UAE Water Diplomacy Drives Public-Private Collaboration For Global Water Action In Davos
The United Arab Emirates strengthened cooperation with the World Economic Forum on 20th January 2026 by signing a Memorandum of Understanding that targets water finance and public–private partnerships. The agreement supports preparations for the 2026 United Nations Water Conference, which the UAE and Senegal will co-host in the UAE toward the end of 2026.
After the MoU signing, the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the WEF held a high-level session at the UAE Pavilion titled "Unlocking Water Finance and Investments: Strengthening Public–Private Collaboration toward the 2026 UNWC." Participants examined how to expand water-related investment and turn the new partnership into practical financing outcomes.
The session gathered senior figures from governments, multilateral development banks, philanthropies, private companies, and non-governmental organisations. Discussions centred on ways to de-risk capital, create joint platforms, and scale up funding tools. These exchanges aimed to support a coordinated response to water challenges before the 2026 UN Water Conference in the UAE.
The UAE used the Davos meetings to reinforce its wider role in water diplomacy. Abdulla Balalaa, Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs for Energy and Sustainability, led the engagements and underlined that the country is working to mobilise investment, speed up public–private collaboration, and shape multilateral action in the run-up to the global conference co-hosted with Senegal.
In his opening remarks at the UAE Pavilion session, Balalaa stressed the need for water to be central in global decisions and said, "Let’s move water from the margins of our discussions to the center of our decisions. To meet our collective global water-related goals, we must go beyond projects and build platforms, de-risking investments and innovation and empowering countries to deliver at pace and scale. The 2026 UN Water Conference will serve as a global moment for public and private actors to deliver new solutions, mobilise capital, and strengthen collaboration across the water ecosystem. This is our opportunity to work together – across sectors and institutions – to turn ambition into impact."
Alongside the MoU-focused session, the UAE, Senegal and WaterAid co-convened a roundtable called "Financing Resilience: A New Reality for Water." The event explored how emerging sustainable finance instruments can support long-term and climate-resilient water projects, and how investors, governments and civil society can align to close the water financing gap.
The Davos programme built on a series of UAE-led dialogues on the Conference’s interactive theme "Investments for Water." Insights gathered from these discussions will feed directly into the High-Level Preparatory Meeting in Dakar, Senegal, scheduled for 26–27 January 2026, and will guide the UAE’s roadmap for delivering outcomes at the 2026 UN Water Conference.
With inputs from WAM
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