Financing

Last update:3 March 2024

Ensuring adequate water and sanitation services for communities and businesses requires making better use of existing sources of finance and mobilizing new ones. Critically, all solutions to the water crisis will require capital, including significant international financial support for the developing world. 

Fisherwomen prepare fish for sale in the city of Baher dar. For the last decades, fish as been declining due to water hyacinth, pollution and overfishing. More than 50% of the fish as disappeared.
In Bahir Dar city, Ethiopia, fisherwomen diligently prepare their catch for sale, but their livelihoods are threatened by the decline of fish stocks due towater hyacinth, pollution, and overfishing.
Arthur Larie
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

There is a need to make better use of existing sources of finance and to mobilize new capital, including greater international support for developing countries. Rigorous assessments of the impacts and benefits of investments can create new financing opportunities. 

Water-related investments, instruments and arrangements can be designed to equitably distribute the costs and benefits across various stakeholders. Valuations can inform policy instruments such as water tariffs, taxes, charges, and permits or offset markets. Similarly, these principles can inform voluntary financing arrangements that link potential returns to an investment, to encourage local actors to provide non-repayable capital for investments that provide operational benefits.

A better understanding of water-related risks can encourage financial actors to engage with companies to invest in mitigating those risks. 

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