The World Water Council contributes to the 14th OECD Roundtable on Financing Water in Rome
On 29-30 September 2026, the World Water Council took part in the 14th Roundtable on Financing Water at the headquarters of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in Rome. The meeting was convened by the OECD, jointly with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and IFAD, and held back-to-back with the 44th UN-Water meeting. It was supported by SDC and the Netherlands, in collaboration with the World Water Council, WaterAid and IFAD.
A workshop on getting more from water investments
This Roundtable meeting discussions focused on improving the targeting and efficiency of water investments. Participants examined how water-related investments can be better directed, and how public and private resources can be mobilised more effectively to advance water security.
Sessions covered public expenditure efficiency, national platforms for financing and coordinating water investments, and the targeting of investments to address distributional inequalities. They also looked at integrating water-related risks into investment decisions, including the role of central banks and financial supervisors, and at trade and virtual water dependencies.
The World Water Council’s contribution: trade and virtual water
As a founding member of the Roundtable, the World Water Council supported the background note on fair water footprints, which was written by the Water Footprint Network .
Water has always crossed borders physically. Increasingly, it also crosses them virtually, through the goods and services we produce, trade and consume. The expansion of trade has turned water into a shared global resource and local water scarcity into a global supply-chain issue, with consequences for water resources and for the communities that depend on them.
A recent study by the Water Footprint Network and a research team at the University of Twente looked at patterns over the past three decades. It found:
- persistent patterns of virtual water trade in water-scarce areas;
- a particularly high dependence on external water resources among high-income countries.
These findings suggest that environmental sustainability and distributional justice will not be achieved without deliberate, coordinated action.
Not less trade, but fairer water footprints
The aim of the background note and its recommendations is not to discourage trade in water-intensive products. It is to promote more sustainable and equitable water footprints and trade patterns, in particular by avoiding additional pressure on regions where water resources are already under significant stress.
From Rome to the UN Water Conference and Riyadh
The Roundtable was designed to generate concrete, actionable recommendations. The key findings and policy recommendations from the background papers and the discussions will be consolidated and presented at the 2026 UN Water Conference, where they will inform discussions on financing water and the development of flagship initiatives linked to its Interactive Dialogues.
The conversation will continue at the 11th World Water Forum in Riyadh in 2027. As the co-organiser of the Forum, the World Water Council and its partners will keep working to turn commitments into concrete, financeable action. Fair water footprints and smarter, better-targeted investment must be part of that agenda.
The World Water Council thanks the OECD, SDC, IFAD, the Netherlands and WaterAid for bringing the community together, and all participants for their contributions.
Further reading: the OECD report Financing Water Security: Models and Approaches for Investments that Last and the Roundtable background paper Unpacking the value of water in global supply chains: Towards fair water footprints.