Steven Lloyd’s Post

Excellent UN Global Compact webinar today on opportunities for investing in water to deliver sustainable outcomes across multiple SDGs. Some key takeaways: Despite Thames related bad press on UK water financing returns and uncertainty on how that will pan out over the next 12 months, there is lots of opportunity for investment in water and nature. Some opportunities include: An exciting programme of UK water transfer projects coming to market as PPP style contracts underpinned by separate regulatory settlements. Both Voluntary and Compliance Markets are emerging across water, nature and carbon with big potential to aggregate funding for local based outcomes; the UK is at forefront of establishing integrity in these markets. Opportunity for Local Authorities to convene new collaborations on green and blue retrofit of cities; an innovative GLA pilot is leading the way on a governance model to enable this. Water has an impact across all infrastructure and urban systems - integrated working and assessment of how to adapt to future scenarios is essential. Companies are rightly focusing on decarbonisation but also need to include water and nature risks in their materiality assessments and consider how to work with others, and through their supply chains, to improve resilience. Keep it simple to enable first steps. Great contributions from fellow panellists James Payne, Anupam Ravi, Mai-Lan Ha, Dr Sally Uren, Sarah Webster