Adapting to Change Conference by Leah Barrett (student)

As a GIS and Environmental Management Masters Student at the University of Brighton, I was lucky enough to attend the recent Adapting to Change Conference. This was a new experience for me, having never attended a conference before, and it did not disappoint. The overall theme was issues of water stress, which is affecting countries all over the world, and ways to combat this through water recycling and desalination.

There was a particular focus on the South East of England, which gave me insight into just how water scares the area is in comparison to other parts of the UK. Which I found very interesting given just how close to home it is. It was fantastic to hear from Paul Hickey from RAPID, a brand new regulatory partnership formed in January, and gain an understanding of how they are aiming to use a collaborative approach to improve the water industry.

We were lucky enough to have speakers from the America, Australian, Germany and Spain. Hearing about the success stories of water recycling and those not so successful was quite eye opening, and allowed me to realise the importance of public engagement and what can make or break a project, something I hope guests from the UK water industry took on board. Additionally, being among some of the first people to hear about new state of the art waste water treatment research from all over the world was an honour.

As well as learning from the speakers, it was great to engage with all the other guests and find out about any interesting projects they are currently working on, where they had previously worked and what they had done, as well as just simple daily tasks related to their job role. As I am coming towards the end of my time in education, I found conversations such as these especially interesting, helping me to get a better understanding of possible options for my future carer.

Overall it was an amazing event, covering very current themes and I cannot wait to attend more in the future. I left feeling inspired, filled with new information, lots of questions and of course a full stomach from the delicious lunch and snacks.

I leave you with a thought provoking statement from Dr Art Umble which I whole heartedly agree with “we need to stop trying to be less bad, and start trying to be good”.