EVENTS
Aligning Finance, Policy, and Action: Reflections from the 13th Roundtable on Financing Water
It was wonderful to see so many familiar faces and brilliant minds at the 13th meeting of the Roundtable on Financing Water. These sessions are always a powerful reminder of how passionate and dedicated our community is.
This year’s discussions at Banco de España felt particularly pivotal as we look ahead. The Roundtable serves as a crucial bridge to the “Water for Prosperity” interactive dialogue, paving the way for a major milestone: preparing a declaration by central banks on the financial materiality of water-related risks, set to be released at the 2026 UN Water Conference at the end of this year.
Reflecting on the sessions, a few key takeaways stood out to me:
- We are closing the implementation gap: The water sector has made tremendous, commendable strides over the last decade. The progress is real, and the momentum is building.
- The alignment gap remains: As Mathilde Mesnard, Deputy Environment Director at OECD, and Soledad Nuñez Ramos, Deputy Governor at Banco de España, pointed out, we still need a much closer alignment with the private and financial sectors.
This resonated deeply with my own daily work in planning and investment programming. Too often, I see well-intentioned “wish lists” transformed into concept notes ready for financing, only to fall short. There is often insufficient robustness in these proposals to clear the high bars set by climate finance and blended finance organizations. Similarly, our sector still faces a steep learning curve in building watertight, commercial cases that attract private capital.
Can we learn from the energy sector?
Looking at how advanced the energy sector is in structuring bankable projects, I can’t help but wonder: should we be collaborating much more closely? There are invaluable lessons learned in energy transition financing that we could adapt to accelerate our own progress.
To secure a truly resilient future, today more than ever, it is time to break down silos, collaborate across sectors, and turn our shared vision into investable reality.