CPI at the 2026 Spring Meetings
Climate Policy Initiative experts will host and present at several events during the 2026 Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group.
All times below are EST
Tackling Water Bankruptcy
📅 Thursday, April 16; 1:30 – 3:00pm
Today, 2.2 billion people lack access to safely managed drinking water, and 3.5 billion people live without safely managed sanitation (UNSD, 2024). Action is urgently needed. AIIB’s recent Where the Water Flows report offers clear pathways for addressing these challenges in an increasingly destabilized hydrological environment. Yet, financing remains insufficient: an additional USD 140.8 billion in investment is needed annually to meet SDG targets 6.1 and 6.2 by 2030 (World Bank, 2024).
Traditional water funding modalities – tariffs, taxes, and transfers – are under strain, jeopardizing sustained investment and potentially widening the funding gap. Innovative governance models and financing solutions have a critical role to play in this evolving landscape. As the World Bank operationalizes its new global initiative Water Forward, there is a growing need for alignment and dialogue on the strategic allocation of capital for water, alongside the potential of new financing and governance models.
This event, held on the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings, will convene water finance practitioners actively leveraging innovative governance and financial approaches to fund water in emerging markets.
Opening remarks will be delivered by Zou Jiayi, President and Chair of the Board of Directors, AIIB.
Speakers will include:
- Tim Wainwright, Chief Executive, WaterAid
- Andrea Erickson-Quiroz, Global Managing Director, Food and Water Systems, The Nature Conservancy
- Andrew Johnstone, CEO, Climate Fund Managers
- Ede Ijjasz-Vasquez, Nonresident Sr. Fellow, The Brookings Institution
- Arunabha Ghosh, CEO, Council on Energy, Environment and Water
- Bella Tonkonogy, Senior Director of Programs, CPI
High-level Meeting on Financing Resilience for Jobs and Economic Prosperity
📅 Tuesday, April 14
This invite only roundtable, organized by Climate Investment Funds, will bring together senior leaders from multilateral development banks, governments, international organizations, and the private sector to explore how resilience investment can drive economic growth, job creation, and fiscal stability. Moderated by Barbara Buchner, CEO of Climate Policy Initiative, the discussion will examine how concessional finance, stronger public private collaboration, and enabling reforms can help scale resilience investments, unlock greater private capital, and build more resilient economies. Drawing on lessons from CIF, its new ARISE program, and broader MDB experience, the session will highlight practical approaches to linking resilience, livelihoods, and market development at a moment of growing urgency.
Investors Resilience Challenge Roundtable: Operationalizing Resilience in Investment
📅 Tuesday, April 14
The Investors Resilience Challenge is a global call to increase adaptation and resilience (A&R) investment by aligning on a common framework to develop and deliver credible A&R investment strategies. Drawing on recent findings from market consultations and engaging investors and fund managers, including through the Investment Mobilisation Collaboration Alliance (IMCA) and the Adaptation Finance Window for Africa (AFWA), the session, at which Barbara Buchner will speak, will ground the IRC in current market experience and highlight where greater clarity and alignment could help drive A&R from niche to mainstream.
COP30 Roundtable
📅 Tuesday, April 14
This invite only breakfast roundtable, convened by the COP30 Presidency, will bring together senior leaders from governments, multilateral institutions, and the private sector to discuss how to advance implementation of the Roadmap to $1.3T and track progress toward its climate finance goals. The conversation will help shape a framework and monitoring tool, developed in collaboration with the COP30 Circle of Finance Ministers, the Independent High Level Expert Group on Climate Finance, and Climate Policy Initiative, to assess progress across the Roadmap’s five pillars and identify priorities, good practices, and remaining gaps ahead of COP31. Barbara Buchner, CEO of Climate Policy Initiative, will participate in the discussion.
15th Ministerial Meeting of the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action
📅 Wednesday, April 15; 8:00 – 9:30am
This discussion will examine how finance ministries can harness the economic opportunities of a green and resilient transition to drive growth, productivity, job creation, competitiveness, and energy security by building a credible enabling environment that unlocks private sector investment.
CPI’s CEO Barbara Buchner will participate in the meeting.
