Session 6: Closing Session — From Global Lessons to a Regulatory Agenda for Water-Scarce Systems

A moderated discussion around three lines of synthesis, conducted as a conversation rather than through presentations.

Placed at the end of the day, this session does not add a further regional account. It asks what the day's discussions have in common, where they genuinely diverge, and what follows for regulatory design in systems becoming structurally dependent on non-conventional supply.

Discussants are invited for the regulatory questions they have worked on rather than as representatives of their countries, and the panel is composed across regulatory models, an established European regulator, a regulator built incrementally from a modest mandate, and the contract-led structures through which production capacity is committed, rather than across regions.

The discussion returns to the three themes posed at the opening of the Exchange:

• Theme 1. Why approaches that once worked are proving harder to sustain.
• Theme 2. The implications of the emerging use of desalination for the regulation of water and wastewater services.
• Theme 3. From integration in principle to integration in practice.

The session closes by setting out the priorities for regulatory innovation in water-scarce systems that emerge from the day, framed against the three themes and displayed alongside them, and carried directly into the launch. It is a forward looking view on what comes next for regulation.