, for drinking. What kind of innovation do we need, Mary, to actually make that deadline? Are we going to make it? One of the things we've done is we've developed the Water Solutions Catalog in UNDP, which is basically about saving time. It pulls together the solutions that already work, things like fixing utility governance or reducing water losses, so countries don't start from zero every single time. Can you give me an example, Mary? One that I really like is the Women in Water Diplomacy Network. We supported women mediators who were working on water disputes at the community level and the trans boundary level. Why women? Women actually are often at the heart of these issues, but women also are wonderful at talking to each other in ways that men aren't. And you know what I think is a really important difference, Mary? Women talk to each other in the bathroom. We do our business in the bathroom while we're refreshing our lipstick. Exactly. A rich man was a cultural anthropologist and it fasts and aids me. Men will not talk to each other in the bathroom in any culture I've found. But women go there because it's a safe place where we can get work done and get business done and talk to each other. and refresh our lipsticks. [Laughter] SDG #6 says that by 2030, which is like tomorrow, there must be clean water for everyone. I asked Mary what is the biggest breakthrough that we need to make that happen? Her answer was a little unexpected. Often the private sector comes to me and they say, "Hey, Mary, we really want to work with you NDP." And I always say, "Great." And they say, "We need enabling environments. We need to know that our investments are actually going to serve the people we need them to serve." And when governance works, the money follows. Public money and private money. Isn't there something really fundamentally wrong with our system in which you can grow food and make a profit? You can't make a profit on water. And there's no food without water. Making a profit on water is really a tricky issue because people often say, "The water is free. It is a gift from God." And I often say, "Yes." It's a gift from God when it's in the soils, when it's in the skies, when it's in the river. But when it comes out of the tap in your kitchen, God didn't do that. Engineers did that. That takes money because if we don't have the private sector, if we don't have the private sector, engaged in the international processes around water, it won't be possible to do this. I don't envy Mary Matthew's job. Water issues are the most intractable, difficult to resolve, international issues ever. So I asked her if she can actually make a difference. Water problems are the most wicked, intractable, challenging problems because water is so precious, and it's so finite, and we can't live without it. There's never been a civilization that's ever existed where they didn't have access to fresh water. And there never will be. One thing I've realized is that if I'm not part of the solutions, I'm part of the problem, and I'm not willing to be part of the problem, not just for myself, but I've got a two-year-old granddaughter, and I don't want her to say, why couldn't you fix this when you had a chance? That was Mary Matthews, the Global Water Lead Add-In Trim for UNDP, the United Nations Development Program. Partners for Water and UNDP will be working together at the next UN Water Conference at the end of 2026. So I'm Florian Wittsenberg. I'm the director of a company called Tyron, and we make a software for city planning. We make software where you can create a digital twin of your city where you can plan different scenarios for the future. Florian's company Tyron makes digital twins for urban planning and for potential disaster scenarios like floods. You name it, they can simulate it. So Florian, what is exactly a digital twin? A digital twin is a digital representation of reality. It is actually created by NASA in the 60s, for their space program. They created a digital representation of their rockets where they can experiment with the performance in a digital world. And we work in cities, so we can create a digital representation of a city, and then you can upload a city plan and recalculate what's the effect of a plan on a city. Florian is actually a hydrologist by training, and used to work at a big consultancy. He saw that in the traditional city planning method, each sector made its own plan, the traffic people, the water people, the biodiversity people, the housing people, the cumulative effect of so many plans, meant that nobody could see the woods for the trees. That's where digital twin comes in. He told me how this worked in, for example, the Dutch town of Nielgrijn. There were about 90 different places where we were going to develop houses. Each of these locations, there was a environmental impact assessment done, etc. The city council said, "What is the cumulative effects of all these plans?" So what if we do them all? What if we do half of them? What is the impact of all these plans on the city? People need schools, they need supermarkets, they bring cars, we have no clue what's the impact of all these plans. So there was a building stop. We're not giving any permits till we know what we want to have control as a city council. So they build a digital twin, now they're building in Nielgrijn. That's a great example where technology with a good process can make better decisions. TyGron also uses digital twins for disaster response. The flood line is a very important part of the city. The flood