DAVOS, Switzerland - Most people view water simply as a day-to-day resource, but water is also both a victim and cause of climate change, as seen in droughts in countries like the Netherlands – long known for an abundance of water – and the loss of moisture in soil and forests, said panellists at the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Jan 17.

The issues related to water are low-hanging fruit in tackling climate change, as they can be solved through proven technologies and available financial resources, said President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, a panellist speaking in Davos, Switzerland, where the forum is being held from Jan 15 to 19.

First, however, governments and organisations need to understand the role water plays in the economy and climate change, said the panel, in a discussion about the resource and its role in achieving sustainability

This would help accelerate and scale up solutions looking at efficient management of water and also help advise policy around water pricing, said the panellists, who included members of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, of which Mr Tharman is a co-chair. The commission is a global project to transform water governance.

Mr Tharman said solving the problems around water management is achievable within a reasonable period of time “if we organise ourselves well and if we finance this so that everyone benefits”.

He added that the technologies and innovations required are already known, and can be financed with resources from the global market system.

“What’s required… are changes in the way we govern water, together with biodiversity and everything else that it takes to solve the climate crisis. It’s changes in governance and changes in the way we finance,” he said.

There is proven technology that needs to be scaled up and made affordable to the ordinary farmer in India or Africa, and for local municipalities everywhere in the developing world, he said.

It also needs to be implemented at scale in the most advanced countries, he added.

Another panellist, Dr Kirsten Schuijt, who is the director-general at conservation organisation WWF International, pointed out that while water has direct economic value given its role in food and energy production, it also has huge indirect economic value, for instance, through wetlands and other freshwater ecosystems, which play a key role in processes like water purification and floodwater control.

“The problem is that we often don’t realise what that economic value is, and how that actually impacts us as people,” she said.

She added that while there are local communities in some countries such as Kenya and Malawi whose livelihoods depend on water, there are people in other parts of the world who take the availability of water for granted.

“We need to include the assessment of freshwater availability in our risk assessments as corporates as part of water stewardship, and be prepared for what will come over the next years as climate change is going to be impacting us wherever we sit,” she said.

Mr Ulrik Gernow, chief operating officer of Danish pump manufacturer Grundfos, said water provision and management is ultimately a business.

“If there is a fair price of water, it will incentivise investment in water. It will incentivise actually innovating in water… putting new solutions in place, encouraging start-ups to actually come into this because… there’s actually good return on investment of actually doing the work,” he said.

He also said putting a higher value on water will lead to greater motivation for being more thoughtful about managing water demand and also increase the deployment of water reuse technologies.

Mr Tharman said it is not only about scaling up one or two big innovations, but scaling up categories of innovations that would allow for competition and different experiments to flourish.

If the challenge is known and the solutions exist, what is required from the public sector is to define the challenge, explain how it is going to incentivise private investment, then regulate the solutions and call for bids, he said.

The public sector’s role in these new areas is to drive down the costs of new solutions by moving faster than the market would on its own.

“That’s what happened in solar. That’s what’s going to happen here as well. So the task of the public sector is to co-invest, mitigate risk and also to set standards and regulations,” he said.