The climate crisis is actually a water crisis. The main way people experience the impacts of climate change is through the water cycle. That means intensifying droughts in some places and intensifying floods in other areas. From 6 to 18 November, COP27 will bring together global decision makers to explore solutions to take on the climate challenge through concerted, collaborative and impactful action. As it did last year in Glasgow, water will again take a critical role as an issue where the international community can work for the common good of our shared planet and humanity. 

During this year’s conference, the CEO Water Mandate will showcase the power of collective action to build system-level water resilience and make human-level impacts. We will showcase the latest advances in climate-resilient WASH and innovative financing along with new tools like the Water Action Hub 4.0, the Water Resilience Assessment Framework Corporate Guidance and the Stakeholder Engagement Guide for Nature-Based Solutions. Join us in sessions across both weeks to scale solutions to the global water crisis. 

Female CEOs for Resilience

This fireside chat will explore how leading companies are approaching the topic of resilience from the leadership level.  In particular it will explore:

  • What key components of resiliency are companies focused on addressing for their businesses and for the broader communities within which they operate.
  • In the context of Africa, how are companies contributing to “resilient sustainable development”
  • Where does water resilience come in for the companies and what are they doing to promote greater water resilience

Date: Thursday, 10 November 2022

Time: 13:45-14:10 EET

Location: ICC Pavilion

Type: In-person

Conveners:

Global Compact Organization (GCO)

Building Resilience from a Multi-stakeholder Approach: Science-based Tools for Adaptation

Building resilience is a collective effort that requires a systems approach. It connects multiple components, including socio-economic, institutional and biophysical systems. Enhancing resilience with one aspect is not sufficient to build system resilience. We need to have a shared understanding of how individual stakeholders, ranging from local communities and businesses, to governments and other institutions, directly or indirectly engage in the process. We need practical tools and approaches to identify, act, measure, and report the impacts of resilience-building efforts. This session brings together practical work from key organizations in this space.

Date: Saturday, 12 November 2022

Time: 10:00-11:30 EET

Type: Hybrid in-person / online session

Location: Water Pavilion (Blue Zone)

Conveners:

CEO Water Mandate

Center for Climate and Resilience Research (science-based tools from Chile)

Forest-Water Champions

Pacific Institute / AGWA (WRAF)

UNESCO-IHP (CRIDA)

UN Global Compact

Collective Climate Action for Water Resilience in Cities

This session will explore positive examples of partnerships between national governments, cities and the private sector to demonstrate how public bodies and specialist organisations can collaborate to take action, develop solutions and share learnings and expertise to deliver climate-resilient water sectors and infrastructure critical to thriving cities. By sharing knowledge, tools and international best practice approaches, these partnerships can build capacity to deliver value now and for generations to come.

Date: Saturday, 12 November 2022

Time: 16:30-18:00 EET

Type: Hybrid in-person / online session

Location: Water Pavilion (Blue Zone)

Conveners:

Arup

CEO Water Mandate

Resilient Cities Network

UN Global Compact

Water Witness International

Xylem

Realizing Resilience: A Pragmatic Path for Companies and Communities

This event will take you through a thought-provoking journey on how systematically one can build water resilience in times of climate uncertainties and other stresses. It will present why we need to worry about water when we talk about climate change. It presents an innovative solution to building resilience, and finally, it will present how it is pushing the edge of resilience thinking from the decision-makers, practitioners, and leaders in the field of resilience and climate change. We’ll produce a storyline that will have a moderating storyteller with recorded snippets to support the case. There will be two quick surveys [one to gauge how the audience sees the problem, and the second one on how they think differently after the session], time allocated for Q&A, and finally a synthesis with directions to engage, etc.

