“It doesn't matter where in the world you go, whichever mine you visit, there's always some kind of water problem,” explains Dr Nadja Kunz of the University of Queensland (UQ). “It’s just that in different parts of the world, there's going to be different issues.” Dr Kunz is an expert in modelling and mitigating complex water and sustainability challenges within the industrial sector. She has previously spoken at Water in Mining on the use of natural language processing tools to strengthen water management in mining, and she is due to chair the inaugural Water in Mining Australia regional edition on 8-9th September 2026. Over her career, she has established a track record of working closely with the industry. This includes a stint as a water specialist at the International Finance Corporation (part of the World Bank Group), where she worked with ten mining companies to improve their water management practices in Mongolia’s Southern Gobi region – one of the world’s most arid environments. Today, she is a senior lecturer at UQ’s School of Chemical Engineering and an adjunct senior lecturer at the Sustainable Minerals Institute. Water in Mining sat down with Dr Kunz to discuss her research and get her reflections on how the sector should be thinking about water risk today. Categorising water risk “Water cuts across the entire life cycle, and depending on where in the world you are, those issues can be really diverse,” she explains. With mines located across the full spectrum of climates, from desert to rainforest, this is perhaps intuitive, but there are also different types of risk to consider. “My early career was much more focused on the technical aspects of water – understanding how to better manage extremes of too much or too little water on sites,” explains Dr Kunz. “Water quality issues are also consequential from a technical perspective.” “Over time, however, I've become more exposed to some of the social issues in mining and water. For a lot of communities, water is really a foremost concern when they think about questions of mine closure and of competition for water in operations.” With water risk representing a multi-faceted challenge, it can be useful to break it down conceptually. “I like to think of risk being in different groupings and you can think about organising those in different ways,” Dr Kunz explains. “You have water quantity issues that are important, but also water quality, and how those two things interface.” “You then have short-term and long-term dimensions. There are operational water issues that can become really critical quite quickly – do I have enough water for my supply, for example – but if you're not paying attention to the longer-term strategic issues, they can also quickly rebound on sites as operational risks.” “The other categories I think about are things like the social issues, which are quite separate from the technical dimensions,” Dr Kunz adds. Thinking beyond the fence Over her career, Dr Kunz has noticed a shift in how companies think about these risks. “I think the industry's come a really long way from thinking within the fence in terms of water to thinking beyond the fence.” “Going back, maybe 20 years ago, when I started working in this space, a lot of thinking about water management was really operationally focused at the site level,” she explains. “The boundary was around the mine lease, and the questions companies were asking were: have we got enough water supply? Are we discharging water?” “Now, I think the industry has made an exciting jump to think more about water stewardship in terms of the bigger issues that happen at the catchment level, beyond the site.” This is shaping not only the way that companies plan, but also the skills that they need. “The social side is a skill set that wasn't always at the forefront of mind when companies thought about water – it was often considered a domain that is very technical,” Dr Kunz explains. “But as time has progressed, to manage water well, you also need the scientists and engineers to work really closely with social teams and have people that have that social element, which I think is more important now than it was 20 years ago.” The different meanings of water Another point that Dr Kunz is keen to stress is that water risk means different things to different stakeholders. “Companies are interested in managing their internal risk exposure with projects, and water is a component of that risk,” she explains. “But when you talk about water risk to a local community, their perspective of what risk is, is really different, and likewise when you talk to investors.” “Regulators are obviously trying to protect the public good, but they too have a different lens, and Indigenous rights holders have their own very specific set of concerns that they may have around projects,” she adds. “A lot of what I do involves working across these different groups of stakeholders to understand what risk means, how we quantify it, and how the choices that sites make can pose different kinds of challenges for others,” Kunz explains. “To give a really specific example, desalination is an increasingly used practise in the mining space to supply water to sites, and it is often seen as a way of mitigating the risk of not having enough water for supply.” “It solves certain elements of the water equation, but it also raises new challenges that need to be thought through. For example, where should desalination facilities be located? Where does the brine go and are there consequent environmental impacts to be managed? Are there community concerns around what the impacts of desalination facilities might be, or could new desalination infrastructure also create opportunities to provide communities with a more secure water supply?” According to Kunz, “there are few easy silver bullet fixes for a lot of the industry’s water problems; they are multi-dimensional and I think that's what excites me about working on them.” Asking the right questions How does this expanded understanding of water risk change how companies should operate in practice? For Kunz, recognising that there can be a different worldview on risk can have very real tangible implications for the technical aspects of water management in mining. “I'm very interested in how we can support technical and engineering teams to ask the right questions very early on so that designs can be done in a way that is ideally going to lead to positive social and environmental outcomes over the longer term,” she explains. This naturally leads on to what the ‘right’ questions might be. “Within communities there will always be a diversity of opinions, but the kinds of questions that they might have are also likely to be distinct from what a company would otherwise prioritise,” explains Kunz. “For example, where is a tailings dam going to be located? Is that a place that the community will accept or not? Is there going to be acceptance around mining a mineral deposit that might be in a culturally sensitive area where water impacts could be significant?” “They are the things on the social side that, from a company perspective, might not be asked in early engineering design stages unless there is a conscious effort.” As the industry moves to a more holistic view of water issues, having these conversations early on in projects is an important way that companies can protect themselves from water risk in all its many guises.