Greg Kunst

My recent speech at the United Nations General Assembly on behalf of the Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations for the Pan-African Intergovernmental Agency on Water and Sanitation for Africa. #UNGA

Day 3 United Nations General Assembly #UNGA #UNGA81HLW

UNGA Day 2 #UNGA

Day 2 at the UN General Assembly #UNGA

This week, the world is gathering in New York for the 81st UN General Assembly — and I couldn't be more honored to be part of it. UNGA week is one of the few moments each year when heads of state, diplomats, civil society, and technical experts from every corner of the globe sit in the same rooms and wrestle with the same hard questions. It's easy to be cynical about multilateral diplomacy, but I've seen firsthand what it makes possible: coalitions that wouldn't otherwise form, funding that wouldn't otherwise flow, and accountability that wouldn't otherwise exist. For Water & Sanitation for Africa (WSA), this week matters enormously. As the Pan-African intergovernmental agency holding Permanent Observer status at the UN, WSA exists to make sure water and sanitation — the foundation of public health, food security, and human dignity — stay at the center of the global agenda, not the periphery. Access to clean water isn't a "someday" development goal. It's the thing that determines whether pandemic prevention systems work, whether communities are resilient to climate shocks, and whether children survive their first five years. I'm proud to be speaking on Panel 1: "The World Together — Multilateral Action for Coordinated Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response," on September 25th, 11:00 AM–1:00 PM ET, Conference Room 2. We'll be sharing lessons learned and pushing for the kind of coordinated, well-financed response systems that only get built when nations commit to working together. Tune in live on UN WebTV (webtv.un.org) — and let's keep pushing water and sanitation up the global agenda, together. #UNGA81 #WSA #GlobalDiplomacy #WaterForAll #PandemicPreparedness

“Blended finance” is one of those terms that sounds complicated and is actually a simple idea wearing a suit. Here’s the plain version: public or philanthropic money — call it catalytic capital — agrees to take the first loss if a project underperforms. That protects the commercial investors who come in behind it. Because their downside is now smaller, they’re willing to accept a lower return, which makes the whole deal pencil out for a project that wouldn’t have gotten funded on pure commercial terms. If that sounds familiar, it should. It’s close to how early biotech financing works — the earliest, riskiest capital absorbs the most risk and gets structured differently from the capital that comes in once a program is de-risked. Nobody expects a Series A investor and a public-market investor to take the same risk for the same return. Global water and sanitation financing has access to this exact tool. It’s used more in renewable energy and financial inclusion than in WASH. My honest opinion: that’s a missed opportunity, not a structural limitation. Where else could a first-loss structure unlock stalled water infrastructure projects? Views are my own and do not represent an official position of the United Nations, the Permanent Observer Mission of WSA, Valitor, or any organization I’m affiliated with. oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en…

sdg.iisd.org/news/who-un-wat… Here’s a number that should change how we talk about the global water crisis: every $1 invested in water and sanitation returns $4.30 in economic benefits — lower health costs, more productive workdays, kids who stay in school instead of walking for water. That’s not an advocacy talking point. It’s a WHO/UN-Water calculation, and different studies using different methods keep landing in the same range — some as high as $5.50 for sanitation alone. My honest opinion: if any other asset class had a documented 4-to-1 return, capital would already be lined up. The fact that it isn’t tells you the problem was never the math. It’s that almost none of this gets underwritten like an asset — it gets underwritten like charity, one grant cycle at a time. I don’t think that’s a funding gap. I think it’s a structuring gap. What would it take to get institutional capital to treat a 4-to-1 return the same way it treats any other investable return? Views are my own and do not represent an official position of the United Nations, the Permanent Observer Mission of WSA, Valitor, or any organization I’m affiliated with. #SDGs#SDG6#sdg6cleanwaterandsanitation #UnitedNations

I spent close to two decades learning how to convince investors to fund things that don't exist yet. Three weeks ago I sat in a room at the United Nations and realized global health has the exact same problem — just at a much bigger scale. In biotech, nobody funds "hope." They fund a structured, staged, de-risked path: milestone-based capital, clear go/no-go decision points, guarantees where the science is uncertain and hard commitments where it isn't. That discipline is why capital shows up for things that used to sound impossible. Most of the global water and sanitation sector is still funded like a grant program, not an asset class. Good intentions, real money, but almost no structure that lets institutional capital underwrite it the way it underwrites everything else. My honest opinion: the biggest blocker to closing the Water and Sanitation in Africa financing gap isn't a shortage of capital. It's the absence of an investable structure that capital can actually underwrite. I think the tools already exist — blended finance, guarantee instruments, revenue certainty structures — biotech and infrastructure finance both figured this out separately. Global health hasn't fully borrowed the playbook yet. Tell me where this breaks down. What am I missing? Views are my own, not an official position of the UN, the Permanent Observer Mission of WSA, Valitor, or any organization I'm affiliated with.