The year 2025 will also start in January with the important World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Besider the 8 topics below

•  Advanced Manufacturing and Supply Chains
• Cybersecurity
• Financial and Monetary Systems
• Health and Healthcare
• Regions, Trade and Geopolitics
• Fourth Industrial Revolution
• New Economy and Society
• Urban Transformation

the World Economic Forums has focused especially on the topics

• Energy and Materials
• Nature and Climate

The challenges of making the world sustainable will play a central role in all subject areas. One of the topics of discussion will certainly be how to meet the rapidly growing energy needs of AI and the large-scale data centers required to power it. The World Economic Forum will take place from January 20 to 25.

On April 29, 2025, the Sustainable Investment Forum Europe 2025 will take place at the Pullmann Montparnasse in Paris. It is of interest to all finance stakeholders. The forum is organized by Climate Action in partnership with UNEP-FI. It will take place for the eighth time in 2025 and aims to successfully guide the European economy into a resilient, just and sustainable future.

Key themes:

• Just Transition: Advance equity and resilience, marking ten years since the Paris Agreement
• Global Carbon Markets: Unlock biodiversity potential within Article 6 mechanism
• Policy Innovation: Drive net-zero targets with supportive and forward-thinking frameworks
• Anticipate, Adapt, Act: Building Resilience to Physical Climate Risks
• Insurance as a Financial Buffer: Enhancing Adaptation Efforts and Mitigating Risks
• Paris a Decade On: Advancing Sustainability and Investor Impact
• The Baku to Belém Roadmap: Guiding global efforts toward sustainability and decarbonization
• Harmonising Double Materiality: Aligning EU with Global Voluntary and Mandatory Reporting Standards

We informed you about the topic of Water Scarcity in the article “Water scarcity, many people are already on a dip”, subtitle “More than 2.2 Billion people have no direct access to fresh water. Global Water Intelligence sees the issue of global water security as being under severe pressure due to the fact that the world is now well beyond the 1.5°C target. The Global Water Summit 2025, which is taking place in Paris between May 12 and 14, is intended to help accelerate important investments in the area of global water security. Here is an excerpt from the agenda:

Day 0 – Workshops, lectures, site visits

• Scaling Water Reuse in Industry
• GWI Strategy Summit
• Leading Utilities of the World
• The 300 Group
• The Future of Desalination
• Climate Change and the New Water Energy Nexus
• Corporate Water Leaders Workshop

Day 1 - Lectures

• Opening Plenary: Delivering the Economics of Water
• Roundtables: 40 Urgent Questions for Water?
• Delivering the Surge
• Missionising the Circular Economy
• New Thinking on Water Finance
• Watering the AI Revolution
• Incentivising Finance for SDG6
• Leading Utilities Inauguration
• Partnering for Industrial Reuse
• Project Roundtables
• The Vision for Water

Day 2

• Opening Plenary: Leadership Visions
• A Target for Reuse in Cities
• Industrial Water's Crystal Ball
• Maximising Infra-Finance
• Top 30 Technologies I AI
• Risk and Reversing Inflation
• The Technology Roadmap
• The Utility of the Future
• Water as a Value Driver for Business
• Closing Plenary: Next Steps

The European Sustainable Energy Week 2025 (EUSEW) will take place in the European capital Brussels, Belgium, from June 10 to 12, 2025. The conference, which can also be attended online, is organized by the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency. For the 19th time, decision-makers, innovators and representatives from the energy sector will meet to discuss innovations and the future of sustainable energy in Europe. A detailed program has not yet been published. Call for papers and to host a policy session is open.

If you are interested in more cutting-edge research, innovative solutions and concrete examples of implementation with a view to a climate-resilient society, meet researchers, decision-makers, practitioners and stakeholders at the European Climate Change Adaptation Conference (ECCA2025) in Rimini, Italy, from June 16 to 18, 2025. Here are the session proposals:

•  Living with climate extremes
• Managing cities to be fit for the future
• Protecting coastal and mountain areas
• Human and legal dimensions of change
• Adaptation finance: reducing communities’ economic or social vulnerabilities

You want to help shape the event. You still have the opportunity to submit your proposal for a presentation by February 3, 2025. Link, see below.

In the United States, the Climate Group, in partnership with the United Nations Gerneral Assembly and the City of New York, organizes the annual Climate Week NYC in New York. It will take place in 2025 from November 21 to 28. Climate Week NYC is the largest of its kind in the United States. Over the course of eight days and more than 900 events and activities, business leaders, political change makers, local decision-makers and civil society representatives from around the world will come together to advance the climate transition. The review of the 2024 event, see link below, will give you an impression of Climate Week NYC.

The year will once again come to a close with the UN Climate Change Conference UNFCCC COP 30, which will take place in the city of Belem, Brazil, from November 10 to 21. Experts and decision-makers from around the world will once again take a close look at the status quo of climate change, review the agreed goals and agree on new ones. In 2025, intensive discussions will again revolve around the topic of climate financing. At the COP29 in 2024, an agreement was reached at the last minute on the achievement of an annual budget of 300 billion US dollars from donor countries to developing countries by 2030. However, the developing countries thought and think that this is not enough. They demanded at least half a billion US dollars annually.

Sustainability and climate change will continue to be the top issues in 2025 and beyond. So it will be another exciting and interesting year with important to-dos, but also many opportunities.