Prince Charles has launched an initiative to ensure that around 50 million people have access to sustainable water sources by 2030.

The Resilient Water Accelerator aims to bring together governments, development banks and companies to allocate funds towards protecting water services from the impacts of climate change.

Six locations in Africa and South-East Asia will be selected for the initiative to test new approaches to tackle the issues of pollution, water-stress and scarce supplies.

The scheme is part of HRH The Prince of Wales’ Sustainable Markets Initiative, which calls on businesses to adopt more sustainable practices.

The Prince of Wales said: “The Covid-19 pandemic has reinforced the need to ensure access to clean water around the world.

“Since the first meeting in March of last year, the Water and Climate Finance Initiative Task Force has worked steadfastly towards achieving this, by boosting climate funding, for comprehensive scalable resilient water programmes.”

Tim Wainwright, WaterAid’s Chief Executive, said: “As the world hopes to emerge from the dark cloud of Covid-19, we have a real chance to seize the even bigger challenge of climate change.”