Farewell message from Steven van Rossum

“Nearly four years ago I started as CEO at World Waternet. When Roelof Kruize, CEO of Waternet, asked me if I was interested in the position, I had to give that some serious thought. My idea of development cooperation was not all positive, and I somewhat rejected matters such as ethnocentrism and the ‘free’ supply of services to people who might not even desire them. There are ample examples of how development cooperation can go wrong and large amounts of money spent in the wrong way, ultimately leading to very limited results for the beneficiary.

I did have a lot of confidence in the knowledge and skills of the Waternet staff. It seemed very valuable to me to share those with public water organisations throughout the world, in a very practical and hands-on matter. And thus contribute to one of the most important challenges our planet is facing: clean, sufficient and safe water for all.

In my view, imposing how things ought to be done and criticising when things go wrong, is not very constructive. So after I pushed my doubts aside, with the idea of being able to do better, I started working at World Waternet with much enthusiasm.

The past few years, the World Waternet team has made a transition to more result-oriented work. Moreover, we devoted ourselves to sharing our unique knowledge of the water cycle with other water organisations, within old and new partnerships. Our knowledge and way of working have also sparked an interest with organisations such as the World Bank and the Asian Developement Bank to contribute to improved and more efficient water management worldwide.

And finally, the objective to allow for trade has been better incorporated. In the Netherlands, there are many companies and institutions with exclusive knowledge and technologies that add value to cope with major challenges our partners face. Unfortunately a considerable amount of these organisations have difficulty finding their way to the international market. A missed opportunity, both for the Dutch water technology sector and for the potential beneficiaries. The past years we dedicated ourselves to bringing parties together and we made significant steps forward and achieved great results in a short time. But we also see that it is a lengthy and complicated process.

Therefore I am very pleased that after my departure at World Waternet, I can continue to contribute to this challenge as Head of the programme ‘Scaling-up Export Water Technology’ (in Dutch: Opschaling Export Watertechnologie) at the request of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy, Topsector Water & Maritiem, the Netherlands Water Partnership (NWP) and the Dutch development bank FMO.

Last but not least, I want to thank you all for the very pleasant cooperation!”