Roundtable on Financing Water

The UN 2023 Water Conference is a unique opportunity to set a transformative agenda for water finance, in line with the sustainable development agenda and related global commitments (in particular on climate, biodiversity, or disaster risk reduction). As the world comes together to focus on solving the water and sanitation crises, financing water will be essential for translating the political ambition of the Conference into action on the ground in its follow-up. The outcome of the Conference will be the Water Action Agenda, which will include transformative commitments from across sectors and actors.

In this context, the ninth meeting of the Roundtable on Financing Water – co-convened by the OECD and UN-Water – will play a key role in the lead-up to the UN 2023 Water Conference, possibly contributing a finance perspective to the Water Action Agenda. It will bring together the finance and water communities to share information on recent and future developments of common interest.

The Roundtable meeting will also be the first societal dialogue of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water. The Commission ambitions to anchor equity in water economics and define the hydrological cycle as a global common good.

Sessions will focus on:

• The hydrological cycle as a global common good. What does this mean for finance?
• New economic approaches to value and finance the preservation of the hydrological cycle
• Creating space for equity: Enhancing access to finance for water
• Changing finance for water: the role of governments and public finance
• Changing finance for water: driving the behaviour of corporates and financiers
• Towards a transformative agenda on financing water