WaterAid welcomes the announcement of the Energy Transition Accelerator

Posted by
Jeff Greene
on
9 November 2022
In
Individuals, Employees and companies, Campaigns, Fundraising resources, Water, Partnership, Education, Hygiene, Girls and women, Health, Maternal health
Image: WaterAid/ Prashanth Vishwanathan

November 9, 2022 (New York, NY)—

WaterAid welcomes the announcement of the Energy Transition Accelerator (ETA) by the United States Government, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Bezos Earth Fund. This accelerator fund will support the clean energy transition in developing countries by working with companies who are committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

Importantly, the ETA will provide five percent of the value of its carbon credits to support the critically important work of adaptation and resilience. There is an urgent need for increased investment in the global south, and this initiative creates pathways for private funds to support progress at a time when trillions of dollars are needed to address the climate crisis.

The urgent priority for poor communities is managing the impacts of climate change that are already in motion, and often felt through impacts on water. WaterAid is pleased to see that funding for increasing the resilience and adaptation of communities is recognized in the ETA model, and we encourage this financing be focused on the most vulnerable.

WaterAid is an international nonprofit working to make clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene a reality for everyone, everywhere within a generation. WaterAid works in more than 30 countries to change the lives of the poorest and most marginalized people. Since 1981, WaterAid has reached 28 million people with clean water, 28 million people with decent toilets and 26 million people with good hygiene.

Statistics

  • 750 million people in the world – one in ten – do not have clean water close to home.
  • Two billion people in the world – almost one in four – do not have a decent toilet of their own.
  • Around 310,000 children under five die every year from diarrheal diseases caused by poor water and sanitation. That's around 800 children a day, or one child every two minutes. 

Every $2 invested in water and toilets returns an average of $8 in increased productivity.

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