Past events:
 | July 17, 2025 | Financing Transboundary Basin Development – Part 2 Part 2 of the Basin Roundtable series focused on innovative and new approaches to financing shared water resources, tackling challenges such as high perceived risk and the difficulty of monetizing cooperative benefits. Discussions featured perspectives from the World Bank, CEO Water Mandate, Organisation pour la Mise en Valeur du fleuve Gambie (OMVG), Organisation pour la Mise en Valeur du fleuve Sénégal (OMVS), Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), and United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). Highlighted solutions included public-private partnerships, blended finance, guarantees, and bonds to attract investment, alongside corporate initiatives to strengthen water resilience in priority basins. Examples ranged from regional strategies like the Blue Peace Financing Initiative and integrated development plans to donor-supported blended finance models and the role of global conventions in facilitating funding and technical assistance. The session emphasized how creative financial instruments and multi-stakeholder collaboration can unlock sustainable investment for transboundary water management. |
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May 8, 2025 Watch recording (EN / FR/ SPAN) | Financing Transboundary Basin Development – Part 1 Part 1 of the Basin Roundtable series examined conventional financing mechanisms for transboundary water resources development. The discussion assessed the structure, adequacy, and accessibility of existing funding sources, while identifying financial and institutional barriers that hinder implementation. Stakeholder contributions provided insights into these challenges and informed strategies for strengthening cooperative water governance at the basin level. Examples included the Mekong River Commission’s Mekong Fund and the Danube River Basin financing approach under the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR) framework, illustrating the complexity of sustaining collaboration through traditional streams. Perspectives from IHE Delft, European Commission Directorate-General for International Partnerships (DG INTPA), Scientific Information Center of the Interstate Commission for Water Coordination of Central Asia (SIC ICWC), and Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) enriched the dialogue, offering diverse institutional viewpoints. Finally, the event explored opportunities to broaden financing options, emphasizing public funding, diversification of sources, and the potential of public-private partnerships to address infrastructure costs in shared basins. |
 | August, 26, 2024 | Rethinking the architecture to support transboundary water cooperation The world is grappling with increasing conflicts, climate change, disasters, and biodiversity loss, which the World Bank aims to address by prioritizing water through its new Global Challenge Program. Given that half of the world’s water is transboundary, cooperation on shared water resources is crucial for development, climate resilience, and peace. In response, the World Bank and its partners have launched the Global Facility for Transboundary Water Cooperation to provide expertise and support for managing these shared water resources more effectively. |
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| August, 27, 2024 | Innovative Financing for Transboundary Water Cooperation Effective water management at all levels is key to creating a world free of poverty and ensuring climate resilience, but transboundary water management faces challenges such as asymmetries in information, capacity, and risks to financiers. The session aims to explore innovative financing mechanisms, such as bonds, guarantees, and water funds, to support transboundary cooperation and address these challenges. It will focus on increasing financial flows from both public and private sectors while identifying gaps in current financing approaches and risk reduction strategies. |
| Instruments for Managing Climate Variability in Transboundary Basins March 27, 2024 | The roundtable featured presentations and discussions regarding both institutional instruments (e.g., change allocation in light of changing water availability) and informational instruments (e.g., predictive models, river basin planning tools). Discussion on how climate change is accounted for in decision-making in transboundary basins and aquifers also took place. Presenters and panelists shared their experiences in identifying and overcoming challenges imposed by climate variability and its impact on equitable water resource management in shared basins. This session illustrated how partnerships and adaptive or updating existing procedures are powerful tools to leverage climate resilience. |
| Achieving Drought Resilience through Transboundary Water Cooperation November 29, 2023
| Targeting stakeholders involved in transboundary river basin management, this virtual roundtable focused on how to approach cooperative drought management within the context of transboundary waters. Technical experts, as well as practitioners, illustrated the complexity of droughts and how these challenges have been addressed in different regions. |
| Global Forum on Transboundary Water Cooperation for Climate and Development July 11 and 12, 2023 | Targeting a cross-section of stakeholders (river basin organizations, multilateral organizations, civil society, private sector, and academia), the Forum identified ways for transboundary water management to address joint development priorities and deliver regional and global public goods. The Forum explored opportunities for deepening cooperation over transboundary waters. The Forum allowed stakeholders to reflect on how the international community can better respond to transboundary waters challenges through their programs, including the World Bank’s Global Facility for Transboundary Water Cooperation. |
