and I'll go ahead and get started. Thank you so much, Said. Again, I'm saying it correct, Said?
Yes, Said, yeah. Cool. Wonderful. Okay, great.
All right, well, welcome to Water Talks. I have my friend,
Said, with me today. We met at MIT a few weeks ago at their water summit. We were asked to be a part
of that and participate. We had a wonderful time at it. That's where I got to meet you. And Said
has an extensive background, one of which is he is a voting member at the United Nations.
So, Said, it's wonderful to have you with us. I appreciate your time. And why don't you tell,
just tell us a little bit about your background and how you and I came to meet at the MIT Water
Summit. Yeah, thank you very much, Doctor. I have my bachelor's in microbiology at University of
Lourie. And I also proceed to my master's program at UNESCO IHE in the Netherlands,
IHE DEPT Institute for Water Education. And it is acclaimed largest water education facility in the
world. And of course, I work as a consultant in different forums and in different countries as
well across the development, humanitarian and emergency contests. And of course, I've also
traveled around so many places. And also as well, I've been to so many forums where I've presented
a big guest speaker, like the sustainability summit in 2019 at the Abu Dhabi energy water summits.
And at the MIT too, I participated because I wanted to share my knowledge also be able to
learn new things for people. And that was why I actually participated.
I love that I went to learn as well. And I sure did a lot of it.
Yeah, the presenters were absolutely wonderful. And I took so many notes and I had such a wonderful
time. I can't wait to participate again next year. And so first question I like to ask Saeed is,
when you're, where is home these days? And when you're home, what's your favorite meal?
What do you like to eat? Yeah, actually, I like to eat rice. That's my favorite meal.
Because actually in Africa, where I come from rice is something that is very common. And
the fight like a very delicacy that everybody likes is very easy to prepare. And you just
eat and stuff like that.
That's wonderful. I love that. So part of part of being a learner, and part of keeping up with
life interesting is staying curious about things. And there's no right or wrong answer to this. But
what are you curious about? What are you interested in these days right now in your life?
Yeah, for me, I'm actually very much curious about water itself. That's one big thing.
Apart from the fact that it is within my specialization, I'm also very much curious
about the dynamics with which water has intercepted with food. It is intercepted with energy
development, because it cut across every quarter. Almost now, we have a development in terms of
what I use, what are being used as a kind of currency around the world now, and has also
been listed on the stock exchange market, US stock exchange market as a currency. And
which of course, people are now walking towards the legal status, the policy directions of how
it's going to be. Because now, we have so many countries not trying to grow some crops in their
country because of the high consumption water that is required for the crop. And of course,
they try to grow it in another country and import it back to their own country. So it's kind of
things that is growingly weird. And also the disaster issue around trans-border water cooperation,
where we have a lot of countries fighting over water, was especially at the Nile Basin. So
it's something that is actually very much fascinating to me. And yeah, I get surprised
by the renown there.
Yeah, you're right. There are very, very few people that have your
level of understanding as far as water. People ask is water a commodity? And it already is.
Not everyone's aware of that. But of course, it already is a commodity to some. And there
actually are some schools of people who believe that it's a fundamental human right. And we're
right now in the middle of a conversation trying to find out the balance between
it being a fundamental human right and then the price point of that. How do you make a
fundamental human right a currency and have a price point to it? So that's sort of an ongoing
philosophical discussion that many people are sort of working on. And it's fascinating that you
bring up the conflicts that are already happening around the world that are water-based. Can you
talk a little bit about that?
Yeah, concerning the conflicts, I think is very much historic. We have at a domestic level,
we have at a national level, we have at an international level. At the domestic level,
usually at the water points, everybody wants to have access to water. And of course, we do
know that there's a lot of process that involves in the treatment of water. So a lot of money,
financial capacity goes into it, and population is growing. So there's competition at the water
points of who gets water and how to use the water itself. In so many countries, coupled with the
fact that there's climate change. So at the water point domestically, there's conflicts, and it has
been over the years. Not every country has been able to get water. And so we have to be very
careful. Not every community has access to safe water infrastructure that can generate quality
and safe water for them. So this has been a competition for long, and it has been crisis
inherent. At the national level, there are so many regions that do not have access to water.
