In this episode, we meet activists and campaigners who believe rivers and nature should have legal rights – just like people. They walk rivers, swim in urban waterways, write books, work with communities, and even take governments to court. All with one goal: ensuring clean, healthy rivers and cities where people can swim safely.

Featuring:

• Matt Sykes – Co-Founder, Swimmable Cities
• Li An Phoa – Initiator, Drinkable Rivers
• Robert MacFarlane – Author
• Harpo ’t Hart – Artistic Director, Embassy of the North Sea

In this new episode, we meet activists and campaigners who believe rivers and nature should have legal rights – just like people. They walk rivers, swim in urban waterways, write books, work with communities, and even take governments to court. All with one goal: ensuring clean, healthy rivers and cities where people can swim safely.

Featuring:

• Matt Sykes – Co-Founder, Swimmable Cities
• Li An Phoa – Initiator, Drinkable Rivers
• Robert MacFarlane – Author
• Harpo ’t Hart – Artistic Director, Embassy of the North Sea

Drinkable Rivers, Swimmable Cities
In this Waterproof episode, we meet activists and campaigners who believe rivers and nature should have legal rights – just like people. They walk rivers, swim in urban waterways, write books, work with communities, and even take governments to court. And some of them even sing songs with the trees and the turtles. All with one goal: ensuring clean, healthy rivers and cities where people can swim safely.

Featuring this episode are:

• Matt Sykes – Co-Founder, Swimmable Cities
• Li An Phoa – Initiator, Drinkable Rivers
• Robert MacFarlane – Author
• Harpo ’t Hart – Artistic Director, Embassy of the North Sea

From Financing Green to Greening Finance.

The difference is bigger than just syntax. So we speak with FMO, the Dutch Entrepreneurial Bank about the “secret sauce” that allows them to loan money to projects most financiers would consider too risky. Projects like Taprobane Seafood in Sri Lanka, which FMO financed, even after 30 years of political instability. So why did they do it?

We also speak with ABN AMRO Bank Chief economist Sandra Phlippen and Netherlands Water Ambassador Meike van Ginneken about what needs to happen to get banks and funds to be less risk averse when it comes to “greening” their finance.

That’s coming up in this sixth episode of Waterproof.

Water, biodiversity and food: it’s Nature’s Recipe. But how do you keep these important drivers balanced, healthy, profitable and resilient? And what do jaguars and strawberries have to do with it?

This episode of Waterproof tells stories all about how water, biodiversity and food meet. Did you know that 70% of the world’s freshwater is used for food production? And that food production causes 70% of biodiversity loss. So, this show is about how scientists, engineers, officials, experts and indigenous people come together to work on solving these profound problems. So, we speak with guests in Ghana, Colombia, Mexico and the Netherlands who show the world CAN be more sustainable, or in the case of the berry growers in Jalisco State, Mexico, a sweeter and juicier place.

This episode of Waterproof is all about breaking the Build-Neglect-Repair Cycle. As we have called it: Build Neglect Repair Repeat. With the best intentions, countries in the global north often spend a bundle of money building something that people in developing countries need, or that the donor thinks they need. Then the locals can't maintain it, or can’t afford to, or they don't know how. It falls apart, and the donor either has to come back to repair it - or doesn’t come back at all. It’s a vicious circle .

So we travel to Ethiopia, Indonesia, Mozambique and the city of Chennai in India, to speak with people who are doing their best to break this cycle.

Once upon a time, Europeans would turn up in emerging countries with mega-infrastructure projects meant to help people. They were well-meaning, but often deaf to what the local populations wanted or needed. Times have changed and, as you’ll hear in this episode of Waterproof, more and more, the locals run the show!

So, we bike through Amsterdam, where gardens and flood prevention measures are put in by the city and then maintained by Amsterdammers. In Ghana, water projects are consulting village elders to make sure the plans align with their needs - and maybe even benefit from their local knowledge.

And as a massive, but slow new Delta Plan gets underway to control flooding in Bangladesh, we look into small-scale projects implemented by locals that have benefits for their people right now. Locals in the Lead!

This second episode of Waterproof is all about “The Salty Intruder”. 

All over the world, arable land is becoming more and more saline, threatening farmers’ livelihoods and our food security. But there are smart, innovative people looking for solutions - and the Dutch are helping, for example with a new Virtual Reality game to teach farmers to plant salt tolerant crops. 

In Egypt, where the Nile delta is getting saltier, farmers like Tariq el Arini are switching from water-intensive rice to saline loving potatoes.  And Vietnam’s ‘Sokfarm’ has moved from coconut milk, ruined by salt, to coconut sugar, made from the sap of the flower. Even Dutch farmers are struggling to come to terms with the intruder. But then we meet Hans Elenbaas, who has harvested salty sea vegetables his whole life! And he loves it.

WATERPROOF ONLINE

PARTNERS FOR WATER 

KATE NEGACZ

PETER PRINS/SALTA

SOKFARM VIETNAM

A VIDEO ABOUT SOKFARM

HANS ELENBAAS/ZEEKRAAL.NL

For centuries, the Dutch have been good at keeping the water out using increasingly engineered structures of concrete and steel like the Delta Works. And for years, they’ve exported that technology too. 

But times are changing. Macho dikes keep the water out, but they’re terrible for nature and biodiversity. The Dutch are - slowly - discovering that you can work with nature rather than against it. It’s called Nature Based Solutions and they work - in the Netherlands, in Ghana, basically everywhere. And that is why this week’s show is called: Let Nature Do It!

We speak with Bregje van Wesenbeeck, who is experimenting with willows and mangroves to see how they stand up to storms. Carel Nobbe of the Blue Deal says: first you have to make sure the people you’re working with are on board. Wetlands ecologist Emmanuel Nii Attram Taye from Ghana is working to save the mangrove forests that protect the coast. For the Netherlands, says Alex Hekman of NL2120, it’s both: Nature-based Solutions are essential, but always in combination with hard infrastructure. 

PARTNERS FOR WATER 

WATERPROOF ONLINE

BREGJE VAN WESENBEECK & DELTARES

CAREL NOBBE AND THE BLUE DEAL

Waterproof is the six-part Partners for Water podcast that travels the globe sharing uplifting stories about how today’s water crises are being tackled through smart ideas, local knowledge and international partnerships. Hosted by water expert Tracy Metz, Waterproof delves into six crucial water themes with local and international experts, researchers, practitioners and other water professionals. Following each episode, listeners can participate in live meetups with other water professionals to go deeper into the themes.

Listen to the trailer and discover what the “Waterproof” podcast is all about.