Cape Town - The 2014 Stockholm Water Prize – widely acknowledged as the “Nobel prize for water” – has been awarded to South African-born and educated water engineer and academic John Briscoe, who cut his professional teeth as a planning engineer with the Department of Water Affairs.
Currently a professor at Harvard University in the US, Briscoe, 66, also lived and worked in poverty-stricken areas such as Bangladesh and Mozambique, building and maintaining water infrastructure that has helped transform the lives of the poor.
Awarded the prize by patron King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden at a royal award ceremony during 2014 World Water Week last week, Briscoe was honoured for “his unparalleled contributions to global and local water management, inspired by an unwavering commitment to improving the lives of people on the ground”.
In its citation, the Stockholm Water Prize Committee said he had “combined world-class research with policy implementation and practice to improve the development and management of water resources as well as access to safe drinking water and sanitation”.
Briscoe said he was “very surprised and honoured – I’m delighted for the recognition this gives to thinking practitioners, of which I consider myself one”.
And he acknowledged the “profound impact” of South Africa on his career, saying he had spent much of his youth in Kimberley “at the edge of the desert”.
He told the Cape Argus yesterday that his first inspiration mentor in becoming a “thinking practitioner” had been Professor Gerrit Marais at UCT, and he had learned from the “great generation” of water engineers in the Department of Water Affairs, such as Theo von Robbroeck and Bob Pullen, about what it meant to build “a water platform for growth”.
This was needed because in South Africa “the Good Lord had put the rain on the coast and the minerals in the vast rain shadow”.
Also in Stockholm, Durban’s eThekwini Metro won the Stockholm Industry Water Award for its “transformative and inclusive approach to providing water and sanitation”, while pupils from Taxila Secondary School in Polokwane, Limpopo, were finalists in the global schools’ competition for inventing a method of using sand filters to treat contaminated water and recover water for reuse.
Briscoe, born in Brakpan, graduated in 1969 with a first-class BSc in civil engineering from UCT where he won a slew of awards as a student, including university medals and the City of Cape Town Gold Medal as best graduating engineering student at UCT.
He then did his Master’s and PhD degrees in environmental engineering at Harvard where he is currently Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Environmental Engineering and director of the Harvard Water Security Initiative.
After a year (1970) with the local Department of Water Affairs as planning engineer working in hydrological and economic planning of water resource investments, Briscoe – who speaks English, Afrikaans, Bengali, Portuguese and Spanish – worked in Bangladesh, Mozambique, India, Brazil and the US.
According to the official statement of the Stockholm award, today’s world is “beset by daunting water challenges – human water security and biodiversity are at risk, global demand for water is soaring, and droughts and floods cause deadly disasters”.
“These challenges cannot be met on one front alone. Professor Briscoe’s genius lies in his fusion of science, policy and practice, giving him unrivalled insights into how water should be managed to improve the lives of people worldwide.”
Briscoe joined the World Bank in 1986 and during a 20-year career held senior technical positions, including country director for Brazil – the bank’s biggest borrower – and developed the bank’s 2003 Water Strategy.
The Stockholm statement quoted Briscoe as saying: “At the end of the day, it is what happens on the ground that matters. All policies must be judged by whether they make a difference on the ground. I believe that the years I spent working at the micro level is what enables me to be an effective policy maker.”
l The Stockholm Water Prize is a global award founded in 1991 and presented annually by the Stockholm International Water Institute to an individual, organisation or institution for outstanding water-related achievements. South African Water Affairs minister, the late Professor Kader Asmal, is a 2000 laureate.
l On the web, http://www.siwi.org/prizes/stockholmwaterprize/
Cape Argus