UB Solidarity Foundation takes part in Inow Asia project on sustainable water management in Southeast Asia

Representatives of European higher education institutions and universities of Camboja, Laos and Vietnam took part in the online meeting for the project launch.
Representatives of European higher education institutions and universities of Camboja, Laos and Vietnam took part in the online meeting for the project launch.
Institutional
(05/03/2021)

The cooperation project Inow Asia: Development of Innovative multilevel formation programs for new water leading professionals in Southeast Asia (2021-2024), framed within the Erasmus+ program, held its launch meeting on February 25 and 26, online. About thirty people took part in the meeting: members of European entities partners of the project and representatives of the universities of the three Asian participating countries.

Representatives of European higher education institutions and universities of Camboja, Laos and Vietnam took part in the online meeting for the project launch.
Representatives of European higher education institutions and universities of Camboja, Laos and Vietnam took part in the online meeting for the project launch.
Institutional
05/03/2021

The cooperation project Inow Asia: Development of Innovative multilevel formation programs for new water leading professionals in Southeast Asia (2021-2024), framed within the Erasmus+ program, held its launch meeting on February 25 and 26, online. About thirty people took part in the meeting: members of European entities partners of the project and representatives of the universities of the three Asian participating countries.

The Solidarity Foundation of the University of Barcelona is one of the partners in the Inow Asia project, coordinated by the University of Girona (UdG). They aim to collaborate with universities from Camboia (Institute of Technology of Cambodia and University of Battambang), Laos (National University of Laos and Souphanouvong University) and Vietnam (Hanoi University of Science - Vietnam National University Hanoi and Can Tho University) to contribute to the postgraduate studies in the field of the innovative management of water resources and sustainable development, as part of the masters and doctoral programs that already exist in Southeast Asia.

Apart from the conventional problems related to safe-drinking water supply and sanitation, countries in the southeast Asian coast face serious challenges affecting health and the economic activities of the population, due to the dramatic lack of water supplies, lack of sanitation, droughts and severe floods, deforestation and threats to biodiversity.

In the Inow Asia launch meeting, Antonina Torrens (Solidaritat UB - University of Barcelona) led the session on the network of water oriented living labs (WOLL), to be created at the campuses of Asian universities. WOLL are real experimentation environments, water-oriented, which count on the involvement and commitment of the interested parts (students, companies and water authorities) and serve as a “field laboratory” to develop, test and validate solutions that include the implementation of technologies and their combination with new business models and innovative policies based on water value.

At the end of the meeting, the participants listed the tasks for the first six months of the project, when the UB Solidarity Foundation plays a main role as leader, together with the University of Battambang, in the preparation phase of the project: it will gather and assess the information and needs of partner entities, including the needs of the labour market, in order to implement training modules and WOLL. In addition, it will identify the whole series of agents that need to be involved in this initiative.


More than ten yearsʼ experience in the sustainable management of water resources

Apart from the building of Inow Asia, the UB Solidarity Foundation will play an important role in the design of WOLL and will focus its task on the training and knowledge transfer on water, hygiene and sanitation, and circular economy in the management of the water cycle. This transfer will be possible thanks to the more than ten yearsʼ experience of the entity in WASH projects (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene), which have promoted nature-based solutions for a sustainable management of water resources in countries such as Senegal and Vietnam. In the latter, between 2012 and 2013, the UB Solidarity Foundation contributed to create an industrial wastewater treatment plant with ecological systems in Halong Bay, which became the first infrastructure of this kind (Constructed Wetlands) in Southeast Asia.