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Future-Proofing Europe’s Water Systems

The challenge

‍Water resilience has emerged as one of the defining infrastructure and economic challenges facing Europe. Climate change, biodiversity loss, ageing infrastructure, pollution, and growing competition among water users are placing increasing pressure on freshwater systems, while floods, droughts, and water scarcity are generating escalating social and economic costs.

‍Recognising both the urgency and strategic importance of the challenge, the European Union adopted its Water Resilience Strategy in June 2025, establishing a common vision for restoring and protecting the water cycle, securing clean and affordable water for all, and building a resilient and competitive water economy. At the same time, the European Investment Bank launched its €15 billion Water Resilience Programme for 2025–2027, representing a 50% increase in water-related lending and expected to mobilise between €30 and €40 billion in total investment.

‍Yet achieving these ambitions requires more than financing individual projects. It requires new approaches to investment origination, planning, partnership development, and capital mobilisation capable of addressing increasingly interconnected water, climate, nature, and economic challenges.

Our contribution

To support this transition, Altamira partnered with the European Investment Bank Institute to design and facilitate Future-Proofing Europe’s Water Systems: From Vision to Investment Pathways—an annual strategic foresight and investment dialogue bringing together senior leaders from European institutions, multilateral development banks, governments, utilities, investors, infrastructure developers, corporations, regulators, academia, and civil society.

‍The initiative was conceived as a platform for exploring one fundamental question:

How can Europe move from ambitious visions for water resilience toward concrete investment pathways capable of delivering systemic impact at scale?

Altamira led the overall design, curation and facilitation of the process, including the development of the foresight framework, participant engagement strategy, discussion architecture, synthesis of insights, and preparation of the resulting white paper. The resulting white paper synthesised emerging trends, systemic challenges, innovative approaches, and practical recommendations for strengthening water resilience through improved investment origination, governance, and financing frameworks.

Rather than focusing exclusively on financing solutions, the dialogue explored how investment systems themselves may need to evolve. Discussions examined emerging innovations in investment origination, mission-driven planning, institutional coordination, public-private collaboration, funding mechanisms, project preparation, and blended finance.

The objective was to identify practical approaches capable of accelerating implementation of the EU Water Resilience Strategy while strengthening Europe’s capacity to mobilise investment for long-term water security. In doing so, the initiative contributed to an emerging European dialogue on how public institutions, investors, utilities, businesses, and communities can work together to translate water resilience ambitions into investable, scalable, and financially sustainable pathways.

Our methodology

The process combined strategic foresight, systems thinking, collective intelligence, and investment planning, guided by five principles.

Strategic foresight

The initiative combined strategic foresight, systems thinking, collective intelligence, and investment planning to create a structured process for translating emerging trends into actionable investment opportunities.

‍The methodology was built around five principles:

1. Strategic Foresight

Participants explored emerging trends and future risks affecting water resilience, including climate change, biodiversity loss, changing hydrological patterns, demographic pressures, and evolving financial markets.

2. Systems Thinking

‍Rather than treating water as a standalone sector, discussions examined the interconnections between water, food systems, energy, land use, biodiversity, climate adaptation, and economic competitiveness.

3. Mission-Driven Investment Planning

The dialogue explored how place-based and mission-oriented approaches can align public and private actors around shared resilience outcomes, creating integrated investment pathways at basin, landscape, and regional scales.

4. Collective Intelligence

The process intentionally brought together perspectives that rarely engage in strategic planning together, creating opportunities to challenge assumptions, explore trade-offs, and identify new forms of collaboration.

5. From Vision to Investment Pathways

The ultimate goal was to move beyond diagnosis and identify practical approaches for implementation. Discussions therefore focused on three interconnected themes:

Key findings

A central insight emerging from the dialogue was that Europe’s water challenge is not primarily a financing challenge. Rather, it is a challenge of investment origination, coordination, governance, and institutional alignment. Participants repeatedly highlighted that better outcomes depend as much on how investments are conceived, planned, and coordinated as on the availability of capital.

‍The dialogue revealed a growing recognition that many of the barriers to water resilience lie upstream of project financing.

‍Participants highlighted that while finance remains essential, the greatest opportunities for transformation often emerge earlier in the investment cycle through better investment origination, stronger institutional coordination, more integrated planning processes, and innovative partnership models.

‍Several themes emerged consistently across discussions:

1. Investment Origination Must Become More Integrated

Traditional sector-based planning approaches are increasingly unable to address interconnected water, climate, nature, and economic challenges.

