Water is becoming one of the key strategic resources, affecting security, public health, economic stability, and resilience to the impacts of climate change. This talk shows that infrastructure alone and yet more strategies will not be enough if there are no people prepared to make good water-related decisions. Lasting change in how water is perceived, used, and protected depends on the competencies of future decision-makers—today’s pupils and students—who in the coming years will be planning space, managing cities and municipalities, designing investments, and shaping practices in institutions and business.
The starting point is the perspective of a practitioner who combines renaturation experience with water education delivered by the Code for Green Foundation through the Code for Blue programme. At the core of the talk are nature-based solutions (NBS) and blue-green infrastructure (BGI), understood not as fashionable buzzwords but as a practical approach to adaptation and mitigation. NBS are actions that use natural processes to improve retention, water quality, and resilience to extreme events—for example: river and floodplain renaturation, restoration of wetlands and peatlands, increasing soil water retention and infiltration, mid-field and riparian tree planting, slowing runoff across the landscape, or “giving space back to the river.” BGI, in turn, is a network of such solutions in cities and landscapes that integrates water and green functions—from rain gardens, infiltration basins and green streets to floodable parks, river corridors, reservoirs and small retention systems, as well as green roofs—designed as a coherent system rather than isolated investments.
The talk highlights that NBS and BGI only work when supported by competencies: catchment-based thinking, understanding landscape retention and natural processes, working with data and measurements, selecting solutions appropriate to the local context, planning maintenance, and the ability to engage in public dialogue around the costs and benefits of adaptation measures. Without these elements, it is easy to end up with superficial implementations—“nice-looking projects” with little impact, poorly maintained, or rejected by local communities.
An important part of the talk draws conclusions from working with schools: modern water education—empathetic, inspiring and empowering—gives students tools, space and support to take real action. Project-based work in a Living Lab format teaches not only environmental awareness, but also implementation skills: diagnosing local water challenges, designing solutions (including NBS/BGI), testing ideas, building prototypes, and formulating recommendations that can be applied beyond the school environment—also in municipal practice and future innovation.
If we want to effectively protect water resources and scale up NBS/BGI, we must invest in competencies in parallel. They will determine whether the next generation treats water objectively—as a problem—or subjectively: as a resource that must be understood, retained in the landscape, and wisely protected.