From sustainable financing to investment-ready projects: FELICITY II supports Ukraine’s water sector at Lviv Eco Forum 2026

FELICITY II sup­port­ed the Lviv Eco Forum 2026, bring­ing its work on sus­tain­able financ­ing, insti­tu­tion­al capac­i­ty and invest­ment prepa­ra­tion into the broad­er dis­cus­sion on the future of Ukraine’s water sec­tor. Dur­ing the Forum, the pro­gramme con­tributed to dis­cus­sions on tar­iff pol­i­cy and for­malised two new part­ner­ships aimed at strength­en­ing the sector’s pro­fes­sion­al capac­i­ties and advanc­ing infra­struc­ture invest­ment. 

Oksana Oliynyk, Head of the Ukraine Com­po­nent of the FELICITY II pro­gramme, par­tic­i­pat­ed in a pan­el dis­cus­sion on water and waste­water tar­iffs. Sus­tain­able tar­iff set­ting remains an impor­tant ele­ment of the sector’s long-term finan­cial resilience, requir­ing a bal­ance between cost recov­ery, afford­abil­i­ty for con­sumers and the invest­ment needs of util­i­ties. The dis­cus­sion built on FELICITY II’s ongo­ing work with Ukrain­ian and Euro­pean water-sec­tor part­ners to exchange expe­ri­ence on tar­iff approach­es and the finan­cial sus­tain­abil­i­ty of util­i­ties. 

Along­side the dis­cus­sions, GIZ signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing under FELICITY II with the Ukrain­ian Water and Waste­water Asso­ci­a­tion “Ukr­vodokanalekologiya” and the Nation­al Ukrain­ian Water Acad­e­my (NUWA). The part­ner­ship estab­lish­es a frame­work for sys­tem­at­ic coop­er­a­tion on train­ing, pro­fes­sion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tion and knowl­edge exchange for spe­cial­ists work­ing in Ukraine’s water and waste­water util­i­ties. 

Planned activ­i­ties include train­ing cours­es, sem­i­nars, webi­na­rs and study vis­its, as well as the devel­op­ment of prac­ti­cal learn­ing mate­ri­als and exchange of expe­ri­ence. Coop­er­a­tion will cov­er areas includ­ing WASH, asset man­age­ment, water-loss reduc­tion, water qual­i­ty, emer­gency pre­pared­ness, occu­pa­tion­al safe­ty and com­mu­ni­ca­tion with com­mu­ni­ties. The part­ner­ship is intend­ed to strength­en the pro­fes­sion­al and insti­tu­tion­al capac­i­ties need­ed to main­tain reli­able and resilient water and waste­water ser­vices. 

A sec­ond Mem­o­ran­dum of Coop­er­a­tion was signed between GIZ and Kono­top City Coun­cil in Sumy Oblast under FELICITY II. The coop­er­a­tion will sup­port the prepa­ra­tion of invest­ment projects in water sup­ply and waste­water infra­struc­ture. It will include insti­tu­tion­al capac­i­ty devel­op­ment, tech­ni­cal and finan­cial-eco­nom­ic assess­ments, improve­ment of project doc­u­men­ta­tion and its align­ment with the require­ments of inter­na­tion­al finan­cial insti­tu­tions, includ­ing the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank. 

The coop­er­a­tion will also pro­vide advi­so­ry sup­port and train­ing for util­i­ty pro­fes­sion­als and con­tribute to the prepa­ra­tion of low-car­bon and cli­mate-resilient projects capa­ble of attract­ing inter­na­tion­al financ­ing. 

Togeth­er, these activ­i­ties demon­strate the inter­con­nect­ed ele­ments required for sus­tain­able water-sec­tor recov­ery: finan­cial­ly resilient util­i­ties, skilled pro­fes­sion­als and insti­tu­tions, and well-pre­pared infra­struc­ture invest­ments. By work­ing across these areas, FELICITY II sup­ports Ukrain­ian munic­i­pal­i­ties and water util­i­ties in cre­at­ing the foun­da­tions for mod­ern, cli­mate-resilient water infra­struc­ture aligned with EU stan­dards. 

FELICITY II is imple­ment­ed by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Inter­na­tionale Zusam­me­nar­beit (GIZ) GmbH in coop­er­a­tion with the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank and with the sup­port of the Ger­man Fed­er­al Min­istry for the Envi­ron­ment, Cli­mate Action, Nature Con­ser­va­tion and Nuclear Safe­ty, under the frame­work of the Inter­na­tion­al Cli­mate Ini­tia­tive (IKI).