Dr Bapon Fakhruddin, PhD, MPENZ

Climate Investment Principal and Water Sector Lead, Green Climate Fund

Bapon Fakhruddin is a water and climate leader with 25 years of experience across more than 40 countries in Asia, the Pacific, Africa and the Caribbean. He is Climate Investment Principal and Water Sector Lead at the Green Climate Fund, where he looks after a water investment portfolio worth several billion dollars and has mobilised more than 10 billion dollars of public and private capital for water and climate resilience.

His work sits at the meeting point of water, climate adaptation and finance. He set out the 50by30 plan for the water sector, designed large water programmes including a 3.5 billion dollar programme in Central Asia, and structured blended finance that brings philanthropies and private investors alongside public money. Earlier he was Technical Director at Tonkin and Taylor and a climate risk adviser in New Zealand's Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

Bapon is a chartered engineer with a PhD in water engineering and a Harvard Business School diploma in sustainable investing. He serves on several boards, chairs a CODATA task group, and is a visiting professor at the University of Auckland, University College London and the University of California, Berkeley. He was recently named an Asia Global Fellow at the Asia Global Institute of the University of Hong Kong. He is well connected across Asia and the Middle East, regions where AGWA wants to grow.