Financing Water Resilience: From Vision to Investment

Join us and the Europe Investment Bank (EIB) at Paris Infra Week to explore the path from insight to bankable pipeline:

Thursday, 5 November 2026, 15:00–18:00
EIB Paris offices
3 rue Grétry, 75002 Paris

Event Details

In September 2025, the EIB Institute convened Europe’s first Water Resilience Roundtable, bringing together financiers, policymakers and infrastructure practitioners to explore why water investment in Europe continues to lag despite growing urgency. The resulting White Paper, Future-Proofing Europe’s Water Systems: From Vision to Investment Pathways, argues that Europe’s central constraint is not a shortage of finance but how water investments are originated, coordinated, funded and governed, and sets out eight moves toward a new investment paradigm, from mission-driven, place-based planning to new funding ecosystems and stronger cross-sector governance.

This session brings that White Paper to the Paris Infra Week community, alongside fresh perspectives from the Institute’s second Roundtable (October 2026), which pushed the conversation further: from naming a new paradigm to defining the principles that should guide it, including how Europe applies Water Efficiency First, prioritises investment under growing scarcity, and designs the next generation of decentralised, place-based water solutions.

The presentation of the report will also showcase pioneering cases from the White Paper’s appendix of emerging approaches, such as the Wye–Usk Transition Lab’s catchment-scale coordination, Meridiam’s TURF co-development platform.

Following the presentation, participants will join a panel discussion and open Q&A on what these principles mean in practice for infrastructure investors and financiers, and what it will take to move from insight to bankable pipeline.

Programme

15:00– Networking 
15:30 – Official opening
15:40 – Presentation of findings, including pioneering cases from the White Paper
16:15 – Panel discussion
17:00 – Q&A with participants
17:45 – Closing remarks
​18:00 – Close

There is limited capacity for this session.

If you would like to attend this session, please fill out this form here.

The publication to be presented during this session can be found below: 

Future-proofing Europe’s water systems: From vision to investment

Europe’s water systems are under increasing stress from climate change, biodiversity loss, ageing infrastructure and growing water needs. The paper looks at how investment can best help strengthen them. Its central finding is that substantial investment is needed, but the biggest obstacle is not a lack of finance. It is the way investments are originated, coordinated, funded and financed. Most investments focus on narrowly defined objectives and don’t reflect how water systems work. To achieve water resilience and a broad set of benefits for people and communities, investments need to consider the whole area that drains into a river or lake. That means looking beyond the interests of individual sectors, municipalities or utilities.

The paper sets out the main challenges, who can address them and how. It is the starting point for this year’s conversation: having named the need for a new investment paradigm, we now want to explore with you which principles should guide it.