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As the world of water meets in Glasgow: we must seize the chance to think bigger 

By Alex Plant, Chief Executive, Scottish Water

After a long build-up, the moment is almost here. Next week the IWA World Water Congress & Exhibition comes to Glasgow, bringing around 10,000 people from across the global water community to Scotland. 

As co-President of the Congress - alongside Peter Simpson, former Chief Executive of Anglian Water - I cannot wait. It’s a big moment for Glasgow, Scotland and the UK, and a chance for Scottish Water to show what we do, challenge our assumptions and test our thinking against the best ideas from around the world. 

 

A city shaped by water and reinvention 

Glasgow is exactly the right place: a city shaped by engineering and reinvention, in a country where bold, long-term decisions created water infrastructure that transformed public health and still serves us today. 

Visitors can see that story through sites spanning Loch Katrine’s Victorian engineering, modern treatment, low-carbon technology, renewable energy, regeneration and climate resilience. 

I hope people meet our teams, ask awkward questions and tell us what they are doing differently. None of us can afford to stop learning. 

 

Thinking bigger about shared water challenges 

The challenges are familiar: climate change, ageing infrastructure, population shifts, environmental pressure, affordability and sustained investment. Short-term fixes will not solve them. 

One conversation matters particularly to me: how do we build national water strategies that connect the forces shaping water and enable systems thinking regionally? Water links housing, land use, agriculture, energy, economic development, climate resilience and the environment. It is too fundamental to be governed through separate policies and plans. 

A national strategy can set shared outcomes and confront trade-offs; regional delivery can target effort and investment where they make the greatest difference. 

Working upstream across whole catchments 

Often, the best response is upstream and cross-sectoral. Climate change is degrading the catchments we rely on for water, food, flood management and discharge capacity, demanding action at a scale no organisation can deliver alone. Scottish Water’s pioneering catchment work is putting that approach into practice. 

Grant Moir, CEO of the Cairngorms National Park, will showcase this pioneering work at IWA’s Landscape Scale Nature Resilience Forum, organised by Scottish Water and United Utilities. 

On the Dee in Aberdeenshire, Scottish Water, Cairngorms National Park, Aberdeenshire Council, Diageo and private estates will use peatland restoration, river stabilisation and natural flood management to improve water quality and flows and reduce flooding. 

In the Angus Glens, which supply Dundee and Tayside, landscape and peatland restoration, native woodland and better land management across public and private estates will improve water quality, reduce runoff and stabilise flows. On the Almond in West and Mid Lothian, local authorities, developers and others will continue work to tackle urban pollution and flood risk and improve the wider catchment. 

Preventing pollution upstream can build resilient catchments, protect sources and cost less than repeatedly upgrading treatment downstream. 

 

Planning ahead for future water resources 

The same thinking must shape water-resource planning. We must anticipate rainfall, drought, population and demand; protect sources; reduce leakage and consumption; and plan new sources, storage or transfers before shortages emerge. 

The principles sound obvious; delivery is harder. Organisations must cross traditional boundaries, align incentives and judge success by the whole system, not simply their part of it. 

That is where systems thinking becomes practical: are we solving the right problem, in the right place, at the right time? Are public bodies, regulators, businesses and communities aligned around the same long-term outcome and prepared to invest early to avoid greater cost later? 

That requires stability. Water assets serve generations, so stop-start policy and short funding horizons are a poor fit. The answers will differ between Scotland and other parts of the world, but systems thinking gives us a better way to find them. 

 

Creating confidence for long-term investment 

Independent economic regulation is another essential pillar, creating confidence and predictable frameworks so investment, from whatever source, can flow into water systems. 

Scotland offers an interesting case study: a publicly owned water company within an independently regulated framework, able to plan nationally and connect water more closely with land, energy, housing, infrastructure, climate and the economy. That is a real platform for coordinated action. 

We should be proud of that platform and restless about doing more with it, from long-term cross-sector planning to better surface-water management as our weather becomes more extreme. Those discussions, and our work in Glasgow to help close the gap on UN Sustainable Development Goal 6, clean water and sanitation for all, are what I am most looking forward to next week. 

 

A chance to learn from the world 

For a few days, Glasgow will be full of people tackling drought, flooding, water scarcity, ageing infrastructure, rapidly growing cities, new technologies and changing climates. People who have tried approaches we haven’t - and whose experience we can learn from. People who have made mistakes we can learn from. And, hopefully, people who will look at some of what we are doing in Scotland and take an idea home with them too. That's a pretty exciting prospect. 

So, if you are coming to Glasgow, I hope you make the most of being in one of the world’s friendliest cities, with all the beauty of Scotland on your doorstep. Come and see what we are doing. Visit our sites. Meet our people and partners. Ask difficult questions. Share your own experiences. 

For someone who has spent much of his working life thinking and talking about water, having so much of the world's water expertise gathered here in Scotland is a unique opportunity that I am looking forward to making the most of.  

Get yourself into town!