Water Is a Critical Infrastructure of Economies

The delegates at COP30 in Belém did something overdue: they put water closer to the center of the climate conversation.

That’s welcome — and it should be a wake-up call for entrepreneurs and investors.

Water is no longer an environmental or humanitarian “nice to have.” It is the elixir of life and the critical infrastructure of economies, food systems and cities. And as governments and climate funds move to finance large projects, there is a clear commercial pathway for for-profit companies to deliver scalable, resilient water solutions while earning market returns and measurable social impact in the process.

At a recent Climate Summit, I stated this clearly - And also addressed the elephant in the room that is that the scale of the water scarcity problem is stark. Recent UN and U.N.-linked reporting shows that nearly three billion people already face water scarcity at least one month a year, and global freshwater ecosystems are under growing stress.

And beyond the handshakes, photo-opportunities and promises of COP which take place annually, SDG progress on water and sanitation is off track: billions still lack safely managed drinking water and sanitation services. Climate change — hotter temperatures, shifting rainfall, more intense droughts and floods — is amplifying both scarcity and volatility.

Those are humanitarian and ecological facts; they are also the basis for a fast-growing economic opportunity.

The global water market — covering treatment, desalination, reuse, monitoring and infrastructure services — is large and expanding. Multiple market analyses estimate the water and wastewater treatment ecosystem alone at hundreds of billions of dollars, with desalination and treatment technology segments projected to grow at high single-digit to double-digit CAGRs over the next decade.

But why is private, for-profit participation so pivotal? First, governments and multilateral funds can and should underwrite core public goods and large conveyance projects — and they are starting to do so. The Green Climate Fund’s recent backing for Jordan’s $6 billion Aqaba-Amman desalination and conveyance project is the clearest example: public finance acted as catalytic capital to unlock billions more from development and private lenders, aiming to deliver 300 million cubic meters of water annually to a water-stressed nation.

Those deals create pipelines of commercial contracts and long-term revenue streams for technology, engineering and operations firms.

Second, the technical and commercial problems in water are solvable — and often profitable — across multiple layers: inexpensive sensors and analytics stop leakage and reduce non-revenue water; decentralized treatment and reuse turn wastewater into reliable local supply for industry and irrigation; modular desalination and hybrid renewable-powered systems shrink costs and carbon footprints; and atmospheric water generation technology (AWG) like ours aligns incentives for utilities, municipalities and private operators. These are the products and business models that companies can scale, measure and sell.

Third, climate resilience increasingly matters to corporate buyers and investors. Agriculture — which uses roughly 70% of freshwater globally — and high-water-use industries are actively seeking supply security and regulatory certainty.

Corporations will pay for proven solutions that protect operations and brand reputation.

Investors, meanwhile, are looking for assets that combine stable cash flows with environmental returns.

The result is demand for both hardware (treatment plants, desalination, distribution upgrades) and software (real-time monitoring, optimization, contracting platforms).

COP30 showed political will and fresh finance commitments are arriving. If we pair that momentum with rigorous, market-driven innovation, we can build businesses that fix real water problems and deliver returns.

The climate imperative and the commercial imperative are the same: stabilize water systems, protect livelihoods, and generate predictable cash flows from essential services.

That’s not just good public policy — it’s smart entrepreneurship.

I believe the future of climate resilience is co-created — by public agencies, finance partners and private innovators aligned around measurable outcomes. The next decade will reward companies that move beyond platitudes and bring scalable, affordable water solutions to market.

For entrepreneurs, investors and policy makers: if you want to invest in climate resilience with both impact and returns, start with water. The market and the need are already here.