Over the past year, Foresight Canada and Invest Vancouver, the Metro Vancouver region’s economic development leadership service, have worked closely together with the goal to strengthen water technology in the region. This included the publication of Invest Vancouver's Water Tech: The Metro Vancouver Region’s Untapped Clean Tech Opportunity Report and Foresight's Water and Climate Toolkit.

As part of this collaboration, Foresight Canada and Invest Vancouver are co-hosting an online panel discussion focusing on the development of a water tech cluster in the Metro Vancouver region. While a water innovation ecosystem has emerged organically in the region, there is much to learn from successful cluster-building experiences in other countries. 

The Netherlands is a world leader in water technology development, commercialization and export. The successful WaterCampus Leeuwarden offers a valuable model for government, industry, and academic collaboration, which has successfully spun off more than 100 new water tech companies to date. 

The online event consists of two-panel discussions, featuring Dutch and BC representatives from academia, industry and government.

The goal of this exchange is to:

• Draw lessons from the Dutch cluster-building experience
• Explore the current state of BC’s water innovation ecosystem
• Chart a path forward for future cluster development and international collaboration.

Dutch Panellists include:

- Hein Molenkamp, Managing Director, Water Alliance 

- Inez Dinkla, Scientific Program Manager and Theme coördinator, Wetsus

- Roelof Jansma, Senior beleidsadviseur provincie Fryslan

The Dutch panel will be moderated by Alan Shapiro, Director, BCNZIN Water Cluster, Foresight

Canadian Panellists include:

- Shannon Bard, Lead Climate Venture Studio, [email protected], University of British Columbia

- Lillian Zaremba, Program Manager, Collaborative Innovations, Metro Vancouver

- David Tsui, Director General at Pacific Economic Development Canada

- Saad Dara, CEO & Co-Founder, Mangrove Lithium

The Canadian panel will be moderated by Gregory Freeman, Senior Economist, Invest Vancouver

The event will be a webinar with an expert panel to answer any questions. Join us to be a part of the discussion. 

This event is also run in partnership with Climate Connections, to showcase pressing, real-world challenges with an audience of academics, researchers, and innovators from across Canada. We thank our partners entrepreneurship@ UBC, SFU and the University of Victoria.

Register Here