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Elizabeth Tripp Budden
Climate-Health Officer Pathfinder International
Lizzy Budden is a young development professional with a background in climate and water security, having worked in both the UN and NGO sectors. She holds an MA in Geopolitics, Resources and Territory from King's College London, where she specialised in water security and transboundary resource sharing in climate-stressed environments, including the political discourse surrounding the GERD negotiations. At UN-ESCWA, Lizzy contributed to the UN World and Arab Regional Water Development Reports, focusing on water project financing, international water policy commitments, groundwater governance, and gender in the water sector. This work gave her a close view of how technical water reports translate, or often fail to translate, into the financing decisions and political commitments that actually shape water access on the ground. She is currently working at Pathfinder International developing a USD 100 million climate-health nexus proposal for the Green Climate Fund, bringing together her interests in water security, public health, and international climate finance. Lizzy is particularly interested in the GERD negotiations as a case study in transboundary water diplomacy, and in how gender considerations are, or are not, meaningfully built into water-sector financing. Through the Global Youth Water Envoys Program, she hopes to bring this finance-and-diplomacy lens to the 2026 UN Water Conference.