From Risk Reduction to Economic Prosperity
Water resilience doesn't just prevent or minimize losses, it enables economic growth and prosperity. The world is rapidly changing, marked by significant shifts in policy, investment, and legislation, alongside rollbacks in funding and commitment. These evolving circumstances coincide with the intensifying global climate crisis.
However, at World Water Week AGWA shared a more optimistic stance: we have the opportunity to proactively influence and accommodate these shifts. This begins with a fundamental shift in our perception of water: not merely as a victim of climate change, but as an essential avenue to achieving resilience for people, for the planet and for prosperity.
From Victim to Driver
Water's transformation from environmental concern to critical business risk was explored during several sessions at 2025's World Water Week. The global sustainability landscape has shifted dramatically in recent months, while investor, consumer, and reputational pressures for transparency and action on water risks remain high.
AGWA's Executive Director John Matthews explored the space between reaction and action, between prevention and prosperity, during the Leveraging Water for Security and Resilience: Tilting Economies, Shifting Hydrologies session. As Matthews noted, "If we can build resilience through water, we can move from a reactive and defensive approach to climate change to imagining how we can thrive."
Instead of asking "How do we survive water challenges?" we want to ask "How do we thrive with water advantages?" This reframing transforms water investments from defensive insurance policies into proactive growth strategies.
Looking forward
When communities see water investments as engines of prosperity rather than a defense against disaster, political and economic support follows. This shift unlocks funding, accelerates implementation, and builds broader coalitions for water infrastructure.
For countries and companies in a water-constrained world, water abundance becomes the ultimate competitive advantage. It is precisely now, as norms dissolve and political and financial landscapes shift from one day to the next, that the long-term, horizon-focused approach of resilience is most needed.
AGWA and the Water Resilience for Economic Resilience (WR4ER) initiative is striving to perpetuate a shared understanding of resilience, most recently by compiling input to the EU’s Water Resilience Strategy. The Strategy already acknowledges the opportunities in water resilience: “[Europe’s] water industry generates €107 billion and supports 1.7 million jobs.” The group is currently working on a perspectives paper that enhances a shared understanding of the concept of water resilience, as the EU moves towards the concrete implementation of its strategy.
4 ways to make the shift from prevention to prosperity
Business Engagement
Demonstrate how sectoral resilience - protecting entire industries, not just individual companies - creates ecosystem advantages.
Financial Institutions
Emphasize the distinction between financial stability (maintaining operations) and financial resilience (thriving through change). Water resilience investments can offer both immediate stability and long-term adaptive capacity, making them attractive to diverse investor profiles.
New Metrics
Expand how we measure impact: measure job creation, sectoral growth, and business ecosystem health alongside traditional resilience indicators. Tracking how water resilience creates safe operating spaces for key economic sectors will resonate across industries and sectors.
Strategic Communications
Develop sector-specific messaging that resonates with different communities from manufacturing to agriculture to banking to government to build awareness of the importance of water resilience to all economies.
By shifting from prevention to prosperity, we transform water from a cost center into a profit driver, unlocking the political will and financial resources needed to build truly resilient water systems for the 21st century and beyond.
Read the Water Resilience for Economic Resilience Report >
Watch the World Water Week Session [available to registered participants] >