Connecting Cities with Nature: Ensuring Water Supply for Cities through a Collective Action That Enhances Green Infrastructure

As global demand for food, energy and shelter puts unprecedented pressure on our water resources, protecting water supplies at their source is increasingly critical to ensure the water security of cities. By protecting and restoring forests, grasslands and wetlands, and by reducing agricultural runoff that runs to rivers and streams, cities benefit from having nature retain freshwater, filter pollutants and reduce erosion. Water funds are innovative mechanisms that seek long-term investments in green infrastructure through collective action. They are an example of how governments, financial institutions, businesses, communities, and conservationists can work together to protect ecosystems and help to develop sustainable economies that benefit both people and nature. A successful example of collective action is “Agua por el Futuro” program created by The Coca‐Cola Company and its bottling partners in alliance with The Latin American Water Funds Partnership, implemented in six countries of The Coca-Cola Latin Center Business Unit (Colombia, Costa Rica, República Dominicana, Panamá, Guatemala y Ecuador). This program has contribute through restoration and conservation activities to conservation of critical areas for water supplies for cities, with the goal to safely return to communities and nature an amount of water equivalent to what is used in The Coca‐Cola Company’s portfolio of beverages and their production by 2020. Goal achieved five years early as announced globally in August 2016 in Stockholm during World Water Week. In Ecuador, it is implemented by Coca‐Cola Ecuador, its bottling partner Arca Continental, The Nature Conservancy and local Water Funds.