‍Participants highlighted the need for mission-driven, place-based planning approaches capable of aligning multiple stakeholders around shared resilience outcomes and generating portfolios of interconnected investments rather than isolated projects.

2. Public–Private Collaboration Must Begin Earlier

Rather than engaging only during procurement or financing stages, participants emphasised the importance of involving private actors much earlier in planning and project preparation processes.

‍Early collaboration can help reduce transaction costs, accelerate implementation, improve innovation, and unlock additional investment opportunities.

3. New Funding and Revenue Models Are Required

Water resilience investments often generate benefits that extend well beyond the water sector itself.

‍Participants explored opportunities to combine multiple funding streams, create new revenue sources, capture value more effectively, and develop blended finance approaches capable of reflecting the full range of social, environmental, and economic benefits generated.

‍Multipurpose Infrastructure and “Mosaic Projects” Represent an Emerging Paradigm

‍A recurring theme throughout the dialogue was the growing importance of investments capable of delivering multiple outcomes simultaneously.

‍Rather than designing projects around a single objective, future investments may increasingly combine water security, climate adaptation, biodiversity restoration, agricultural productivity, urban resilience, and economic development objectives within integrated investment portfolios.

Convening the leaders shaping Europe’s water future

Beyond the diversity of organizations represented, the dialogue intentionally brought together actors spanning the full investment ecosystem—from policy and regulation, to public finance, private investment, utilities, infrastructure developers, and knowledge institutions. This systems perspective enabled participants to explore how different actors can contribute complementary capabilities, resources, and incentives to accelerate water resilience outcomes.

One of the distinguishing features of the initiative was its ability to bring together actors who rarely engage in strategic planning processes together.

The dialogue convened 30 senior leaders and experts from more than 25 organizations, representing:

Participants included senior representatives from the European Investment Bank, European Commission, Green Climate Fund, African Development Bank, World Economic Forum, Veolia, Meridiam, AquaFed, Aqua Publica Europea, the European Environment Agency, WAREG, and national governments including the Netherlands and Chile. These represent all five parts of the investment ecosystem: policy and regulation, public finance, private investment, industry and utilities, and knowledge and innovation.

This diversity was intentional. The objective was not only to discuss water resilience, but to create a structured process capable of unlocking collective intelligence across traditionally disconnected sectors and institutions.

Looking ahead

Future-Proofing Europe’s Water Systems has evolved into an annual strategic dialogue that supports ongoing reflection on the future of water resilience, investment, and infrastructure planning in Europe.

‍As implementation of the EU Water Resilience Strategy accelerates and investment needs continue to grow, the initiative provides a platform for identifying emerging trends, fostering collaboration across sectors, and exploring how innovative approaches to investment origination can help translate long-term resilience goals into practical action.

‍By connecting foresight, systems thinking, and finance, the initiative contributes to a broader shift toward mission-driven investment planning capable of supporting Europe’s transition toward a more resilient, regenerative, and water-secure future.

Mission-Driven Investment Planning for Regeneration – NetworkNature Plus

The challenge

Across Europe, cities and regions are facing increasingly interconnected challenges related to climate adaptation, biodiversity loss, water security, ageing infrastructure, economic competitiveness, public health, and social cohesion. They are also at the forefront of delivering the European Green Deal, the Biodiversity Strategy, the Climate Adaptation Strategy, the EU Missions, and other ambitious policy commitments. Yet translating these ambitions into investable projects and coordinated investment programmes remains a major challenge.

‍While Nature-based Solutions are increasingly recognised as part of the solution, many planning and investment processes remain fragmented, organised around individual sectors, projects, and funding streams. Infrastructure decisions are often taken independently from ecosystem restoration efforts, climate adaptation strategies, and economic development objectives.

‍As a result, public authorities frequently struggle to translate ambitious climate and biodiversity commitments into investable projects and coordinated investment programmes capable of delivering systemic impact.

‍The challenge is therefore not only how to implement more Nature-based Solutions, but how to rethink strategic investment planning and redesign infrastructure systems so that natural, built, social, institutional, and financial assets work together to deliver multiple outcomes simultaneously.

Our contribution

As part of the European Commission-funded NetworkNature+ consortium, Altamira leads the development of a pioneering capacity-building programme designed to help cities, regions, infrastructure professionals, and public authorities rethink how infrastructure investments are originated, planned, financed, and delivered. The programme supports a fundamental transition:

From fragmented projects and siloed planning toward regenerative infrastructure systems designed around shared societal missions. Altamira is responsible for designing the conceptual framework, methodology, learning architecture, bootcamp programme, and practical tools that enable participants to move from long-term vision to implementation and investment.

