13th OECD Roundtable on Financing Water: Session 4

Session 4. Fiscal risk in a water-insecure world Water insecurity, including droughts, floods, pollution events, and failures in water systems, is increasingly recognised as a significant source of fiscal risk, driving higher public expenditure, revenue losses, and mounting contingent liabilities. Water-related risks can impose substantial and often unplanned costs on governments: emergency response and reconstruction spending, social protection programmes, support to affected sectors, and disruptions to tax revenues. Over time, these pressures can weaken fiscal space, increase borrowing needs, and influence sovereign credit profiles. This session examined how public and private actors are recognising, pricing, and managing these risks, and what it takes to build fiscal resilience, including through public investment in water infrastructure, the integration of resilience planning into fiscal frameworks, and the evolution of sovereign credit analysis and development finance. How are water-related shocks affecting fiscal space, public debt trajectories, and long-term public investment planning? What signals are emerging in sovereign credit assessments related to water risk? And how should governments, rating agencies, fiscal authorities, and public development banks integrate these risks into expenditure frameworks, contingency planning, debt management, and the financing of resilience? Please visit the dedicated event webpage for more information: https://www.oecd.org/en/events/2026/0...