YWPDK AT DANSK VAND 2019

YWPDK were part of the yearly Dansk Vand conference taking place on November 12-13 and organized by DANVA. Ten YWPDK members were present at the conference to represent our network. YWPDK hosted sessions during both days of the conference.

The first day, students and other participants could join and hear about our members’ work in the water sector. It is impressive how diverse our members professions are. The brilliant members presented work on drinking water, climate adaptation, policy, wastewater treatment, and climate adaptation. The water sector is a multi-disciplinary sector whith multiple career paths. We hoped to illustrate this in the first session where careers within regulation, consultancy, utilities, and research were presented.

On the second day, we hosted a workshop on the workforce of tomorrow, where young – and old professionals participated and shed light on the competencies needed in the future.
During the conference we had multiple posters up where participants could add their suggestions for the most important challenges facing the water sector in the next 25 years. These challenges were then used for the workshop on the second day.
The groups prioritized the challenges facing our sector based on likelihood and impact on their daily work. This was an interesting exercise with thought-provoking results. According to our participants the most important challenges facing our sector in the years to come are:

– Digitalization
– Urbanization
– Ensuring clean drinking water

The second part of the workshop focused on what skills will be needed in future to stay relevant and cope with the challenges.
It is remarkable how much soft skills are emphasized. They are central in all the workshops we have held on the topic, which have been in very different international and professional contexts. We have previously held the workshop in Toronto and Helsinki, while we have discussed the topic at a panel debate in Copenhagen. It is becoming quite clear that hard skills will not be enough.

We want to thank DANVA for a great conference and for once again including us in the program and allowing students to participate for free.