Financing Climate: Early-Stage Risk Solutions for Investors
📅 Wednesday, April 15; 9:00 – 10:30am
The World Economic Forum is convening a closed door roundtable that will bring together leaders from finance, insurance, and development institutions to explore how early stage risk solutions can help unlock investment in climate resilience, particularly in emerging markets and developing economies. The discussion will focus on practical ways to make resilience investments more viable and scalable, including through innovative financial and insurance instruments, stronger public private collaboration, and approaches to structuring risk earlier in the investment process. Barbara Buchner will deliver closing remarks on the key shifts and actions needed to mobilize capital at scale.
Scaling Private Investment for the EMDE Energy Transition: The Role of Catalytic and Development Finance
📅 Wednesday, April 15
CPI’s CEO Barbara Buchner will moderate an invite only roundtable discussion hosted by the Independent High Level Expert Group on Climate Finance during the Spring Meetings at the Brookings Institution. The session will convene senior leaders from development finance institutions, multilateral development banks, and the private sector to explore how catalytic and development finance can more effectively mobilise private capital at scale. Building on new analysis, the discussion will focus on identifying key barriers, defining priority actions, and shaping a forward looking agenda to accelerate investment in emerging markets and developing economies.
Guarantees at Scale: From Political Commitment to Implementation in 2026
📅 Wednesday, April 15; 5:00 – 6:30pm
This high-level, invite-only roundtable, hosted at MIGA during the WB/IMF Spring Meetings and moderated by Barbara Buchner, CEO of Climate Policy Initiative, will bring together senior leaders from governments, multilateral development banks, development finance institutions, and the private sector to advance the role of guarantees as a core pillar of capital mobilization. The session will focus on moving from political commitment to implementation by showcasing progress across the Green Guarantee Group’s four key recommendations. Through a strategic, forward-looking discussion with GGG Champions, the roundtable will highlight concrete milestones for 2026, including developments in regulatory treatment, local currency markets, data and transparency, and risk pooling mechanisms. The conversation will also reintroduce the GGG Guarantee Directory and emphasize the importance of coordination across stakeholders to scale guarantee instruments, unlock private investment, and strengthen country-driven approaches to sustainable finance.
Accelerating Systems Support for Public Development Bank Innovation
📅 Thursday, April 16; 9:00 – 11:30am
Public development banks (PDBs) are key players to drive climate finance at scale, with over 540 PDBs worldwide holding 18.7 trillion USD in assets, delivering approximately 10% of annual global investment. PDBs, particularly national and sub-national development banks, are uniquely positioned to support their governments’ climate and development priorities and deliver on the scale and quality of climate finance required to reach Paris Agreement goals. Since the signing of the Paris Agreement, PDBs have been increasing their focus on climate change. Sixty percent of PDBs had institutional climate commitments in 2024, up from just 5.9% in 2016. In 2023, PDBs provided over 400 billion USD in climate investment. There is strong demand from PDBs to build out their climate finance strategies and products.
This high-level roundtable convened by IDB, CPI, and FiCS will shed light on the ambitious and innovative approaches PDBs are pursuing to deliver climate finance and barriers they face, and highlight how to connect these efforts with international sources of climate finance.
Integrating Localization into Blended Climate Investments
📅 Thursday, April 16; 1:00 – 2:30pm
The Catalytic Climate Finance Facility (CC Facility) Learning Hub will host an invite-only roundtable discussion on designing and implementing localization strategies for blended climate finance structures.
The session will highlight the CC Facility’s experience in advancing its own localization approach, alongside insights and lessons learned from its grantees.
Localization strategies in climate finance (those that integrate local expertise, partnerships, and investment) are increasingly vital for achieving effective and sustainable outcomes. Locally anchored initiatives tend to perform better, as local actors and investors bring deeper knowledge of regulatory environments, market dynamics, and sector-specific risks, enabling more relevant and implementable project design. This improves project viability and the ability to mobilize domestic and regional capital. As global climate finance needs grow and traditional international funding sources decline, leveraging domestic public and private capital becomes essential to closing the financing gap and ensuring durable climate mitigation and adaptation efforts.
The event is organized by Climate Policy Initiative and Convergence Blended Finance.
