The Global Facility for Transboundary Waters supports sustainable transboundary and cross-jurisdictional water resources management and cooperation.
The Global Facility for Transboundary Waters is a World Bank–hosted platform dedicated to advancing water security, resilience, and shared prosperity by strengthening multi-stakeholder engagement over the management of rivers, lakes, and aquifers—reducing poverty and fragility risks while unlocking the socioeconomic and environmental benefits that coordinated management of shared waters can deliver.
The Facility brings knowledge to implementation through a practical, four-step pathway: understanding the issues, exploring options and identifying solutions, promoting agreement, and catalyzing action. Its support ranges from analytics and economic assessments that quantify cooperative benefits and establish a shared understanding of the resource to technical assistance for institutional frameworks, capacity building, and the identification of investment roadmaps. Uniquely, the Facility addresses the full hydrologic cycle—supporting “blue water” (surface and groundwater) and “green water” (soil moisture and atmospheric flows) management—and addresses the challenges of fragile and conflict-affected settings, as well as the management of shared aquifers.
The Facility operates as a global convenor and delivery mechanism. At the global level, it curates knowledge, fosters peer learning, and hosts the bi-annual Global Forum on Transboundary Waters. At basin and regional levels, it provides support to riparian governments and river basin organizations, offering tools for cooperative planning, nexus assessments, and de-risking investments that underpin joint development. By connecting upstream analytics with downstream financing instruments, it helps partners translate cooperative frameworks into tangible projects and programs.
The Facility works in close partnership with World Bank regional programs (such as CIWA, CAWEP, and DWP) and international initiatives including the GWSP and GEF. And it collaborates with client governments, regional organizations, civil society, and development partners to ensure that engagements are demand-driven, complementary, and scalable. Through a results-focused approach that strengthens institutions, informs policy, and mobilizes financing, the Global Facility for Transboundary Waters helps countries transform shared water challenges into shared opportunities.
