Water Futures Mobilizing Multi Stakeholder Action for Resilience 2025

Where we want to get Various types and sources of finance are available for water resilience. Governments and leaders set priorities for water resilience investments in partnership with multiple stakeholders and access to suitable programmatic- and portfolio-based sources to finance water. This approach encourages industries and communities to adopt sustainable, locally relevant water management practices, ensuring that scarce water resources are allocated more effectively and equitably and that climate risks are sufficiently accounted for. The next generation of finance should include terms and rates of return suited to the long-term horizon of resilience-building efforts, alongside more diverse sources of income that capture co-benefits and avoid losses. Multiple financial and private actors, including philanthropic organizations, must help shape a new generation of financial mechanisms that address various risks across different project types – from infrastructure development to technology innovation – and at every phase, from early project identification to implementation and maintenance. By joining forces, financial players can leverage their diverse strengths and risk appetites to align, stack and deploy finance to key areas of water resilience, including food systems transition, the circular economy and addressing the lack of access to safe water in vulnerable communities.69 Fit-for-purpose finance Fit-for-purpose finance FIGURE 8 Fit-for-purpose financePortfolio of projects requiring investment Facilitate the involvement of international and private capital at the watershed level.Policies and regulations Balance supply- and demand-side measures to foster sustainable water resilience investments. Stack up and streamline different types of finance Structure innovative market mechanisms and create investment opportunities at different scales.Collaboration with tech firms and water suppliers Share and gain expertise in investing in water and identify opportunities. Data collection and sharing Enable tracking, monitoring and evaluation of investment and financing needs in water resilience. By joining forces, financial players can leverage their diverse strengths and risk appetites to align, stack and deploy finance to key areas of water resilience. Where to start Multi-stakeholder collaboration Identify and develop a portfolio of projects requiring investment to facilitate the involvement of international and private capital. Actors who want to invest in water can struggle to identify opportunities for engagement, according to stakeholder consultations. With this in mind, authorities, in collaboration with infrastructure operators, the private sector, NGOs and innovators can direct their efforts to create portfolios of projects that require investment. Portfolios can include the segmentation of projects based on the roles of different investors across the asset’s or project’s life cycle, reflecting how various investors, with different risk appetites and return expectations, can participate in and benefit from water-related projects at different stages of development and operation. Projects could also be identified following existing methodologies to facilitate the quantification of benefits, requiring multi-stakeholder collaboration. Pathway 2 Water Futures: Mobilizing Multi-Stakeholder Action for Resilience 20