The Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) hosts and organizes World Water Week, a global gathering established in 1991.

Considering what we know of population growth over the next four decades, it seems the 2011 focus of World Water Week in Stockholm August 21 through 27 is right on target – Water in an Urbanizing World.

Between now and the year 2050, 95 percent of the world’s population growth is projected to be concentrated in urban areas. And we can expect a rate of growth so significant that population in urban areas alone will skyrocket to the same population of people on the entire planet today!

The Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) hosts and organizes World Water Week, a global gathering established in 1991. The focus is different each time, though fitting within an over-arching theme that spans a number of years. For instance, the 2011 focus – “Water in an Urbanizing World” – fits within the wider theme of “Responding to Global Changes” that spans 2009 through 2012.

There are well over a hundred workshops, seminars and events going on this week, a number of which touch on the most timely and/or controversial of water issues, such as:

• Recovering Nutrients, Water and Energy from Waste: A Business Perspective
• Water and Climate in Focus: Raising the Profile of Water in the Global Climate Discourse
• Making Sure That Dams Don’t Create More Problems Than They Solve
• Challenges in Access to Drinking-Water: Equity, Safety and Sustainability
• Living on the Edge: Management in Coastal Cities
• Which Water Quality for Which Uses? A Regulators’ and Practitioners’ Perspective
• Forum on Water Stewardship in the Forest Products Industry
• Urban Water Reuse for Food Production: City to the Field
• Creating a Sustainable City – The Stockholm Experience

What seems to be missing from the lengthy list (that goes on for three web pages) is any reference to the use of water for energy. 

Water plays a significant role in the six renewable energies the U.N.’s IPCC predicts will provide 77 percent of the world’s power by 2050. Though this may be the focus of future World Water Weeks, it seems a fitting topic for “Water in an Urbanizing World.” Perhaps this is covered in “Living on the Edge: Management in Coastal Cities” or “Making Sure That Dams Don’t Create More Problems Than They Solve.” But wave power, ocean thermal energy conversion, hydropower and geothermal power seem topics broad and important enough to warrant a separate workshop, seminar or event, a la “Sustainably Harnessing Water to Power Urban Areas.”

Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” also seems a topic worthy of exploration, as this process for natural gas extraction has so much potential for the chemical contamination of ground water systems.

Meredith Simonds Water cities, SIWI, Stockholm, Stockholm International Water Institute, urban, water, water power, World Water Week