levels from the destruction of the Novakhoovka Dam in Ukraine are expected to reach their peak Wednesday. But the scale of a station across large parts of the region has brought fresh heartbreak in what is still in active war zone. This is a news report about a Russian attack that blew up a dam in Ukraine. TyGron predicted within hours where and how much water would flow out of the broken dam. This helped first responders to know where to go and what to do. We started to model that dam break. So we upload all the data. We blew up the dam as well as the Russians did. And simulated the water flow for the next hours and also the drainage of the system for the next 20 days. That help organizations like the Red Cross, what they need to know is where do we mobilize the need to get in that area. It's a war zone. So they need to know where do we need to be. That's why information on a flood and the progress of the flood and the drainage of the flood after the peak is extremely relevant in an emergency situation. How long does it take TyGron to pull together a useful digital twin of this area of a dam in Ukraine? Is that half an hour or two days? The basics are done in half an hour. Like that's what we do in the Ukraine. And what we did, we looked at the news. We saw the dam breach was about 40 meters. We just watched CNN. So we modeled that 40 meters. We published the results and then an engineer that lives in that area. Notify us. They said your calculation is an underestimation of what's happening here. By then we have better images of the dam breach. That was Florian Wittsenberg of TyGron. And as he says, as great as digital twinning is, nothing beats having eyes on the ground. And nothing beats eyes in the skies. Did you know that they're making a digital twin of the whole earth? The EU is creating a 500 million euro project called Destination Earth or Destin E. Nice name, right? Anyway, this is a computer simulation of the entire earth. Including the atmosphere, oceans, and land. The hope is it will sharpen climate forecasts and also help model biodiversity or even pandemics. It's already been used to make high-resolution urban heat maps for European cities. Destin E will also monitor air pollution and provide early warning for wildfires, flood, and drought. If you want to find out more, we've linked to it in the show notes. This is the first time we've ever seen a drone. This is, in my opinion, the pinnacle of science. It's almost like magic. And speaking of magic, how about making water appear from thin air? I'm in a factory in the southeast of Amsterdam at a startup called Solok. And what you're hearing is the flow of air worrying through the factory hall. What you can't see are all the beer crates propping open the windows to let plenty of fresh air in. Having enough air is super important to Solok because they make water out of thin air. My name is Ruben Moore. And I'm one of the founders of Solok, which is a company that developed technology to produce water from air. Some people think it's magic. In reality, it's engineering. This magic does take a lot of hardware and a lot of desiccants. Desicants dry things out. You know, like that little grainy sachet that you're not supposed to eat that comes in packaging? That's a desiccant. It seems weird that you need to dry something out in order to make water. Ruben explains how it works. So what we do at Solok is based on a wet desiccant process, which is a two-step process, where we first absorb water from the air into a hygroscopic liquid. This is a liquid that wants to attract water from the air. And after that, in the second process, we separate that water back out of that liquid to produce pure water. Our goal is with, let's say, the absorption and regeneration process to produce water as pure as possible, because that opens up opportunities for green hydrogen production, data centers, processes, hospitals, laboratories. The problem Solok is trying to solve with his supportive partners for water is the scarcity of clean water worldwide. Global water demand is projected to increase by 55% by 2050. According to the UN, one in four people lack access to safe drinking water. And according to the World Health Organization, 1.4 million people die every year of water-related diseases. Selak's solution is a machine that comes in two parts. One is the absorber, the other is the distiller, the tank which fits in a shipping container. That means they can literally be transported anywhere ships can go. Selak says each unit makes 2,000 liters of water a day. That sounds like a lot. I asked Ruben how they power these machines. We need mostly a source of heat to separate the water back out of that working fluid. That heat can come from solar energy, solar thermal, can come from solar electric with a heat pump, can come from waste heat from industry or diesel generator. Basically the containers we develop are meant to be energy flexible, right? And we now have actually sold first commercial pilots in Mexico and Spain and Brazil. In Brazil specifically there's over a million and a half people that depend on water trucks every day all year round for their water. And this water is not even drinking water. So people are getting sick. They either use that for their sanitation and hygiene and buy bottled water for drinking or they end up drinking it and kids get sick, they don't go to school. So there's a lot of, let's say, costs associated to this problem that aren't even included into the water price. We are really first focusing on creating a source