Roundtable on Financing Water

The 11th meeting of the Roundtable on Financing Water (Brussels, May 2024) focused on the EU’s Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. It shed light on needs and opportunities to accelerate investments into water in line with EaP priorities. The meeting examined how to accelerate investments in water in those target countries, including for water supply and sanitation, water resources management, and water-risk management, as well as adaptation to climate change. Lessons from enabling investments in the European Union, applicable to the rest of the world, were also drawn upon. 

The regional meetings provide an opportunity to refine and share knowledge of water financing needs and capacities in the region. They also enable the characterisation of regional issues (e.g., infrastructure resilience in the Americas; mobilising commercial banks in Asia; developing a taxonomy of green investments in Europe). They are an opportunity to mobilise regional actors around shared issues or lines of action. Regional meetings have covered:

• Europe, co-convened by the European Investment Bank (virtual meeting, December 2020).
• Asia, co-convened by the Asian Development Bank (Manila, November 2019).
• America, co-convened by the US government and the Inter-American Development Bank (Washington, June 2019).
• Africa, co-convened with the African development Bank (Abidjan, November 2023)

The thematic meetings allow discussing specific themes at the global level, benefiting from input from leaders and experts and supported by evidence-based analyses. Past thematic meetings have focused on:

• Defining the role of financing in the Water Action Agenda in the run up to the UN 2023 Water Conference, co-convened with UN-Water (Geneva, February 2023)
• Water and climate action, co-organised with the U.S. Government, including the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (virtual meeting, September 2021)
• Agricultural water, co-convened with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) (virtual meeting, January 2021)