Recording Available - Assessing Water Resilience: The Intersection of Credit Ratings and Climate Adaptation

On 15 January, the Water Resilience for Economic Resilience (WR4ER) initiative hosted a global webinar on Assessing Water Resilience: The Intersection of Credit Ratings and Climate Adaptation. Below you can watch the recorded event and learn more about the session.

Overview
Credit rating agencies communicate measurements of trust and risk to investors on a massive scale – and a level of the expectation of quality and investor appetite to institutions that seek funding. The financial flows for the global bonds market alone is estimated at more than 130 trillion USD annually. Credit rating agencies play an important role in lending practices, investment, and regulatory frameworks, forming a pillar of the broader economy.

Climate change impacts remain a relatively new perspective for how we evaluate, score, and compare investments, though instruments that purport to disclose these approaches are rapidly becoming mainstreamed and normalized as part of disclosure, evaluation, and rating systems. To date, they have emphasized high-confidence physical risks, such as from extreme heat, air quality, and flooding. Broader system-level risks (e.g., electrical grids and regional water supply), black swan events, the challenges associated with climatic transitions, and climate-related governance risks are much less widely captured and scored though they may be more significant and indeed important for investors and regulators to perceive and understand than direct physical risks. Moreover, our ability to also describe and weight the potential for adaptation and resilience benefits through credit rating systems is nascent. 

How do we ensure that credit rating systems are capable of communicating both the level of potential risk and incentivizing systemic resilience? Do we need to disclose drivers and risks beyond the influence of direct physical threats? Is the absence of broader perspectives on risk important for the larger economy? Are new insights, such as the ability of water resilience interventions to promote coherence in climate action, important for credit ratings?

This webinar is part of an ongoing series from the Water Resilience for Economic Resilience (WR4ER) initiative.

Additional Resources:

Thank you to the speakers and panelists who joined this session:

  • Ram Sri - Keynote Speaker 

    Ram Sri serves as Vice President – Senior Analyst within Moody’s Ratings Sustainable Finance - Credit Team. He is the lead author of Moody’s umbrella water report, titled “Credit Effect of Water Management Risks to Rise Amid Higher Demand, Climate Change”. Ram spearheads the global initiative to integrate water risk and water management considerations into Moody’s analysis, ratings, and research. Additionally, he has authored Moody’s global environmental and social risks heat maps and the associated framework reports. Ram holds an MA in Management and Strategy from Warwick Business School and an MSc in Environmental and Analytical Chemistry from Warwick University.

  • Michael Brown - Keynote Speaker

    Mike Brown is the Global Cities Lead at the Climate Bonds Initiative, where he supports governments in identifying eligible projects and securing funding to achieve climate and resilience goals. Since joining Climate Bonds in 2022, he has led capacity-building workshops and developed innovative financing solutions for cities worldwide. Prior to CBI, Mike spent 16 years at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission as Environmental Finance Manager, where he oversaw the issuance of over $3 billion in certified green bonds under the Climate Bonds Water Criteria. Mike holds a Master’s in Urban Studies and Planning from MIT and is committed to advancing sustainable finance to support climate-resilient infrastructure

  • Mario Lootz-Petersen - Panel Moderator

    Mario Lootz-Petersen is a Senior Policy Officer for Water and Circular Economy at the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development BMZ, responsible for the climate – water interface and international processes related to Water and Circular Economy. He is a Political Scientist with a focus on international relations and has worked in the implementation of development cooperation projects with the German Organization for International Cooperation GIZ, the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources BGR, the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment BfR and the CGIAR-Center WorldFish.

  • Claudia Sadoff - Panelist

    Dr. Claudia Sadoff is the former Executive Managing Director of CGIAR, the world’s largest not-for-profit partnership of international food, land, and water systems research institutes. She was Director General of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), a CGIAR research Center headquartered in Sri Lanka, and served 25 years at the World Bank holding a variety of positions including Lead Economist and Global Lead for Water Security and Water Resources Management. She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley and an MA in International Political Economy from Columbia University.

  • Karri Ving - Panelist

    As a Managing Principal at Brown and Caldwell, Karri Ving is dedicated to instilling trust in municipal water infrastructure through sound governance, robust community partnerships, and innovative circular business models. She began her career in the water sector by pioneering San Francisco’s SFGreasecycle Program, a groundbreaking, closed-loop, and cost-neutral urban resource recovery initiative. Today, Ms. Ving collaborates with utilities across the U.S. to redefine their approach to risk, enhance system reliability and strengthen resilience. Her efforts include a pivotal role in establishing the US Water Alliance’s Net Zero Community of Practice and serving on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Finance Working Group.

  • Miriam Seemann - Closing Remarks

    Miriam is a Senior Policy Advisor for the “Global Programme Water Security for Resilient Development” and the “Sector Programme Water and Sanitation Policy – Innovations for Resilience” at the GIZ in Bonn, Germany. She has over 15 years working on a variety of issues ranging from governance and natural resources management to water security, including the water-food-energy nexus. Ms. Seemann holds a PhD from the University of Hamburg in Germany in (local) water rights and graduated from the University of Portsmouth in the UK with a BA in Latin American Studies and Economics.           

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