of water security for places where there simply is no other alternative. Ruben showed me around his workshop to get a look at how it's done. So this white tube that we're looking at, Ruben pulls air in and does clean water come out at the end? Is that how it works? So this is half of the process, right? This is what we call an absorber. This is where we absorb the water from the air into that liquid. This liquid becomes diluted and then that diluted working fluid goes to the other system, the other process where we then separate the water back out of it and then we get water. Everything you see back there is the second part of the process where we then separate the water back out of that liquid to produce distilled water. So the absorption process and the desolation process are really two very different stages of this. And you can see that here in the workplace. How can you see that? So basically this absorber which is built to be modular and outside of the container is the whole absorption process and then all of the rest is the desolation process. And between the absorber and the distiller, there are just a few pipes. But indeed there's just a few pipes and right now this set up here in Amsterdam is, you know, we have all kinds of different configurations and bypasses and extra sensors so that we can really validate as much as possible with the goal to simplify. Not necessarily optimized but simplified in terms of measuring and control, robustness and cost, right? Because in order for this to work at scale and solve problems in remote places, it needs to be simple, maintainable and scalable. That was Ruben Moore of Solak. Ruben got me thinking when he said his invention could be used to produce water for data centers. What data centers? They use huge amounts of water. He said, yes, of course. Better that data centers are powered by solar energy and cooled with water made from air than with water taken from rivers or groundwater. I have to say, I think he's right. Why it could even be used to do the laundry. [LAUGHTER] This is a group of Nepali women in Kathmandu doing their laundry. They're laughing and chatting while they lather, ring and slap the clothes against the wall. They're big tubs of soapy water. It sounds like fun. But it is also time-consuming and hard work. In fact, according to the Asia Development Bank, women in developing countries spend huge chunks of their lives on doing the laundry by hand. That means carrying hefty bundles of clothes to distant water sources or fetching heavy containers of water over slippery paths, followed by hours of scrubbing, rinsing, lifting, bending, drying, and folding. This physical labor can expose them to serious health and safety risks. And all that work takes up time that they could use to earn an income, go to school. Or if you ask me, just have some downtime with friends and family. My name is Daya. Daya is her. And I work as a senior water-vexeling specialist at Asian Development Bank, or ADB here in Manila. Daya is one of the movers and shakers behind something called the laundry movement. Why laundry, I ask her? And why is a bank focusing on laundry? Because laundry is not visible. People do not know or do not realize people like myself, as well, that laundry is actually-- and particularly doing laundry by hand-- is a huge burden for many particular women in the world. It's challenging. It's very time-consuming. And we really want to change that. I wondered if you are a laundry expert, because I hear you talking about the people doing laundry by hand, which is a large number, actually. Shall I take you along with a few questions? Just quickly? You have a laundry quiz for me. About 3 billion people worldwide still wash their clothes by hand. Is it right or wrong? 3 billion. That's a lot. I'd say right. It's wrong. It's close to a 4 to 5 billion. And it's 50% of the global world population. Wow. Actually, how much time do women spend on doing laundry by hand? Is it about 8% of their active time right or wrong? I think more, so I'd say wrong. Correct. It is a lot more, actually. It's about 20% of their active time. So talking about roughly three hours every day. And I made some calculations that's more than 1,000 hours a year, which they cannot spend on family time or generating income or just education or rest. The first electric washing machine was invented in 1951. Is that right or is that wrong? 51? Now that sounds plausible. Yeah. It's wrong. It's actually wrong again. Much earlier. Yeah. It's shocking. It's 1908. It was called Thor, like the superhero. But it's a sad story, isn't it, Tracy? So over 100 of years, we have electric washing machines. But still 50% of the people in the world washed the laundry by hand. I think this quiz really tells us a lot about what a big subject this is, which I understand is the reason why Asian development banked together with some other partners has started what you call the laundry movement. What is the laundry movement, Tanya? So the laundry transformation consists actually of three key challenges. Number one is environmental protection. In a nutshell, laundry wastewater is one of the most underestimated source of water pollution, both in rivers, as well as in drainage canals in cities. And it's concerning because this will end up in our food systems. And in the end, also affect our own bodies, right? It's causing human health issues. The second theme is called public private sector collaboration, because we feel that ADB can play a key role in this, in facilitating new partnerships