Seminar 8 ~ Capacity Building for Managing Water Challenges

24 January 2011

Facilitated by Dr. Colin Mayfield

In Colin's seminar we looked at the role of capacity building to overcome water challenges, and specifically at providing a core knowledge base to participants in Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) with a real UNU-INWEH case study. Afterward Colin recommended some TED Talks by Hans Rosling. One thing that particularly stuck out to me was, to borrow a phrase from Alex Bielak, the multitasking of every piece of information. I’ll append ‘gifts and skills’ to information, and expand multitasking to include cross-tasking (using one set of skills or knowledge in the context of another).

HANS ROSLING

If you avoid or yawn at statistics, Hans Rosling’s datasets just might wake you up. His research lies in global health which investigates the role of poverty on public health around the world. A number of things struck me from his presentations.

He possesses a number of skill-sets and knowledge-sets: statistics, computer programming, global health and poverty. He’s an orator and an educator. Add in some creativity, audacity, humour, and a fully dilated, critical eye, and interesting things start to happen.

His data is not amazing per se: it's not his and he doesn't have exclusive access to it. It's how he uses and arranges and displays it. He layers multiple levels of information with animated graphics to create a kind of artistic statistics. He essentially translates the trends of thousands of numbers, tables, charts, etc. to produce something palatable, even enjoyable, and accessible for the average person and politician, all in a matter of minutes.

DIVERSE, COMPETENT, CREATIVE

What I find intriguing about Dr. Rosling is what spawns from his combined skills, knowledge, and character. Let’s call this combination ‘the palette from which one paints’. First, as I noted above, his palette is diverse. Second, with his own palette he paints well. Third, he employs his creativity. Forgive me for trying to pull life-lessons out of our friend, but… I’m reminded of the advantages of being diverse in skills and knowledge. Not too diverse, like trying to know or do everything, but within one’s capacity. And doing certain, different things well. I personally appreciate his creative edge. Who says you can’t do art and math together?

So what does this have to do with water, or more particularly capacity building? For starters, UNU-INWEH’s Water Virtual Learning Center (WVLC), derived from the general knowledge of multiple disciplines, is essentially a smaller, broad-spectrum palette with individual colours (knowledge sets) taken from the larger, narrow-spectrum palettes of many disciplines. It’s been seen that when IWRM personnel have a more comprehensive, broad-spectrum understanding, good things happen.

What about the research of our WWB class? Could we combine photography, hot-air balloons, and topography for effective low-budget mapping? Hilary seems to think so. Or who knows what could come of Matt’s love of adventure, economics, and obscure eighteenth-century French philosophers. (Okay, perhaps I’m the obscure one.) Or my own… ? What’s on your palette?