A safe and reliable supply of water and the protection of water resources are essential for human life and ecosystems.
By 2025, 800 million people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and the stress of diminishing water resources will be felt by two-thirds of the world’s population. This, alongside ageing or insufficient infrastructure and poor water and wastewater management, has a lasting impact on people, economic activities and the environment.
As the largest lender to the global water sector to date, with almost EUR 64bn for some 1 400 projects, EIB is making water security for economic growth a priority. In 2018 EIB provided EUR 2.4 billion for water-related projects.
The EIB supports investment to:
- increase secure access to water resources
- protect against destructive water-related events
- ensure reliable provision of sustainable and affordable water and wastewater related services both in quantity and quality to all stakeholders, and
- promote the increase in energy efficiency measures and recovery mechanisms.
For wastewater, our lending comprises facilities for treatment and disposal of residual waste, and increasingly, infrastructure aimed at increasing the levels of materials and bio-waste recycling, where the latter can also enable the generation of renewable energy from biogas.
This integrated approach – water for energy and at energy for water – aims to ensure that both water and energy resources are developed sustainably and that water and energy services are produced and consumed efficiently. Efficient allocation is based on the consideration of all end-user needs and is, therefore, a cornerstone of water, energy and food security.
Original source: EIB
Published on 22 August 2019
