10:30
Briefing
The most vulnerable populations are those most exposed to the adverse impacts of climate change. Already precarious living conditions are further exacerbated, increasing exposure to risks and reducing the quality of essential services. This session will address these challenges across different regional contexts, analyzing impacts and response strategies.
A particular attention will be given to increased exposure to flooding, landslides, and other climate-related disasters resulting from more intense and frequent extreme rainfall events observed in many parts of the world.
At the other extreme, water scarcity has intensified. The growing frequency and severity of droughts have placed significant stress on water supply systems, creating the need for capacity expansion and resilience-enhancing interventions. This increased stress disproportionately affects peripheral and informally occupied settlements, which are typically the first to experience service disruptions and face greater difficulties in maintaining service continuity.
Climate impacts also affect fragile ecosystems such as water sources, mangroves, and coastal regions, which will also be addressed in this discussion.
10:45
BWW Connection
12:15
Briefing
The degradation of water sources and the intensification of climatic and anthropogenic pressures on water resources require integrated approaches that connect environmental conservation, land-use planning, and water management. In this context, nature-based solutions have become established as key strategies for protecting water sources, improving water quality, regulating hydrological processes, and strengthening water resilience.
This panel proposes an innovative approach organized around the journey of water within the watershed and guided by evidence and outcomes. Each panelist will address a specific segment of the territory, presenting challenges faced, nature-based solutions implemented, and observed evidence regarding their effectiveness.
The session will demonstrate how distributed interventions throughout the watershed are interconnected and mutually reinforcing, contributing to source of water protection and water security at different scales. The discussion will bring together technical, institutional, and scientific perspectives, promoting a systemic and applied view of nature-based solutions within the context of climate adaptation.
13:30
BWW Connection
15:00
Briefing
Complementing the safe water theme, monitoring and early warning are essential for discussing strategies that enable the identification of risks to water quality before they escalate into pollution and contamination crises. Through the exchange of best practices from national and international experiences, knowledge on monitoring technologies, data systems, and rapid response protocols can be expanded. Both international and national case studies should present innovative solutions that address challenges and showcase practices adapted to local realities.
15:15
BWW Connection
16:45
Briefing
According to the United Nations World Water Development Report (UNESCO, 2024), transboundary waters account for approximately 60% of the world’s freshwater, with more than 150 countries sharing rivers, lakes, and aquifers. These transnational waters face significant and increasing pressures due to population growth, rising water demand, ecosystem degradation, and climate change. The same report indicates that in 2021, US$171 million was mobilized for the water sector through development funds, while global costs to achieve SDG 6 are estimated to exceed US$1 trillion per year, or 1.21% of global GDP.
International financing and multilateral credit mechanisms remain among the main challenges to achieving the SDGs, ensuring transnational water security, and supporting environmental adaptation to ongoing extreme events and climate change.
Budgetary constraints—often combined with political and fiscal crises, as well as limited legal and institutional capacity in developing and lower-income countries—hinder the adoption of coordinated and integrated strategies for managing shared transboundary river basins, improving water security, and enhancing infrastructure and environmental and public health conditions. These challenges require significant efforts to ensure the provision, efficiency, and timely allocation of financial resources.
At the global level, various efforts and mechanisms have been discussed, proposed, or implemented to promote access to funding and expand investments in water management and governance. These include market-based instruments, debentures, green bonds, blue bonds, sovereign funds, securitization, multilateral credit sources, and public and private banks, among others, all aimed at leveraging resources and providing guarantees aligned with the urgent need to enhance resilience, water security, and sustainability.
The objective of this panel is to explore and discuss these aspects in depth, presenting best practices and recent experiences on how these instruments and mechanisms are being used and how they can create more favorable conditions for investment and financing, considering the various contractual, political, fiscal, exchange rate, monetary, economic, and operational risks involved.