Economic Resilience Through Water Resilience: Managing Economies for Uncertainty and Change
Date & Time: Friday, 24 March; 12:30-13:45 EDT
Location: UN Headquarters (New York City, USA), Conference Room 8
This official UN 2023 Water Conference side event is organized by a consortium of UN Member States and intergovernmental organizations involved in an ongoing effort to define the practice of water resilience for economic planning, evaluation, and management. The Water Resilience for Economic Resilience (WR4ER) initiative is a cross-sectoral partnership designed to develop transformative tools and approaches that enable the water-centric economic resilience principles necessary to achieve all the SDGs — including SDG 6. The audience for this event stretches beyond the water or climate communities, with the intention of reaching senior decision makers in finance ministries and central banks.
Resilience is not an accident — it must be planned for and invested in. WR4ER provides economic decision makers with the evidence necessary to put what the IPCC calls “water-based adaptation” at the center of resilience investment, planning, and policy processes. During this event, contributions from government agencies, multinational development banks, finance institutions, NGOs, and the private sector will illustrate how this water-centric approach is not only an enabler, but a prerequisite, for thriving economies amid a climate-uncertain future. Applied examples of water resilience economic principles being put into practice at national scales will be paired with high-level remarks on the importance of water resilience for the economy in policy areas as diverse as rural development, energy policy, taxation and tariffs, land use planning, environmental management, and climate change adaptation, among others.
How to Participate
In Person: Official registration is required to physically attend conference events at the UN Headquarters in New York City.
Online: The event will be livestreamed to a global audience via UN Web TV for anyone to view. Visit http://webtv.un.org during or after the event to view.
WR4ER Interim Report
Event Program
Welcome and Opening Remarks (5 minutes) - Niels Vlaanderen
Introduction to Water Resilience as an Economic Concept (10 minutes) - Josefina Maestu, Independent water economics expert, University of Alcala, Spain
Overview of Interim Report & Case Studies (5 minutes) - Ala’a Kolkaila, MIT Sloan Visiting Fellow and AGWA Fellow
Case Study Snapshots (20 minutes)
Spain - Teodoro Estrela, Water Director, Ministry of Ecological Transition, Kingdom of Spain
Yellow River, PRC - Thomas Panella, Director - Environment, Natural Resources, and Agriculture Division - East Asia Department, Asian Development Bank
Netherlands - Annemieke Nijhof, General Manager, Deltares
Niger Delta - Karounga Keita, Sahel Office Head, Wetlands International
Namibia - Michael Eichholz, Groundwater and Urban Governance Specialist, German Geological Survey (BGR)
Panel Discussion: How Do We Understand Resilience as an Economic Concept? (30 minutes)
Moderator: Felicia Marcus, William C. Landreth Visiting Fellow, Stanford University
Panelists:
OECD - Aude Farnault, Policy Officer
Veolia - Patrick Schultz, Chief Growth Officer, North America
GIZ: Mike Enskat, Head of Section for Energy, Water, and Mobility - Dept. for Sectoral and Global Programmes
USACE - Robyn Colosimo, Assistant Deputy Secretary of the Army for Civil Works
US DOI: Tanya Trujillo, Assistant Secretary, Water and Science
Closing (5 minutes) - John Matthews, Executive Director, Alliance for Global Water Adaptation (AGWA)
More Information
This side event is organized by a consortium of UN Member States, international finance institutions, intergovernmental organizations, companies, and NGOs involved in an ongoing effort to define the practice of water resilience for economic planning, evaluation, and management. The Water Resilience for Economic Resilience (WR4ER) initiative is a cross-sectoral partnership designed to develop the evidence, guidelines, and transformative tools and approaches that enable water-centric economic resilience principles necessary to achieve all the SDGs — including SDG 6 — as well as other conventions such as the UNFCCC Paris Agreement and the Sendai Disaster RIsk Reduction Framework.
The audience for this event stretches beyond the water or climate communities, with the intention of reaching senior decision makers in finance ministries, macroeconomic planning, central banks, and investors. Integration of all of these policy targets is becoming critical to the goals and function of national governments, international finance institutions, donor aid, and private investment, but “Paris Alignment” is ultimately about ensuring that our economies become resilient to a dynamic, shifting climate. And economic resilience is ultimately about water resilience across and between sectors and institutional boundaries.
