UN 2023 Water Conference: Water Finance Coalition workshop

Public Development Banks committed to Water Security UNICEF House, March 23rd, 2023, 14:00 - 15:30

PRESS RELEASE

Report of the workshop

Taking advantage of the presence of several IFIs during the UN 2023 Water Conference, the Water Finance Coalition (WFC) organised a 90-minute workshop to share and discuss a draft ‘multi-annual plan’.

The workshop was hosted by UNICEF and brought together more than 13 representatives of WFC members and observers, with secretarial support provided by IRC WASH (see list below).

The main objectives of the workshop were to:

• Share and discuss the ‘Draft Strategic Action Plan 2023-2025’

• Assess key areas of interest within the plan for WFC members

• Identify members willing to be part of a ‘core group’ to support the chairs in finalising and implementing the action plan
  

The meeting started with words of welcome by Ángel Cárdenas, Manager of Urban Development, Water and Creative Economies of CAF, who took the opportunity to share CAF’s Water Action Agenda commitment of US$4bn water finance for the next 4 years; and by Sunny Guidotti, Regional Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Specialist for UNICEF, who was hosting the meeting.

Following the welcome, Franz Rojas, current chair of the WFC, presented the action plan and its fourteen ‘action areas’. Patrick Moriarty (secretariat to the WFC) then facilitated a round of introductions of those in the room, followed by a short exercise based on asking attendees two questions:

• What are the three action areas you find most interesting to you/your organisation?

• What is your preferred relationship to WFC (‘interested observer’ or ‘core member’)?

Discussions

Attendees represented a broad range of primarily regional IFIs. Exceptions included UNICEF, the Green Climate Fund, BANOBRAS (Mexico’s national PDB) and NADBANk (a PDB focussing on financing for environmental issues on the US/Mexico frontier).

Attendees’ interests spanned a broad range of water, WASH and climate related fields and included lending operations as well as technical assistance, knowledge management and project preparation. The scoring exercise reflected this with most participants interested in actions across the three main sets of ‘lines of action’:

1. Peer learning and knowledge sharing

2. advocacy and policy dialogue

3. support and cooperation to national PDBs.

More relevant perhaps is that within line of action

1. there was a clear preference for action relating to peer-learning and knowledge sharing between multilateral and National PDBs; while under line of action

2. the preference was for supporting policy dialogues between governments and regulators and, generating evidence on the nexus between the water sector and climate change adaptation and mitigation

3. under line of action 3 there was no clear preference for specific activities.

CAF, BANOBRAS, GCF, AFD and AfDB will be “core members” (engaging in further developing of the strategy and workplan). The core member group will be open to any other bank that manifest the interest to belong.

Overall, those attendees who remained to the end of the session expressed their satisfaction with the opportunity to meet and network and interest to continue supporting the WFC, as either core members or interested observers. One noted “just meeting and getting to know my counterparts in other organisations is very useful”.

List of Attendees

Albrecht Conrad, Eurasian Development Bank (EDB)

Allison Woodruff, ADB

Amgad Elmahdi, GCF

Ángel Cárdenas, CAF

Bernd Schoenewal, KfW

Carlos Carranza, NADBank

Carlos Puente, BANOBRAS

Catherine Collin, EIB

Claudia Neuschulz, EBRD

David Tyler, EBRD

Dinara Shynybekova

Eurasian Development Bank (EDB)

Emilie Filou, Global Water Intelligence

Florencia Pietrafesa, CAF

Franz Rojas, CAF

Julia Manning, EBDR

Lionel Goujon, AFD, Nizar Zaied, IsDB

Ophelie Bourhis, AFD

Osward Chanda, AfDB

Patrick Moriarty, IRC WASH

Salvador Lopez, NADBank

Sunny Guidotti, UNICEF