AGWA, Fifteen Years On
After 15 years, we’re still here — and still actively growing. AGWA was for many years a lonely, even out of place voice in both the water and climate communities. Today, we have peer institutions shifting their messaging and focus to our space, adopting our terminology, and moving to work with us (or even sometimes in competition against us). We’ve been transformative in our impact, at scales that would have inspired disbelief to me a dozen years ago. Still, we have a clear mission, and I believe that we will continue to thrive. Why? I can see several strengths that are peculiar and specific to our ongoing strength as an organization.
First, we are we: a network — by which I mean a community of practice, actively bridging insights across disciplines, institutions, and political and social boundaries. We come together to both learn, innovate, and act together. With more than three thousand people in the network, we have both a global presence and a diverse representation of people and places. No one person is AGWA. I felt inspired about AGWA’s future when there were 30 people on the mailing list. I am that much more excited now that there are 100 times as many people.
Second, we’ve seen the impact that comes from aligning the water and resilience agendas. As many colleagues have noted, our synthesis is a one-way street — people do not unsee water resilience once they have begun walking down this path. And water resilience is not just a novel term for things we were doing 10 or 20 years ago. Water resilience is a powerful and operational concept, relevant for policy, business, ecosystems, economies, and infrastructure. The water community needed resilience as a new concept for integrity and health, while the resilience and adaptation community lacked strategy and coherence without water.
Third, following one of our earliest insights, the past is often a poor predictor of the future. The rules under which we operate and evolve should be flexible and adaptive to new conditions; fundamental and often unseen assumptions about how to operate and plan are being undermined. Watching for the emergence of new rules and patterns has been especially important over the past two years or so, as both global and regional landscapes have tilted rapidly in hard-to-predict directions. It’s not easy to wake up with fresh eyes but discontinuity and disruption are the norm right now. I wish we had continuity and stability. But don’t count on them coming back any time soon.
Lastly, in a complex and uncertain world, we have a coherent set of solutions to many important problems. Moreover, these solutions are practical, operational, and evidence-based. They are often inspiring, and they are certainly infectious. AGWA has never spent a lot of time taking credit for how we have altered markets, policies, and programs, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t continue to play a dominant role in how resilience plays out in the real world. In many ways, the slowness of our early growth was a reflection of how far ahead we were of our peers, and it took time to catch up and even understand the space we had defined. Many have come to see and accept our worldview. I believe now is our time to shine.
I feel proud of the work we have done together over the past 15 years — and optimistic about what will come next. Thank you for being AGWA.
John Matthews
Corvallis, Oregon, USA