Water wisdom from SIWI’s most senior staff member

Aged 97, Malin Falkenmark, is SIWI’s most senior staff member, and she has a lot to share with the world as the UN 2023 Water Conference approaches.

Together with SIWI colleagues Torgny Holmgren and Andreas Karlsson, I recently visited Malin, who is Senior Advisor to SIWI, to film an interview ahead of the conference. Torgny jokes that it is time to renew her contract for another year.

She was sitting on the sofa of her living room, having ‘fika’ as we set up lights and camera. The room was filled with books about water, and photos of distinguished people she has worked with over time.

She complained about weaker hearing, yet, she delivered messages with precision and coherence. She glanced at her notes every now and then, only to make sure that she got the facts right from 1977 when she attended the first and only UN Water Conference as a rapporteur.

Malin said her strongest memory was a “peculiar one”. She had fallen extremely ill in Mar del Plata, and said, “You cannot function without the General Rapporteur, as there won’t be any report from the meeting, causing it to fail completely.”