The 2026 United Nations Water Conference, co-hosted by the Republic of Senegal and the United Arab Emirates, will be held from 8-10 December 2026 at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Center (ADNEC), United Arab Emirates. The Conference’s mandate is to accelerate the implementation of SDG 6: Ensuring available and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. It will consider challenges to achieve this goal as well as opportunities and innovative ways to support its implementation and accelerate progress.
On this occasion, the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), alongside the European Central Bank (ECB), the Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE), and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) will host a side-event exploring how water-related risks are increasingly impacting economies and materialising in financial risk.
The event will bring together the water, economic and financial policy communities around a common objective: strengthening resilience to water-related risks. Building on recent work on nature-related risks and water litigation by the NGFS and on the OECD roadmap Towards a Water-Resilient Financial System, the event will explore how water scarcity, flooding, water pollution and freshwater ecosystem degradation increasingly affect economic performance, financial stability and sustainable development, and what role different actors can play in understanding, assessing and addressing these risks.