The work forms part of the European Commission’s broader effort to accelerate the uptake of Nature-based Solutions while strengthening the role of ecosystems as critical infrastructure networks within climate-resilient and nature-positive development pathways.

Rethinking infrastructure

A central premise of the programme is that ecosystems should not be viewed solely as environmental assets. Healthy watersheds, wetlands, forests, soils, urban green networks, water infrastructure, transport systems, governance institutions, and financial mechanisms all interact to shape resilience outcomes.

The programme encourages participants to move beyond project-level thinking and towards the design of regenerative infrastructure systems capable of generating environmental, social, and economic value simultaneously, with Nature-based Solutions understood as part of a broader portfolio of interventions that together strengthen resilience, restore ecosystems, improve quality of life, and support long-term prosperity.

The mission-driven investment planning approach

The programme introduces a mission-driven investment planning methodology that helps cities and regions move beyond fragmented planning and project-by-project decision-making.

A distinctive feature of the programme is its focus on investment origination and market creation. Participants explore how public authorities, investors, utilities, developers, entrepreneurs, and Nature-based Enterprises can collaborate to develop investable projects, strengthen business cases, and mobilise funding and financing at scale.

‍The approach combines systems thinking, regenerative design, institutional economics, infrastructure finance, and investment origination.

‍It helps participants “zoom out” to understand system dynamics and “zoom in” to structure viable investment opportunities.

Module 1: Understanding systems and breaking silos

The first module focuses on building a shared understanding of system dynamics through systems analysis, group model building, strategic framing, and scenario exploration.

Participants identify interdependencies, trade-offs, leverage points, and institutional barriers across sectors.

Outputs

Module 2: Planning regenerative futures

The second module enables participants to explore the regenerative potential of their city, watershed, landscape, or region.

Using foresight methods, regenerative design principles, and back-casting exercises, participants identify transformative opportunities and long-term development pathways.

Outputs

Module 3: Financing and delivering transformation

The third module translates strategic concepts into investment-ready portfolios. Participants work on business case development, financing strategies, governance models, procurement approaches, and delivery mechanisms, including Public-Private Partnerships.

The module is supported by practical tools developed through Altamira’s work on infrastructure finance, water security, climate adaptation, and mission-driven investment planning.

Outputs

Pilot bootcamp: from planning to action

The first Mission-Driven Investment Planning Bootcamp was delivered in Milan in 2025 under the theme: “From Planning to Action: Building a Pipeline of Bankable Projects.”

‍The three-day programme brought together 32 participants representing 14 nationalities, including urban planners, municipal leaders, climate finance experts, researchers, entrepreneurs, and Nature-based Solution practitioners.

‍Participants worked on real-world challenges and applied systems thinking, Theory of Change methodologies, project clustering techniques, financing frameworks, governance design tools, and investment planning approaches.

‍The bootcamp demonstrated how fragmented project ideas can be transformed into coherent, investable portfolios capable of attracting funding and financing while delivering multiple benefits across sectors.

Key insights from the pilot:

Strategic outcomes

The programme seeks to catalyse a broader shift in how infrastructure investments are conceived across Europe—from fragmented projects and sectoral budgets toward mission-driven investment portfolios capable of delivering multiple societal outcomes simultaneously.

‍Rather than treating Nature-based Solutions as stand-alone projects, the approach positions them as essential components of regenerative infrastructure systems capable of delivering climate resilience, biodiversity recovery, water security, social wellbeing, and economic prosperity.

By strengthening the capacity of cities, regions, utilities, planners, and infrastructure professionals, the initiative helps:

Why this matters

Europe has entered a decade in which climate adaptation, biodiversity restoration, water security, and resilience are no longer optional policy objectives but strategic necessities. Achieving these ambitions will require more than individual projects.

‍It will require new planning paradigms capable of aligning infrastructure, ecosystems, governance systems, and financial flows around shared missions and long-term outcomes.

‍Through NetworkNature+, Altamira is helping cities and regions develop the capabilities needed to originate, structure, and deliver these transformational investments.

‍The result is a practical pathway from vision to implementation—helping cities and regions transform climate and biodiversity ambitions into investable regenerative infrastructure systems that strengthen resilience, restore ecosystems, and create long-term value for people and place.

Expanding the programme across Europe

Building on the success of the Milan pilot, the programme is being expanded through a series of regional bootcamps designed to help cities and regions accelerate the development of regenerative infrastructure portfolios and Nature-based Solutions investment pipelines.

Confirmed and planned locations include:

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