Building a Roadmap for Water’s Future at The Global Water Summit 2018
The Global Water Summit 2018 will take place in Paris on 15th-17th April 2018. The conference comes at a time of widespread change for the international water sector, with new finance sources, PPP opportunities, and $100 billion of national infrastructure spending plans being unveiled in several key water markets, and the event will unpack these emerging trends as part of its theme of “Transcending Boundaries”.
The Global Water Summit will assemble business leaders and decision makers from across the international water, finance, and technology sectors to explore the changing paradigms for financing water, procuring projects in different regions, using digital solutions for water networks, and planning PPPs in markets that are opening up to private investment to acquire the capital for their national infrastructure plans. Over 130 speakers are currently confirmed for the conference’s two-day agenda.
“The opportunities opening out in the international water sector are driving year’s Global Water Summit Paris to be the biggest yet”, commented Christopher Gasson, Publisher at Global Water Intelligence (GWI) the co-organiser of the conference. “With more than $150 billion of investments in desalination, water distribution, wastewater treatment under discussion and a full slate of industrial water users attending the event, registrations are 10% up on last year’s blockbuster event in Madrid.”
The summit will host a ‘blended finance’ workshop in partnership with the World Bank, aimed at developing structures that bring together public and private resources to deliver water infrastructure projects in emerging markets.
Forming part of the summit’s finance agenda strand, the blended finance session will bring together representatives of development finance institutions with top performing utility leaders and government officials from Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, as they plan to use their access to low cost finance to mobilise private investment in infrastructure on an unprecedented scale. The session will explore how the water sector should proceed in developing structures that bring together public and private resources to deliver water infrastructure projects in emerging markets.
The Global Water Summit will also feature round tables hosted by officials and finance institution representatives, providing insights on private sector opportunities in several key regions with major infrastructure spending plans including the USA, Argentina, Morocco, Oman, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Iran, Nigeria, and India. Together these national spending plans represent $100 billion of water infrastructure investment.
The 2018 summit will be preceded by a pre-conference workshop on the privatisation of Saudi Arabia’s water sector, held on 15th April 2018 in partnership with The Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture (MEWA), the Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC), the National Water Company (NWC) and the Water and Electricity Company.
The officials from the four Saudi organisations will be hosting the workshop in a bid to outline the kingdom’s £60 billion investment opportunity, and to identify and attract top-performing potential partners for their investment plans at the earliest stage of the privatisation process.
Emerging opportunities for the desalination market will also form part of The Global Water Summit agenda, with over 5 million m3/d of new desalination capacity being presented in Paris. Organisations attending the summit and discussing their desalination capacity opportunities include:
Abu Dhabi Department of Energy, UAE – 909,200m3/d
Hunter Water, Australia – 15,000m3/d
Israel Water Authority – 274,000m3/d
Ministry of Water & Irrigation, Jordan – 219,000m3/d
ONEE, Morocco – 50,000m3/d
Sonede, Tunisia – 285,000m3/d
Sones, Senegal – 100,000m3/d
SWCC, Saudi Arabia – 1,275,000m3/d
Water Corporation, Australia – 75,000m3/d
WEC, Saudi Arabia – 3,137,000m3/d
In addition, the conference agenda will put the voice of the customer and end-user perspectives in the spotlight, with round tables and sessions focused on utility perspectives and needs regarding the real-world impacts and leading-edge developments of digital and smart technologies, and sessions exploring customer-driven innovation in desalination project procurement, and technological solutions in the industrial water space.
Industrial end-users with attending representatives include Burberry, IKEA Industry, Nike, Chevron, Tata Steel, ABP Food Group, Repsol, L’Oreal, EDF, Saudi Aramco, Total, Intel, Global Foundries Fab 8.
The Global Water Awards ceremony meanwhile, will take place in Paris alongside the Summit, with the 2018 winners and distinctions being announced at a Gala Dinner at the Pavillon d’Armenonville, Paris on 16th April 2018.
The Global Water Summit 2018 will take place on 15-17 April 2018 at the Marriott Conference Rive Gauche Hotel Conference Centre in Paris, with a keynote speech from Zanny Minton Beddoes, Editor in Chief of The Economist on 16th April.
See the full Global Water Summit 2018 agenda and speaker list at: www.watermeetsmoney.com
