Marko’s Visit to the EU Green Week 2024 Conference in Brussels
Hello everyone!
My name is Marko Fickert Ariza, and I am a third-year Geography and Management student at the University of St Andrews. Throughout my degree so far, I have developed an interest in sustainability, but more specifically in water scarcity. Therefore, this past summer, I have attended two leading Water conferences in Brussels and Stockholm. Below is a summary I wrote for the EU Green Week 2024 conference in Brussels at the European Commission where I have highlighted my three main takeaways from this conference. EU Green Week is an annual conference organised by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Environment and each edition raises awareness and discusses European environmental policy on a different aspect of sustainability, be this global water issues, circular economy or the EU Green Deal.
I hope you enjoy reading this summary of my experience at EU Green Week 2024!
On 29 May and 30 May, I had the great privilege and pleasure to attend the EU Green Week 2024 Brussels Conference at the European Commission Charlemagne building. Since a young age, I have been very interested in sustainability and understanding how people and organisations can adopt more sustainable practices in the face of climate change. Recently, this interest in sustainability has shifted towards understanding the topic of ´Water´, more specifically how water scarcity is having a growing impact on people around the world. With the objective of learning more about water in mind, I thought what better way to do so than attending the EU Green Week 2024 conference in Brussels. In this post, it is difficult to include everything I have learnt during this fascinating and eye-opening experience. Nevertheless, I would like to share the three main learning points I took away with me:
1. How broad the water sector really is. After attending panel discussions and talking to different people at exhibition stands, I noticed that whilst some people viewed water scarcity in relation to biodiversity issues and others viewed the impacts floods were having on farmers´ livelihoods, others view water in terms of how technology could help address the water crisis. The fact that issues of water span across so many dimensions, made me realise of the importance of cross-sectoral collaboration to address water issues (one of the common themes of the EU Green Week 2024 Brussels conference).
2. How we can learn to ´see water differently´. This quote is the aim of the ´WaterWiseEU´ campaign, launched during EU Green Week 2024. Water finds itself in a dire situation as with climate change, droughts as well as floods are becoming ever more frequent and intense. Nevertheless, the ´WaterWiseEU´ campaign promotes people to view the ´water crisis´ through a different lens such as being a global opportunity rather than a crisis or viewing water not as an infinite resource but as one we must manage carefully and wisely.
3. People attending conferences are more willing to talk and connect than I thought. When I arrived at the conference venue, I wasn´t sure whom to talk to and whether people wanted to meet each other. But during the opening session, the attendees completed a poll that showed that one of the main reasons people attended this conference was to meet new people and connect. This prompted me to use the breaks in between panel discussions to introduce myself to new people, and find out why they were interested in water. This proved extremely useful as it helped me appreciate from how many different perspectives the global issue of water can be viewed.
This experience pushed myself out of my comfort zone as I expanded my knowledge on water issues in the EU and their multi-dimensional nature and met many amazing people from across the water sector. I am looking forward to attending more such conferences and continue to learn about global water issues.
by Marko Fickert Ariza