Make finance FLOW like water
Water carries risk and opportunity from glacier to coast. Four recommendations to make finance FLOW like water through the whole system, ahead of the 2026 UN Water Conference.
Feng Hu
10/12/20263 min read
The 2026 UN Water Conference is less than two months away (8-10 December, Abu Dhabi). I haven’t been to a water conference in quite a few years, so I’m genuinely curious what this one will bring, for the global water conversation and for me. Of the six interactive dialogues, I’ll focus on “Water for Prosperity” and “Investments for Water”.
I’ve always been fascinated by rivers. Every river starts small: snow on a mountain, a melting glacier, a spring. By the time it reaches the sea, it has shaped not only the landscapes along the way but also the lives of thousands, even millions, of people living in the basin.
Financing for water, however, tends to be organised around individual projects, single sectors and national borders. Investments then lose sight of how water systems are connected, and end up fragmented and insufficient to build resilience across the whole system.
That gap between ambition and implementation is why I started silkroad.earth, and I hope the UN Water Conference brings inspiring ideas and discussions on how to close it. My message, in five words: make finance FLOW like water.
A connected system, fragmented responses
More than 2 billion people rely on mountain snow and ice for their water, including 1.65 billion who live downstream of rivers fed by Hindu Kush Himalayan glaciers that are changing at unprecedented rates.
Yet action and finance for resilience remain fragmented. Developing countries need to raise spending on water supply and sanitation by US$131-141 billion a year, almost tripling current levels, while aid for these services has declined since peaking in 2018-2019. Transboundary rivers account for 60% of the world’s freshwater flows, but only 14% of transboundary river and lake basins have joint climate adaptation strategies.
Water carries risk and opportunity downstream, but finance and planning too often stop at the boundaries of a project, a sector or a border. What if we made finance FLOW like water?
Four ways to make finance FLOW
FLOW is my shorthand for four linked recommendations. All four concern the dialogue on Investments for Water, and each also speaks to other dialogues at this conference.
F: Financing across landscapes. All financiers and investors, whether public, private or philanthropic, should align their water finance with SDG 6, the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) and national priorities, so that investments from glacier to coast jointly deliver system-wide resilience. Water and freshwater ecosystems are worth an estimated US$58 trillion a year, about 60% of global GDP. Protecting that value means looking beyond individual projects to their impact on connected systems.
L: Lifting access barriers. All financiers and investors, especially climate and development funds and national authorities, should streamline accreditation and eligibility requirements, and build local institutional capacity. Fewer than 13% of countries report having enough financial and human resources to implement their water, sanitation and hygiene plans. Easier access would help finance reach the communities and water-dependent livelihoods that need it.
O: Operationalizing interoperable frameworks. Governments and standard-setters should harmonize adaptation finance taxonomies and resilience frameworks, including the GGA water indicators, so they work together across geographies. Water features in the Framework for Global Climate Resilience and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, yet remains inconsistently integrated in their targets and follow-up. Interoperable frameworks would let investments be assessed with consistent methodologies and comparable benchmarks.
W: Weaving multi-stakeholder platforms. Governments, industry, science and communities should establish platforms that connect upstream and downstream actors, from mountain headwaters to coastal deltas, to share data, expertise and resources across sectors. Cooperation remains incomplete: only 43 of 153 countries sharing transboundary waters have operational arrangements covering 90% or more of those waters. Shared platforms can overcome sectoral silos and inform better investment decisions.
This is where most of my recent work sits. I served as one of 78 experts selected under the UNFCCC’s UAE-Belém work programme, contributing to the GGA water indicators, and I’ve also worked extensively on the development and implementation of sustainable finance taxonomies across Asia and the Pacific.
What I hope Abu Dhabi delivers
Water has never needed reminding that everything is connected. We do. If the conference moves us even one step from isolated projects towards finance that follows the whole system, from headwaters to coast, it will have done something lasting.
If you work on water resilience, adaptation finance or cross-sector partnerships, I’d like to hear from you, in the comments, by message, or in Abu Dhabi if you will be there.
Finance must flow as water does.
