Global partnership makes clean water advocates’ dream come true

From Arnold R. Grahl

Few could have been more excited than Lis Bernhardt, a former Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, when Rotary and the UN Environment Programme announced a joint initiative this year to empower Rotary members to protect, restore and conserve local waters under technical guidance from UNEP experts.

As UNEP’s program officer, Bernhardt spent five years advancing the idea of ​​Community Action for Fresh Water through leadership changes in both organizations. After the agreement was announced during Rotary’s International Assembly in January, she posted on her LinkedIn page: “A professional dream come true.” (Read Bernhardt’s experience in her own words on Rotary’s blog.)

“Rotary has been a big part of my work with the United Nations,” she later explained. “Being able to give back to Rotary, to come full circle and have a global partnership is super exciting.”

Bernhardt has worked in various roles in international development since completing her Rotary-supported studies at the Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland from 2000 to 2002. Her work has often focused on the interface between development and the environment. As a program officer for UN-Water in New York in 2015, she essentially “led” the UN’s sixth Sustainable Development Goal, which seeks to ensure the availability and management of clean water and sanitation systems. Many of her roles had one thing in common: water.

This may have something to do with a chance encounter during her Rotary scholarship that changed her career path.

Bernhardt arrived in her hometown of Geneva with the support of the Rotary Club of Valparaiso, Indiana. With a bachelor’s degree in international studies from Northwestern University near Chicago, she planned to focus on conflict resolution and minority rights.

As an intern with UN Volunteers during the summer between her first and second years, she was part of a program that allowed nongovernmental organizations and other civil society groups in developing countries to apply online for volunteer support for projects such as building a website, translating documents or writing a funding proposal. Her job was to review applications, including one from the Navajo people in the United States.

“Their request met all our requirements,” she recalls. “They obviously needed access to education. They had problems with drinking water and sanitation. They were a disadvantaged group and a minority. They met all the criteria except that they lived in the United States,” which disqualified the group.

Although the group’s application was rejected, the group’s fate stayed with her. She stayed in touch and visited the Navajo Nation. This example became the basis of her master’s thesis, in which she examined the discrepancy between the ecological and socioeconomic development trajectories.

“Ultimately, all of their problems revolved around the environment. I saw how environmental conditions underlie all other development problems,” she says. “That changed my mindset. Every job I’ve had since then has been in the environmental field.”

After brief stints with Amnesty International and as a consultant to UN Volunteers, Bernhardt joined the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change in Bonn, where she worked as a programme officer and external relations manager. In 2009, she took a position with a UN Water programme in Bonn and later moved to UN Water’s New York office, where she helped draft the Sustainable Development Goals on water and sanitation.

As influential as that work was, she became interested in implementation, “to help make these sustainable goals a reality.” In 2016, she moved to Kenya and joined UNEP’s Freshwater Ecosystems Unit. There, in 2018, she was part of the reception of a delegation from Rotary International, including incoming President Barry Rassin, to explore a partnership. The stage was already set for the environment to become one of Rotary’s focus areas.

“Several of us, including Dan Cooney, our communications director and Rotary Peace Fellow, were instrumental in pushing the idea of ​​a partnership on our side,” Bernhardt recalls. “We were both involved in Rotary and knew what a relationship could look like.”

After numerous discussions, Bernhardt’s superiors at UNEP wanted to collect data before negotiating an agreement. Bernhardt met with Joe Otin, then Rotary’s representative to UNEP, and together they launched a pilot project called “Adopt a River for Sustainable Development” in District 9212, which covers Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Sudan. Bernhardt and her colleagues worked with Rotary members in 20 clubs as they “adopted” nine rivers to collect trash, catalog information about pollution, hold community engagement events, and meet with leaders to discuss solutions. They conducted a type of research known as “citizen science” and pushed for the creation of a long-term plan for each river.

Looking back, Bernhardt attributes her fellowship year to her desire to work with Rotary members. “That year, I met Rotarians in many clubs and it was like I was talking to the club in Valparaiso. I was always impressed by the passion of Rotarians, the fact that they are represented all over the world and that they want to do good for their communities.”

She remains excited about the potential of the partnership.

“Water is so valuable to everything we do,” she says. “Not a day goes by that we don’t use freshwater in some form. We drink it to live. It’s in the food we grow. It keeps our industries running. It’s essential to every kind of energy we use. Water is so present and so essential in all of these processes.”

This story originally appeared in the September 2024 issue of Rotatable Magazine.