Pacific Institute experts were front and center during COP27, the UN Climate Change Conference. Building on its 35-year expertise conducting research, issuing warnings, and advancing solutions to the water-climate crisis, the Pacific Institute participated in more than a dozen sessions to scale solutions during COP27. Topics ranged from nature-based solutions to innovative financing. Through its leadership of the UN Global Compact CEO Water Mandate, the Pacific Institute also debuted new tools, including the Water Action Hub 4.0 and the Water Resilience Assessment Framework Corporate Guidance.
Science, Technology, and Society (STS) Symposium
The session covered understanding the intertwined and converging risks of climate, water, and food. Dr. Peter Gleick provided an assessment of the integrated nature of water, climate, and food challenges and the need to develop integrated strategies for addressing present and future risks.
Featured speaker:
- Dr. Peter Gleick, Pacific Institute Co-Founder and Senior Fellow
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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 brought together practical work from key organizations in this space.
Featured speakers:Â
- Jason Morrison, Pacific Institute President & Head, CEO Water MandateÂ
- Dr. Ashok Chapagain, Pacific Institute Senior ResearcherÂ
Emcee:Â
- Ilsa Ruiz Hughes, Senior Manager, Communications and Events, CEO Water MandateÂ
Collective Climate Action for Water Resilience in Cities
This session explored positive examples of partnerships between national governments, cities and the private sector to demonstrate how public bodies and specialist organizations 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.
Featured speaker:Â
- Jason Morrison, Pacific Institute President & Head, CEO Water MandateÂ
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 have used 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 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.
Featured speaker:Â
- Jason Morrison, Pacific Institute President & Head, CEO Water MandateÂ
- Todd Player, Pacific Institute Digital Technology Program Manager
Realizing Resilience: A Pragmatic Path for Companies and Communities
This event took the audience through a thought-provoking journey on how systematically one can build water resilience in times of climate uncertainties and other stresses. It presented why we need to worry about water when we talk about climate change. It presented an innovative solution to building resilience, and finally, it presented 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 produced a storyline that had a moderating storyteller with recorded snippets to support the case. There were 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.
Featured speaker:Â
- Jason Morrison, Pacific Institute President & Head, CEO Water MandateÂ
The Power of Collaboration: Innovating Water Resilience Finance for the Climate & Water Action Decade
This session looked to showcase how private sector collaborations can unleash new financial innovation models that unlock new sources of funding for water resiliency.Â
We reviewed the evolution of climate finance, lessons learned, and direct applications to address current financing gaps for water, natural ecosystems and community resilience.Â
We shared 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.Â
Featured speakers:Â
- Jason Morrison, Pacific Institute President & Head, CEO Water MandateÂ
- Cheryl Hicks, CEO Water Mandate Senior Advisor Â
Water Resilience and Climate Adaptation: Water Risk and Financial Impact, Including the Value Chain
Moderator:Â
- Cheryl Hicks, CEO Water Mandate Senior AdvisorÂ
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.
Featured speakers:Â
- Jason Morrison, Pacific Institute President & Head, CEO Water MandateÂ
- Gregg Brill, Pacific Institute Senior ResearcherÂ
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.Â
In this session, the WASH4Work initiative launched a Climate Resilient WASH Framework for Business with guidance for more businesses to take action to ensure access to climate-resilient WASH across operations, supply chains, and in communities where they operate.  Â
Date:Â Thursday, 17 November 2022
Time: 15:00-15:30 EET (5 AM – 5:30 AM PT)
Location:Â Water Pavilion (Blue Zone)
Type:Â Hybrid in-person / online session
Conveners: CEO Water Mandate, UN Global Compact, Pacific Institute