Cate Lamb

I started not in finance but on the front line - inside businesses and on farms, where I saw first-hand the assumption that sits at the heart of almost every business model and every financial decision: that water will always be available, when you need it, in the quality you require. That assumption is wrong. Exposing it, and building the systems that act on that reality, has been the work of 20 years.

At CDP I built the world's largest corporate water disclosure programme, growing it to influence $124 trillion in assets and teaching me that disclosure alone is never enough. You need the capital instruments, the regulatory architecture, and the institutional will to act. That understanding drove everything that followed: co-founding the Blue Bond Accelerator, co-chairing the Science Based Targets Network, building the first structured water action agenda within the UNFCCC process, and translating Earth system science into frameworks that 450 banks, insurers, and investors can actually use with UNEP FI.

I now work independently — bringing that experience directly to the financial institutions, sovereigns, DFIs, and multilateral bodies who need honest, expert counsel to navigate what comes next.