Global Knowledge Exchange Event on Floating & Resilient Development

The Community of Practice on Floating and Resilient Development held a global knowledge exchange to share information on solutions and engage in discussions with city leaders, planners and experts.

Event description:

Floating and resilient solutions, such as floating houses, floating energy, floating agriculture, amphibious housing, or houses on stilts, offer resilience to water-related hazards. They do this by enabling “living with water” and the continuation of critical functions, such as education, health care and safety shelters as well as protecting household assets and livelihoods. Floating development can also create environmental benefits such as habitats for aquatic and marine life, increased land availability for farming and housing, connectivity of water ecosystems, and reducing the need for (often destructive) sand mining. They can be tailored to high-income buyers as well as provide affordable housing for the most vulnerable. As such, they provide an important adaptation solution, providing resilience, and sustainability for society and the environment.

Despite their great potential, demonstrated benefits and existing good practices, floating solutions are not yet widely implemented. To scale up, and for these solutions to become mainstream, more platforms for awareness and knowledge exchange are needed between practitioners and experts (solutions providers) and development officials, city leaders and decision-makers (solution seekers).

Objectives

• Raise awareness and increase knowledge on the diversity and possibilities of floating and resilient solutions (housing, energy, agriculture)
• Showcase high-income solutions as well as affordable solutions for the poorest and most vulnerable populations.
• Provide an opportunity for personal and informal networking and sharing of implementation challenges and opportunities through two rounds of four (1-hour) break-out rooms.
• Building practical knowledge and capacity by interaction with experts on best/good practices across a variety of topics: technology, research, governance, social considerations, research, design, engineering and much more.

Format

The exchange event on Floating and Resilient Development is hosted by entrepreneurs, experts and researchers. It mainly targets cities that want to explore how they can become more resilient with the help of floating and resilient development solutions.  

• The Knowledge exchange is in the form of a meeting, where after a plenary session, two rounds of four (1-hour) breakout sessions will focus on specific themes enabling more theme-specific group discussion and questions.
• All participants can use their video and microphone to actively participate by asking questions and sharing their expertise and asking throughout the group discussion.
• Sharing of additional resources, follow-ups and interactions via the WAC portal is very much welcome by all participants before and after the event.
• A summary email feedback survey will be sent to the participants in the days that follow the event.

Agenda Overview

10.00-10.20: Plenary introduction to the goal and aims of the exchange

10.30-11.30: Break out session 1*

• Floating research
• Floating agriculture
• Environmental benefits
• Architectural design

11.30-11.45: Break/lunch/stretch

11.45-12.45: Break out session 2*

• Large-scale floating development
• Affordable solutions
• Floating solar
• Navigating regulations

12.45-13.00: Plenary conclusions

* Details about each breakout room can be found here.

The Water Adaptation Community (WAC) aims to connect all who work on water adaptation including nature-based solutions across sectors and professions to share experience and knowledge. It goes beyond the “water sector” to bridge the whole Water Community – that means all who work on issues that affect water from food security to city planning and climate to disaster management. Taking a bottom-up approach, it aspires to be one of the pillars to support collaborative action for the UN International Decade for Action, Water for Sustainable Development on accelerating and upscaling water adaptation mainstreaming. The WAC is working to broker knowledge in several themes across high- and low-income contexts to support vulnerable communities across the globe. The WAC supports collaboration to scale up and jointly overcome implementation challenges. Within the WAC there are several themes that engage communities of practice, including Floating and Resilient Development.

The WAC team produces policy insights and opportunities after dialogues and events to bring emerging knowledge and calls to action from the Water Adaptation Community to UN Water 2023 and the annual UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties.