Recording Available - How to Close the Nature Financing Gap Through Water

💧 Unlocking Climate Finance: The Role of Water & Nature in Climate Mitigation 🌍

On January 28, leading experts from policy, water, and climate convened to explore how nature-based solutions can bridge the climate financing gap and drive meaningful climate action. With insights from CBD COP16, COP29, and UNCCD 16, the discussion highlighted how integrating water into climate mitigation strategies can unlock new funding opportunities while delivering essential biodiversity and social benefits.

Key Takeaways:

1️⃣ Unlocking Nature-Based Finance: Standards and regulatory frameworks can help mobilize investments in water-related nature-based solutions. Yet, stronger policy alignment and more flexible financial instruments are needed to scale up action.

🔹 “Standards help give direction and channel activity. They give a level of confidence to those wanting to invest in these systems.” – James Dalton, IUCN

2️⃣ The Power of Synergies: Breaking silos between climate, biodiversity, and land management policies is essential. Water must be recognized not just as a resource, but as a driver of carbon sequestration and resilience.

🔹 “We don’t include water’s role in our overall climate modeling, and that means we are completely discounting the value of these natural systems to our economies.” – Lucy Watkinson, OECD

3️⃣ From Global Frameworks to Local Action: To translate climate finance into real, on-the-ground impact, capacity building, knowledge-sharing, and institutional support are critical.

🔹“We had woken up to the fact that again most of the climate related investments going into water related infrastructure were all going into grey infrastructure and were not fit for purpose from a mitigation or a resilience perspective. This is why the Water Infrastructure Criteria under the Climate Bonds Standard was created. The standard defines what constitutes credible green water infrastructure projects and channels capital towards those projects. Additionally, it by default integrates climate resilience and biodiversity goals into the project design phase of any water related project. So, it ensures that it's not only again meeting the immediate needs of getting water where we need it, but it also embeds climate resilience as a core principle and promotes infrastructure projects that's capable of withstanding any variability to climate change. Finally, the standard demands enhanced accountability, transparency and measurable impact, which is the thing again, that we all need more of in order to get more confidence and more money flowing ensuring that these water related projects deliver measurable outcomes and are aligned with sustainability goals whether they're national or international.” – Cate Lamb, UNEP FI

Speakers:

James Dalton – Head of Water and Wetlands, IUCN (Moderator)

Iara Giacomini – Director of River Basin Rehabilitation, Access to Water and Multiple Use of Water Resources, Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, Brazil

Cate Lamb – Strategic Advisor, Ambition Loop & Freshwater Strategy Specialist, UNEP FI

Nureen Anisha – Oregon State University

Lucy Watkinson – Climate, Biodiversity, and Water, Environment Directorate, OECD

Josh Weinberg – Senior Advisor, Alliance for Global Water Adaptation & Water Initiative for Net Zero

Bapon Fakhruddin – Water and Climate Leadership, Green Climate Fund

Thomas Panella – Senior Advisor for Water, Natural Capital, and Climate

This event was convened by the Water Initiative for Net Zero (WINZ) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Want to stay ahead in the climate finance conversation? Stay tuned for future events where we continue these critical discussions on water, climate, and bridging the finance gap!