Japanese Professor Taikan Oki, the Stockholm Water Prize 2024 Laureate, has talked about his world-renowned research on the virtual water trade, digital river mapping, and the inclusion of human activity in the water cycle at WWWeek today.
“If you do not have enough available water and if you have strong economic power, you can purchase the food as virtual water from water rich countries to satisfy your demand,” said Prof. Oki indicating that water is a precious resource to sustain a nation.
Prof. Oki has contributed to the scientific community and beyond by drawing interlinkages between climate, water cycles, and sustainability, which are taken as a significant model to maximize the sustainable management of water in human activities on a global scale.
“Climatologists never thought about rivers in their perception of the climate system. So, rivers or the ground waters are excluded from the perspective of climate,” he said.
“Since I am hydrologist, I want to see that river within the climate system. And I knew that the impact on the river fluctuation may have less impact on the climate system. However, for the application of climate prediction like climate change or the others, we need the river in the climate system to recognize how that matters to humans.”
Yan Zheng, Chair Professor at the Southern University of Science and Technology in China and member of the nominating committee, expressed her concern over inequality and the costly nature of climate change adaptation throughout the world.
“We did a lot of global science – the ability to observe this planet from the satellite and from many other tools we developed. I think, maybe now is the time for us to take that to localize. Because all the communities need to have the same access to the knowledge to make wise decisions to manage everything, including water.”
Taikan Oki is a professor at the University of Tokyo in the Department of Civil Engineering at the Graduate School of Engineering in Japan.
According to the Stockholm Water Prize Nominating Committee, “Professor Oki is selected for the award for his outstanding contributions to global water balance studies, global virtual water flows, and the spatial and temporal variability of annually renewable water.”
