In spring 2024, the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia set up the Enquete Commission III ‘Water in times of climate crisis’. The commission will focus intensively on the effects of advancing climate change on the qualitative and quantitative availability of water in North Rhine-Westphalia as well as on how society deals with this change.

In this context, the North Rhine-Westphalian state parliament has commissioned an expert report on sustainable financing models for resilient water management in NRW, which is being prepared jointly by the FiFo Institute for Public Economics at the University of Cologne (FiFo Köln) and GWS.

Based on an outline of the institutional framework conditions of water management, a critical review of the current financing instruments for water-related public services is carried out. The four fields of action drinking and industrial water supply, wastewater management, flood and heavy rain protection and the management of the Water Framework Directive will be analysed. The aim is to obtain an estimate of the financial requirements for future-proof, resilient water management in each of the four fields of action. The climate change-related costs for water management and investments in climate adaptation play an important role here. On this basis and with the inclusion of good national and international practice examples, the study will ultimately identify options for optimising existing financing instruments and, if necessary, strengthening them with new approaches.