From Scarcity to Security - Leveraging Investments for Climate-Resilient Water and Sanitation

The world is facing a huge challenge of securing adequate and affordable water and sanitation services. None of the SDG 6 targets are on track. As of 2022, 2.2 billion people were without access to safely managed drinking water. The situation concerning safely managed sanitation remains dire, with 3.5 billion people lacking access to such services.
Urban water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) scarcity is a global concern. Today, over 700 million urban residents live without improved sanitation, contributing to poor health conditions and heavy pollution loads in wastewater, and over 156 million live without improved water sources.
The large financing gap represents a fundamental bottleneck in ensuring access to water and sanitation. Currently, there exists an annual spending shortfall of between US$131.4 billion and US$140.8 billion to achieve the SDG 6. There is an urgent need to leverage funds through partnership with regional development banks such as the African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and European Investment Bank. In the past, such partnerships have increased the flow of pro-poor investments and ensured that the innovative approaches and solutions demonstrated through UN-Habitat’s WASH activities are linked to large-scale investments. Collaboration between UN-HABITAT and the regional development banks on key pre-investment activities has also greatly improved project design and significantly reduced the project preparation process and the appraisal period.
This session will galvanize global and local efforts including mobilizing financing towards enhancing water and sanitation services in low-income urban areas, thereby contributing to the overall resilience and sustainability of cities and human settlements.
Specific objectives of the session include to:
1. Mobilize investments: Explore financing opportunities and partnerships with development banks to increase the flow of investments into urban water and sanitation from infrastructure to capacity strengthening.
2. Promote Climate Resilience: Discuss the role of enhanced water and sanitation services and capacity development mechanism, including the Water and Sanitation focused Operators’ Partnerships (WOPs, SWOPs) in building urban actors’ resilience, particularly in the face of climate change, natural disasters, and pandemics.
3. Showcase successful initiatives and best practices that are innovative and scalable: Emphasize efforts to improve access in underserved urban areas including tackling legal and policy barriers preventing prioritization and delivery of services.
4. Facilitate Knowledge Exchange: Foster a dialogue between policymakers, practitioners, and community leaders to share knowledge, experiences, and innovative solutions.