and collaboration as we have a large network. And the third one, and maybe the most impactful and exciting one, last but not least. Social innovation. With social innovation, we really focus on saving time of the women, protecting health, and restoring dignity. Across Asia and the Pacific, the Asia Development Bank aims to turn good ideas into real impact. Through partnerships and early funding, ADB support solutions so that they can grow from small pilots into sustainable, investable markets. We're trying to look beyond donations and funding as such. It's these grants they can spark ideas and help us with setting up pilots. But in the end, we want to create markets. And ADB can help with reducing the risk for these early fundings for the markets. And that will give private investors the confidence to invest. Do you have any pilots running yet? We are working with the washing machine project, exploring some pilots in the South Asia. We have public and private sector under one roof in ADB, so we can use concessional finance, but also mobilize private sector capital at the same time, so that these solutions really move from one-time projects to long-term services. I think your project has really opened at least my eyes for the innovative possibilities of something as mundane as laundry. If I talk about it, I get excited, because they have missed this for so long. And now we can help with all the different aspects of people's lives. I think it will change lives to a large extent. And that's why it's important to you to make this happen. To me, to ADB, actually to everyone I talk to Tracy. It seems to be an eye opener for everyone. Hearing these women at the washing place, chatting and laughing and talking to passers-by, you can really hear how much an integrated part of their social lives this is. So, imagine they all get efficient washing machines or washing stations. Does this mean a major social event in their day would be lost? That seems like a high price to pay for efficiency. Tanya says they're aware of this. If we can still facilitate the show show gatherings as part of the laundry, if they want that. Do we have a water and sanitation and hygiene projects where we can combine public toilets with some water, other points and you can combine that with Landry as well, where people pay just a very minor amount to make use of it. And that will give access to a lot of important water-related facilities. Another option is to support local communities with setting out their own Landry stations, that's happening actually in India, in some of the cities, where local people have their own business in learning Landry station, where people still come together for social activities, but the conditions are much better and it's taking less time a day. So for you, Tanya, when is this project a success? What are you trying to actually attain? As Asian Development Bank, we want to unlock and scale better services, new markets and of course improve the people's lives like we discussed. But I think this is going deeper. You cannot do it alone as ADB, you really need coalition of the willing or community of practice. And maybe in a nutshell, Tracy, actually it's sad that for us, this nice smell of your clean clothes is a luxury and I think that should never be the case, right? We had washing machines were over over hundreds of years, so let's everybody benefit now from all the innovations and developments at Tocque Place. I think that's what we want to achieve. That was Tanya Hauser of the Asia Development Bank and our thanks to young expert Shoaib Salik Kavaja for recording our laundry ladies in action. Partners for Water, this shows producer, is also subsidizing four research projects to make laundry easier in Bangladesh, Mozambique, Indonesia and India. Turns out just doing the laundry is a worldwide issue. All the flowers in the bouquet of innovations in this show have worldwide impact, actually, like everything, like just doing the laundry, it's an issue that seems mundane and then next thing you know, you're talking about something that affects billions. Small changes can really impact people's lives in a profound way. But also in this show, we have people thinking really big, almost unimaginably so, like whole floating cities, or things that are miraculous, like creating water out of thin air. When it comes to the world of water, our problems can seem insurmountable. But then when I speak with the kind of brilliant doers like this show's guests, I get a real sense of hope. We got ourselves into this situation, we can get ourselves out of it too. To paraphrase Ritzker the graph from the start of the show, the solutions are at hand. We just need to dare to imagine them. And then we need to act. Waterproof is a production of Partners for Water, an international water program of the RVO, the Netherlands Enterprise Agency. Partners for Water works on water issues in co-creation with local partners in countries all around the world. For Partners for Water, it's all about co-creation, innovation, and sharing knowledge. Want to learn more about all the important things Partners for Water does? Just go to PartnersForWater.nl. That's PartnersForWater.nl. And if you want to learn more about all the projects you heard about in today's show, just go to the links in the show notes. If you like what you hear, tell or text a friend now. Like right now. Go ahead, do it. We'd be grateful. Waterproof was written and produced by me, Tracy Mets, and Jonathan Gruber. I'm Tracy Mets. Thanks for listening. [Music]