Government is using water as a means of politics, where they decide to give some section,
water infrastructure, where they will be able to have access to sufficient water, and some other
section not quite having access to water. And people come from that region say, oh, we want
access to water as one of the key priority political campaign points. And through that,
they've kind of using it as a political tool, which it happens in Africa and some other part
of the world. At the international level, management of water has become a very big problem as well.
Uganda wanted to create dams and ensure that it mass-mised the amount of water that passed through
their territory. And also Sudan wants to do that. Egypt wants to do likewise. And over the years,
the Stein treaties, which of course, they've also defaults on that treaties. And so there's conflicts
at different levels of governance, at the domestic level, at the national level, and at the international
level. So conflict every time. So we talk about peace, most of it, and cooperation when it comes
to water management. Yeah, thank you for speaking to that. There are very few people that have
knowledge or understanding of the conflicts that are already happening in this,
in parts of the world that have to do with water as a resource. In fact,
a very good friend of mine who is sitting next to me right now, my friend Mark. Say hi.
Yeah. Oh, my, how are you? Hi, good. Good to see you. Mark and Max. Nice to see you.
Yeah. And we made a video in El Salvador five years ago. We have been doing a,
we have built our own small-scale decentralized desalinization system in El Salvador that's
been working very hard on to service 38 families. And that video, the video that we made five years
ago, we opened up with a line that talked about many of the conflicts that will happen in the
future will be happening over water. And it's much of what you just described. I appreciate you
being able to educate people about that, being able to share the knowledge of that. Part of
changing public opinion is helping people to think differently about problems. Yeah. So I just want
to say, thank you. It's very, very hard. Part of what we do is, and part of what you do, what
you're very good at is helping people to think differently about how to solve problems. Do you
find that challenging? Yeah. I do find it challenging because with the impact of new
dynamics in terms of cultural inclinations, in terms of infrastructure, there's a need for
continual change. For instance, in the construction of Bottle, people were used to use the IO rod.
And later on, there was an advanced knowledge that says contamination from the ferros is actually,
it causes a lot of side effects in humans. And we advanced towards using stainless steel as one of
the components of construction of a pipe of water. So I felt that there's a need for changing as we
have to advance knowledge. There's always need for changing. And take for instance, also very
general, the lead produced gas, which of course people later discovered that lead was a very
huge contaminant when it comes to gas. And it caused a lot of side effects in humans. And it was
that, oh, we need a lead regulated gas to be using cars. So also we have in terms of water management,
where to place the water itself, how to supply the water itself, whether by rationing of the water
itself, depending on the available water. So we have all those things embedded in water management.
As knowledge grows, which of course we continue to study situations, we continue to study context,
things needs to get improved. And we need to so that we'll be able to achieve our target
and also provide our beneficiary with sufficient adequate amount of water,
which is not coerced to rise as a human right. Wow. Tap taking notes as you're speaking.
Yeah, thank you so much. I want to, I want to switch gears a little bit. And I like to talk about,
I have a lot of younger people that watch these conversations. And so one of the things that I
like to, one of the questions that I like to ask is to everyone that's on is, what is something that
you have failed at in the last 12 months that you would like to talk about? And the reason why I ask
that question is because part of being a leader is being self aware and being self aware has to do
with thinking back on mistakes we've made and how we might do things differently. So is there anything
in the last year that, that you wish you'd done differently?
Yeah, I felt one of the things I would have loved to do differently is I would say
reducing the amount of my carbon footprints. I think that would be one of the things I would
have loved to do more less frequently. I found out that climate change is also a problem of water
management because we could see the impact it's having in terms of changing the atmospheric
conditions, which is also changing the hydrological conditions of water. And which of course is
carrosteres as a result of us putting more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. I wish
I'm able to compute my carbon footprint that I know the amount of greenhouse gases I'm contributing
to the atmosphere. Maybe I would have taken more routes, like use more short distances,
more short-cores roads and help in stopping the impact of climate change or water management.
