Beyond Conferences: An Open Reflection on Non-Revenue Water (NRW) and the Need for Action Networks.
Opinion By Roland Brunner, Blue Community Network.
To the Participants of the Non-Revenue Water Management Conference in Naivasha, Kenya, 30 June – 3 July 2026.
I welcome the attention being given to non-revenue water management through the ongoing NRW Management Conference in Naivasha, Kenya.
The conference theme, “Improving Non-Revenue Water (NRW) Management by Leveraging Innovation and Technology,” addresses one of the most important challenges facing water utilities today.
Across Africa and around the world, water losses resulting from leakages, aging infrastructure, illegal connections, inaccurate metering, and weak management systems place enormous pressure on public water services. Reducing these losses is essential for improving service delivery, strengthening financial sustainability, and ensuring equitable access to water.
I recognize the importance of bringing together utility managers, engineers, policymakers, researchers, and technology providers to exchange knowledge and experiences. Such dialogue has value, especially if it addresses the fundamental question:
How can the water sector move from discussing solutions to implementing them at scale?
Across the world, the water sector produces an impressive number of conferences, forums, summits, declarations, presentations, and policy statements. Yet many communities continue to experience water losses, intermittent supply, inadequate infrastructure, insufficient investment, and unequal access to safe drinking water.
The challenge is not a lack of discussion. The big challenge is transforming knowledge into action.
Water Losses Are Not Only a Technical Problem
Non-revenue water is often presented primarily as a technological issue. Certainly, innovation has a vital role to play. Smart metering, digital monitoring systems, pressure management technologies, leak detection equipment, and data analytics can all contribute significantly to reducing losses.
But technology alone cannot solve the problem. And it is not even in the core of the problem. A growing body of scholarship reinforces this broader understanding. Here two Blue Community voices:
Blue Community co-founder Maude Barlow is a Canadian author, activist, and long-time leader in global water justice movements. She has spent decades advocating for the recognition of water as a human right and opposing its commodification. Barlow served as Senior Advisor on Water to the President of the United Nations General Assembly and has played a central role in international campaigns for the human right to water and sanitation. Through her books and advocacy, she has consistently argued that water must be protected as a public trust and managed collectively for the benefit of present and future generations. Her work links local struggles over water access with global debates on privatization, governance, and environmental justice. Barlow argues that water must be treated as a commons and a public trust rather than a commodity or market service. Her work underscores that persistent system failures—including water losses—are often symptoms of weakened public stewardship, underinvestment in public infrastructure, and governance models that prioritize short-term efficiency over long-term collective responsibility. The privatised water system in the United Kingdom is the best current example for this.
Also Blue Community Ambassador Farhana Sultana, Professor in the Department of Geography and the Environment at Syracuse University (USA), a globally recognized scholar of water governance, political ecology, climate justice, and development studies, author of numerous influential publications on water justice and governance, emphasizes that water insecurity is not simply an engineering problem, but a governance and justice issue shaped by inequality, power relations, and institutional decision-making. In this framing, water systems reflect social and political realities as much as physical infrastructure. Technology has a role to play, but water and sanitation are ultimately a social and political issues.
Non-revenue water itself illustrates this reality. Water losses are often treated as engineering problems, yet many of their causes lie elsewhere. Aging infrastructure reflects decades of investment decisions. Illegal connections often reflect exclusion from formal services. Weak maintenance can be linked to inadequate financing or institutional capacity. Public distrust of utilities may discourage cooperation and compliance. In many cases, NRW is as much a governance challenge as it is a technical one.
Water systems are social-ecological systems. Water infrastructure does not exist separately from society. Technologies interact with institutions, ecosystems, communities, economic structures, and power relations. Solutions that focus only on technology risk overlooking the deeper causes of water insecurity and system inefficiencies.
Across the Global South, numerous well-intentioned technical interventions have produced mixed results because they failed to address underlying inequalities or local realities. Water technologies do not operate in a vacuum. Their effectiveness depends on governance structures, public participation, local ownership, institutional accountability, and social trust.
This is precisely where I see the role of the Blue Community Network.
