On 17 September, Mr Marco van Dijk from the Department of Civil Engineering was awarded the Water Research Commission Knowledge Tree Award in the category: New products and services for economic development. He was selected as the 2015 recipient of one of the WRC’s prestigious awards in recognition of his significant contribution to the water science and technology sector and the impact his research has made in the area of New products and services for Economic Development.

It was presented at the WRC’s biennial gala dinner and awards ceremony that forms part of the WRC RDI 2015 Symposium and Water-tech Summit that took place from 16 – 18 September 2015 at the Birchwood Hotel & OR Tambo, Conference Centre, South Africa.

The theme for this year’s event was universal access wherever you are, infers a rethink of how we approach access in the water and sanitation domain. Typically, when applied to the water and sanitation sector, universal access has implied the adequate distribution of safe drinking water and sanitation infrastructure to citizens. Indeed water is essential for local development, particularly for sectors such as health, agriculture, economic development, education and environment. However, 768 million people in the world lack access to an improved source of drinking water and 2.5 billion people live without basic sanitation facilities.

Integrating “universal access to drinking water and basic sanitation” into the post 2015 agenda is a priority for the water and sanitation sector worldwide. At the same time, it is a consensus that the current MDG monitoring does not fully capture whether water is really safe to drink.

Against a backdrop of future uncertainties, including climate change, changing habits, diets, lifestyles and water-demand patterns, there has to be an integrated approach to addressing these challenges.

The Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and IT would like to congratulate Mr van Dijk on this prestigious award and his success.