Message from our Executive Director

I am delighted to present the 2019-20 Water Institute Impact Report. Our Impact Report aims to illustrate how our 160 faculty members from 24 different departments and schools push the boundaries of water science, engineering, governance and economics, and contribute to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s).

This year was truly challenging with the COVID-19 pandemic taking hold in Canada and around the world as the winter term neared completion. The new normal has propelled the Institute to accelerate the digital transformation of our interdisciplinary supports and programming.

Given the need to ensure post-COVID recoveries support the UN’s SDG’s, it has never been more important for water researchers, practitioners and students to understand and apply the perspectives and contributions from various water-related disciplines, often those other than their own. In the coming year, the Water Institute will continue to support and promote our members’ key strengths in disciplinary and interdisciplinary water research, education and innovation.

Promoting sustainable water management and making meaningful progress against the SDG’s cannot, however, be achieved in isolation and will require global co-operation. The Water Institute remains committed to collaboration with leading international water organizations, and is finding new ways under the new normal to do so.

Roy Brouwer

Executive Director The Water Institute University of Waterloo