Rather than focusing solely on technologies, we seek to connect the people, institutions, and communities that make water systems function. We bring together utilities, municipalities, researchers, civil society organizations, schools, universities, faith groups, and increasingly youth movements that understand water not only as a technical service but as a human right and a public good.
For me, reducing non-revenue water is not simply about finding leaks in pipes. It is also about addressing leaks in governance, participation, accountability, capacity, and public trust.
The most advanced technology cannot compensate for weak institutions. A smart meter cannot replace community engagement. Digital systems cannot substitute for public accountability. Sustainable solutions emerge when technology, governance, and social justice are addressed together.
Building Living Networks
Conferences are temporary. Networks are permanent.
A conference may bring people together for several days. A strong network creates cooperation throughout the year.
The Blue Community Network currently connects municipalities, utilities, universities, schools, NGOs, researchers, youth organizations, faith communities, and public institutions across multiple continents. Increasingly, our African partners are building direct relationships with one another, exchanging experiences, sharing practical solutions, and collaborating on common challenges.
These relationships do not end when participants return home.
They continue through regional chapters, action groups, online exchanges, webinars, technical cooperation, peer learning, and joint initiatives.
This is where lasting transformation begins.
A utility struggling with leak detection can learn directly from another utility that has successfully reduced losses. A municipality can share its experience with public water management. A university can contribute research. Youth organizations can mobilize public awareness. Engineers can support capacity building. Communities can provide local knowledge.
Such cooperation requires commitment, trust, and an operational network.
The Untapped Potential of African Cooperation
Africa possesses extraordinary expertise in water management.
Across the continent, utility managers, technicians, engineers, researchers, community leaders, and water professionals are developing innovative solutions under often challenging conditions.
The question is not whether expertise exists.
The question is how effectively that expertise is connected.
It is my strong believe that one of the greatest opportunities lies in strengthening horizontal cooperation among African institutions themselves. Too often, solutions are presented through top-down models or external consultancy frameworks. Yet some of the most relevant knowledge already exists within African utilities, municipalities, universities, civil society organizations, and communities.
By creating stronger networks among practitioners, the Blue Community Network can contribute to and accelerate learning, reduce duplication of effort, and increase the adoption of proven solutions.
This is especially important because many of the most innovative approaches to reducing water losses are not necessarily technological. They may involve community partnerships, better governance structures, workforce empowerment, public accountability, watershed protection, utility cooperation, or citizen engagement. Such solutions often receive less attention than new technologies, yet they are frequently decisive for long-term success.
From Innovation to Implementation
Innovation is important.
Technology is important.
But implementation is what ultimately matters.
Citizens do not experience innovation when they read a conference report. They experience innovation when water losses decrease, service reliability improves, infrastructure is maintained, and safe drinking water reaches their homes.
The success of the water sector should not be measured by the number of conferences organized, the number of presentations delivered, or the number of declarations adopted.
It should be measured by reduced water losses, improved service quality, stronger utilities, healthier watersheds, and better access to water and sanitation.
These outcomes require continuous collaboration long after conference halls have emptied.
The Blue Community movement therefore invests in relationships that endure beyond events. It supports cooperation among institutions that continue working together when the presentations are over and the conference banners have been removed.
An Invitation
For the Blue Community Network, I extend an open invitation to all participants, organizers, utilities, researchers, and professionals engaged in the Non-Revenue Water Management Conference:
Let us complement conferences with permanent cooperation.
Let us connect innovation with implementation.
Let us strengthen public water systems through practical partnerships.
Let us create action groups, peer-learning platforms, regional cooperation mechanisms, and direct exchanges among water professionals.
Let us also broaden our understanding of what effective water management means.
As Prof. Farhana Sultana reminds us, the future of water governance depends not only on technological innovation but also on addressing questions of power, participation, justice, and social-ecological change. The challenge is not simply how to manage water more efficiently, but how to govern water more fairly.
The future of water management will be built through relationships, cooperation, trust, and shared action.
The Blue Community Network stands ready to serve as a platform for all those who share this commitment.
Because water challenges do not end when a conference closes.
And neither should our cooperation.