Like riding bicycles and motorcycles. Yeah, instead of driving cars as always.
So I think those are the things that I feel I should have done differently. But that actually
goes back to also having sufficient knowledge to empower people to be able to compute their carbon
footprint, which will help in mitigations of climate change impacts, which is unprecedented
as of now. Yes it is. Yes it is. I share your sentiments. So I mentioned to you that we,
part of the work that I do revolves around decentralized desalinization. And can you
share a little bit about that? What do you think about those ideas? And do you have any advice for
me? Yeah, I think on decentralized desalinization, I think it's something that is awesome because we
are moving towards those trends. A lot of countries now are in water crisis. I was opportune to go to
Spain at one point in time to conduct a research with colleagues. And in Granada specifically,
they had a water stress situation. The farmers did not have access to sufficient water. And
also the other sectors competing for water, the municipality and stuff like that. And they had to
revert back to the use of desalination plants, which of course it was very important for them.
One, it replenishes the groundwater using the saline water. And also as an alternative to water,
though it is quite expensive, but it's something that actually gives them leverage. So I felt that
so many countries that are actually experiencing water stress situation and some communities that
are very close to the ocean and not necessarily having access to fresh water reservoir. I think
one of the things they could actually do is decentralize desalination. And we just need to
make it more cheaper as much as possible so that people can be able to afford the amount of water
that comes out of the saline plant. So I felt that the advice will be on affordability in terms of
administrative costs. New technologies have been improved and in terms of machine learning
integrated into water production systems, which of course make it more sharp and much more easy to
be able to produce, to run the operations without much interference. So I feel that it's something
that is important, the centralized sanitation and desalination is very important. It's something
that is on the long run, we are going to revert to it either one way or the other. I could see the
case in Qatar, the case in Abu Dhabi, the most especially in UAE, they actually invested in
desalination plant a lot and that has actually helped the system. And of course, I think it's
somewhere to go by a word. So every country needs to have information, comprehensive information
about desalination because that's a very good option to explore.
Well, thank you for the encouragement. As you know, with anything that is worth doing, it is
a lot of work. It takes 100% dedication, but it means a lot to me to hear the encouragement from
you. So I really appreciate it. Well, I have absolutely enjoyed having a conversation with
you. I certainly hope that we're able to do this again and do it more frequently. You have a lot
to say and a lot more to say. So one of the things that I like to do as I conclude these
water talks, I like to keep them in 20 minute segments. So again, thank you for your time. But
what are some last thoughts that we need to hear from Saheed today? What are some last things that
you would like to share? I think one of the things I would like to share is we need to collectively
improve on the water literacy of people because that is very important and people need to be aware
that water is scarce. It might be available in a vast amount of quantity for us to use. So I think
it's not even distributed everywhere in the world. There's some that to get 10 liters of water is as
hard as anything else. So we need to be well informed about domestic management of water,
industrial management of water, which of course is very good. And this surrounds
into water literacy. Water literacy needs to be taken very seriously with people.
And people need to know that keeping the little amount of water for a productive means is very
important in sustainability of our water resources. Okay, last thing, Saheed, have you ever been to
California? Currently, I'm in Harrisburg. So I hopefully, I wish to go to California one day.
You're in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania? Pennsylvania, yes. Ah, okay. Well, if you come to California,
can you message me? Because I'd like to have lunch with you. I'll buy you lunch.
Oh, great. Great. I will be very, very much to be my pleasure. And if I'm in California,
I will try as much as possible to give you a call. I will try to get your contact. Maybe you could
send it to me via LinkedIn and I will do that. And by the way, only call me if you have any questions.
By the way, I only contributed to the quadrennial policy review of the United Nations. I got training
from UNITRA and also make some contributions. And yeah, I think that's what I'm not really able to
remember at the UN. Oh, yeah, got it. Thank you, brother. Welcome. Well, Saheed, I appreciate your
time and have a beautiful day. And I hope to look forward to talking to you again soon. Thank you
so much, my friend, Saheed. Thank you, brother. Sure. Thank you very much. Okay. All right. Bye.
Bye.