Sustainability can feel like a buzzword, it is everywhere these days but Jo says, “It wasn’t always like this. Nowadays people are more open to being green but for a while there was scepticism.” Working in the industry for 25 years means that Jo has seen radical shifts in real-time, and she was often part of these shifts.

Sustainability over the years

Working in water means directly confronting some of the harsh realities that our modern world offers. When asked about what is the biggest problem we are facing in the water sector and the world Jo says,

“Well, climate change affects everything and when I am talking to scientists and other stakeholders we all agree that there is a problem but the reality is that climate change is affecting us now, not in the future and getting people to wake up to this is challenging despite the evidence.”

Prof Jo is currently in the UK and says, “South Africa and the UK are facing similar problems. Where the standard weather patterns of our seasons have drastically changed over the last very short space of time. In the UK, the summers are uncharacteristically hot. In South Africa, we are getting much hotter summers, but much colder and longer winters.”

With her years of experience, she has adopted the moniker ‘Water-related innovation accelerator’ which speaks to the urgency of getting things right. She says, “We are living in a pivotal time, with a disproportionate burden placed on us, this is the time to do what we can.”

Climate change has brought the concept of sustainability to the forefront of every discussion within various sectors and what Jo keenly notes is that “Sustainability means different things to different people in different sectors.” The mining sector is inherently unsustainable, the extraction of finite resources is never going to be 100% green but “even in mining we can reduce the impact a mine makes on the environment and surrounding community.”

Sustainability can often be viewed as a hurdle to profit or a short-term fix of something that requires long-term solutions. One of the big changes Jo has seen over the years is that new mining companies see themselves differently from the old-school “dig it all up and leave it” way of doing things.

“Newer mining companies are much more on board with the broad mainstream definition of sustainability, where they’re more interested in re-mining historical wastes or reprocessing old dumps, and not necessarily as focused on breaking ground because they see themselves as part of the sustainable energy revolution.”

While mining has changed and is now more environmentally friendly, it is still short-term focused. Jo notes that in other parts of the water sector sustainability is taken much more seriously.

“Some careers like hydrology, require precise measurements decades apart or their entire career revolves around four data points. Where the process is longer sometimes thousands or hundreds of years sustainability means something very different.”

Career highlights

Her career is filled with highly respected roles, such as the research manager at the Water Research Commission, and former director of WISA, and she is currently the head of the Trial Reservoir Global Services in the UK. She helped start Young Water Professionals UK and was a founding chairperson of the Young Water Professionals Southern Africa.

She explains “I was a postdoc and my direct line manager at Cranfield University at the time, was setting it up, and he reeled me in to help him. And I thought this was fantastic. I wasn’t in any of the photos at the first conference because I was the one taking the photos! When I moved to South Africa I was working at Rhodes University and the situation was so different. A lot of the abstract concepts I learned about were just a reality here and my first PhD student and her experience was so different from the British student I was used to teaching. She lived in the township outside of Grahamstown and she would have to fetch water for her household before arriving at the lab in the morning. We had very little library and digital access at that time, and I quickly realised that she didn’t have that support structure where we could bounce ideas between 20 people. The students I was working with had a real hunger for information that was difficult to access. So I started the Young Water Professionals of Southern Africa as a way to give these students a network of people for them to use,”

“At the time I was in contact with Prof Tobias Barnard ​who was based in Johannesburg. We decided the best way to go about setting this up was to make it look as if there was already something to join. So we begged for free and discounted facilities from the CSIR, which gave us their convention centre to host the first conference. We designed our own flyers. We spammed everybody by email, and we said “Please join the inaugural conference of the Young Water Professionals. Everyone who’s anyone under 35 in the sector will be there.”  We got it endorsed by WISA and by the International Water Association. So it was a joint body, rather than having two that would compete with each other, please come. We thought we might get about 50 to 80 people and 150 people registered.” She says this is her proudest moment, and she can’t help but feel warm whenever she looks at the great work done by the Young Water Professionals.

From its humble beginnings, Young Water Professionals has grown and there are chapters popping up all across Africa. She says of this “I see that there are chapters in Rwanda and Uganda and the youth are really engaged. They want to halt pollution, they want to reverse degradation, they want to mitigate risks to the environment. And they’re not just sitting there going, someone should do something. They know that they are someone and they’re going to do something. And I think that it gives me such hope. I think the younger generations are amazing.”

Water in the South African context

Her proudest moment is a valued one when looking into her career highlights, she was recently awarded the WISA Honourary Member Award at the WISA2024 gala dinner.

She says of this, “WISA is invaluable and being recognised by them is an honour.” WISA is an organisation that pops up frequently in Prof Jo’s career, from supporting the Young Water Professionals of Southern Africa to her director position at WISA. She says, “Every sector needs that one organisation that holds everything together, the glue. WISA is that for water.”

With its relatively small board, she notes that “WISA’s mouth is big, its reach is large and it allows people from competing initiatives to stand on neutral ground and come together and work towards the bigger picture.” She adds that WISA allows people to bring their expertise and work together in a way that facilitates systematic change.

South Africa’s water sector is privileged in that there are many great organisations that support the great work done by the industry. Prof Jo says there are too many to name but says “We have WISA and we have the Water Research Commission which is such a boost. South Africa is alone in that we have this one organisation dedicated to water research and is not tied up elsewhere, this is a phenomenal luxury.” An example of this luxury at work is that South Africa produces three times more respected, peer-reviewed academic articles about water than any other field.

When asked about what makes the water sector in South Africa unique she says, “Well the entire sector, globally, is filled with very passionate people yet in South Africa specifically, but Africa generally, there is a real fire. Somehow more passion and because they care about communities that don’t have safe water, or they want to protect their natural environment. They care about pollution. Most people are here for the sake of something or someone that’s not themselves, and it’s a very warm, and very constructive.”

Current work

Jo is currently the head of Trial Reservoirs at Isle Utilities. This organisation aims to mitigate financial risks to start-ups in the water sector. They effectively unlock the gate and grant access to great ideas that would otherwise be unable to function due to financial barriers.

Jo says, “Water is a sector that can’t afford to lose great ideas so we provide funding to projects that show real promise. We finance projects with the guarantee that if successful they get a customer and if the project fails no one has to pay the loan back.”

Her career path has taken her from asking for assistance in setting organisations up to being the one who helps others set up their projects. Lending a helping hand and expertise to the sector her work is invaluable.