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Published: 03.21.2020

Need for Alternative Financing for the water sector as an actionable solution for the water crisis

L to R: Tom Williams, Director Water, World Business Council for Sustainable Development; Siddharth Sharma, IAS, Chief Sustainability Officer – Tata Sons; Archana Shukla, Assistant Editor, Network18; Ajay Dua, IAS, Former Union Commerce Secretary; Kavita Sachwani, 2030 WRG Maharashtra State Coordinator; Pierre Rousseau, Global Sustainability Head, BNP Paribas

Mumbai, February 2020 – 2030 WRG Maharashtra State Coordinator Kavita Sachwani represented the 2030 WRG as a panelist at the Forbes India Sustainability Changemakers Summit championed by BNP Paribas for a discussion on actionable solutions to India’s water crisis. She spoke about the need for the recently introduced workstream on Alternative Financing for the Water Sector:

We really need to move from pricing water to valuing water. We have the Jal Jeevan Mission, Atal Bhujal Yojana, and the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana; we are also talking about raising tariffs and taxes, and we also have CSR funds. All these sources of finance together are also not enough to finance the gap. There is a gap of 2.5 Trillion USD in developing economies for meeting SDGs, and a significant portion of this is for water. We need to move beyond traditional models of financing and subsidy-driven models to newer and more innovative models of financing such as impact investing, alternative investment funds, blended finance, pension funds, and insurance companies.

The 2030 WRG FY23 Annual Report is available now. Learn more about key highlights of the year.