Desk of Gena

We are excited to share with you a special announcement from our Forest Trends’ Global Water Initiative. We’ve just signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Latin American Association of Water and Sanitation Regulators (ADERASA) and The Nature Conservancy to strengthen the role of water utility regulators in advancing nature-based solutions for water security across Latin America and the Caribbean.   

This partnership is grounded in a simple but powerful idea: healthy ecosystems are essential to the reliability, resilience, and long-term sustainability of our drinking water systems. Forests, wetlands, and upstream watersheds serve as forms of nature-based solutions as they filter water, regulate flows, and reduce risks from floods and drought, yet most funding for nature-based solutions in the water sector still come from public budgets and short-term programs. While government leadership is critical, this model alone will not deliver the scale and durability we need. 

After all, water utility regulators are strategic levers for change. Through ADERASA, regulators from across the region shape the rules, incentives, and financial frameworks that determine whether utilities can invest in protecting the watersheds they depend on. When regulatory systems enable utilities to allocate revenue toward upstream nature-based solutions, those investments can become embedded in core service delivery rather than treated as optional add-ons. 

Through this collaboration with ADERASA and The Nature Conservancy, we will work together to equip regulators and utilities with the evidence, tools, and peer learning they need to make nature-based solutions operationally and financially viable. We will co-develop analytical tools and benchmarks to identify priority watershed risks and investment opportunities. We will also support regional exchange and capacity building so that regulators can share lessons and accelerate progress together. 

This partnership represents more than a new agreement. It reflects a shift toward integrating nature into the financial and regulatory backbone of water systems. By empowering regulators, we can help move from project-by-project funding to sustained, beneficiary-led investment in the ecosystems that secure water for millions of people in Latin America. 

I look forward to sharing updates as this work advances and to continuing to build practical pathways for scaling nature-based solutions across the region.

All the best,
Gena Gammie, Director of the Global Water Initiative