Veolia Commits $1.5 billion to Global Water and Sanitation Access, Advancing UN Water Conference Goals

Global Commitment Will Support 13 UN Sustainable Development Goals

New York - At the 2023 United Nations Water Conference in New York City today, Veolia, the global leader in ecological transformation, committed $1.5 billion yearly investment in infrastructure, technologies and research & innovation initiatives for water and sanitation to advancing thirteen UN Sustainable Development Goals related to water and sanitation in 52 countries around the world.

As part of this unprecedented investment, Veolia outlined four specific deliverables, each with dedicated key performance indicators and targets to ensure accountability, as follows:

• Veolia is committed to sustainable management of water resources and to continuing to improve the efficiency of the drinking water networks it operates to further increase overall performance.
   
• A world leader in water reuse, Veolia commits to support scaling-up this technology on a global scale to quickly deploy this proven solution in the territories to tackle water scarcity.
   
• Veolia commits to improving access to essential water and sanitation services for all, aiming to increase the number of people around the world benefiting from inclusive measures for access to water or sanitation to reach 9 million people benefitting from these services by 2025.
   
• Veolia commits to supporting efforts that codify the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation into law.

These commitments are aligned with the company's strategic priorities for the global development of the water sector, notably wastewater reuse and technological innovation.

“As the benchmark company for ecological transformation, Veolia strongly commits to contribute to advance the access to water and sanitation in the world and reduce water footprint of industries and cities. Our corporate values and mission directly align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and the commitments we made today show our global focus on developing new solutions and scaling up existing technologies to tackle the rising challenges regarding water availability and quality around the world,” said Estelle Brachlianoff, CEO of Veolia.  

The world's largest private player in the water sector, in 2022 Veolia supplied 111 million people with drinking water and 97 million with wastewater services across the world. In that same year, thanks to available technologies the Group was able to reuse close to 1 billion cubic metres of wastewater on the sites it operates. Veolia has also been able to significantly increase the performance of the networks entrusted to it during the past three years, to achieve approximately 320 million cubic meters of water savings in 2022.