Date: Monda, 14 November 2022

Time: 11:00-11:40 EET

Location: Climate Action Hub

Conveners:

AGWA

CEO Water Mandate

IWMI

Pacific Institute

UN Global Compact

WRI

Accelerating Collaboration: The Water Action Hub 4.0 Launch

The CEO Water Mandate’s Water Action Hub is an online collaboration and knowledge-sharing platform for water partners around the world. We are pleased to use this session to formally launch Water Action Hub 4.0, a new iteration of this platform featuring a new comprehensive solutions library, self-assessment tools for businesses, a map of existing water stewardship support tools, and more. We also invite businesses, NGOs, public agencies, and others to adopt the tool to support the development of water performance benchmarks and water-related collective action in at-risk basins worldwide.

Date: Monday, 14 November 2022

Time: 10:00-10:40 EET

Location: Climate Action Hub (Blue Zone)

Conveners:

Pacific Institute

CEO Water Mandate

UN Global Compact

The Power of Collaboration: Innovating Water Resilience Finance for the Climate & Water Action Decade

This session will look to showcase how private sector collaborations can unleash new financial innovation models that unlock new sources of funding for water resiliency. 

We will review the evolution of climate finance, lessons learned, and direct applications to address current financing gaps for water, natural ecosystems and community resilience. 

We will share current examples of innovations in water resilience financing and discuss opportunities to unlock new sources of funding and investments for water resilience, via blended finance, the capital markets, and catalytic capital from the private sector. 

Date: Monday, 14 November 2022

Time: 14:00-15:00 EET

Location: Resilience Hub (Blue Zone)

Conveners: 

Water Resilience Coalition

CEO Water Mandate

Pacific Institute

UN Global Compact

Premiere: Ripples of Water Resilience: Stories of Global Impact and Collective Action

The corporate sector has a huge role to play in solving the water crisis and building long-term water resilience — both by reducing the water impacts of their own operations and value chains and by uniting through collective action to positively make change at basin and global scale. 

Join us as we launch a video series that showcases on-the-ground examples of how the members and partners of the Water Resilience Coalition have scaled successful projects. Get to know our story of rippling resilience through the direct experience of the people who are working on making a more resilient world. 

Date: Monday, 14 November 2022

Time: 16:00 EET

Location: Climate Ambition Hub, Green Zone (Hall E2 Booth 01)

Conveners:

ABI

CEO Water Mandate

LN Brazil

Pacific Institute

UN Global Compact

TNC

Engaging Stakeholders for NBS Project Success: Financing to Build Resilient Water Flows for People, Nature and Business

Faced with worsening water-related impacts of climate change, we must urgently accelerate transformational NBS for adaptation. Key to this is prioritizing effective, equitable and just stakeholder engagement & locally-led projects and innovative approaches to securing financing, like the new Africa NbS Clearing House.

Date: Tuesday, 15 November 2022

Time: 17:00-18:00 EET

Location: Water Pavilion (Blue Zone)

Conveners:

CEO Water Mandate

Pacific Institute

UN Global Compact

WWF

Accelerating Climate Resilient WASH: A New Framework for Corporate Action

The WASH4Work initiative is a coalition of global businesses and WASH expert stakeholders collaborating to address our global SDG Goal 6 to achieve universal access to WASH by 2030.  The business community recognizes that access to WASH needs to be a part of climate resilience strategies. 

The WASH4Work initiative will launch a COP27 Business Declaration on Climate Resilient WASH outlining the case for business actions and considerations for further developing and applying a climate-resilient WASH framework across operations, supply chains, and communities where businesses operate.

We will discuss the alignment of the business action framework with the global climate-resilient WASH policy frameworks and implementation guidance from stakeholders and will seek to identify areas for public-private collaboration and collective action. Business leaders will share their perspectives on integrating climate-resilient WASH strategies into their broader climate and water resilience action plans.

Date: Thursday, 17 November 2022

Time: 15:00-15:30 EET

Location: Water Pavilion (Blue Zone)

Conveners:

WASH4Work

CEO Water Mandate

UN Global Compact

Pacific Institute