FT Water Summit: Vital role of business and finance community in achieving water security

    On October 27, the inaugural Financial Times Water Summit was held in London, United Kingdom.  The World Water Council is a founding partner of this event, alongside the Financial Times. The one day conference was chaired by Pilita Clark, environment correspondent at the Financial Times, and gathered more than 180 participants from the business, financial, and water community.
     
    During the Summit, Benedito Braga, President of the World Water Council, called upon the business community to play a greater role in contributing to solve water issues and achieving water security. Outlining the difficult choices and trade-offs that must be made by all, he added that collaboration across sectors, and especially with the finance sector will be crucial if we are to achieve water security for all. Illustrating this challenge President Braga pointed to recent estimates which indicate annual investments in the order of 500 billion to 1 trillion USD dollars will be necessary, from now to 2030, to solve the problem of access to safe drinking water and sanitation.
     
    Several international corporate heads of sustainability and water, policy-makers, banks and investors and executives from leading utilities, academia, engineering and technology companies also attended the FT Water Summit to share practices on how they are transforming water risks into economic opportunities. In addition, they discussed ways in which businesses around the world are working with the broader water community to deal with scarcity and enabling growth. To find out the latest updates on the FT Water Summit, please click here