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Steps 5
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Lecture1.1
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Lecture1.2
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Lecture1.3
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Lecture1.4
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Lecture1.5
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Raise Awareness by Offering a One-Hour Water Stewardship 101 Workshop
Introduction
In order to raise awareness on and scale water stewardship, business networks and others can offer a one-hour workshop that offers the what, why, and how of water stewardship. Below we offer a proposed agenda for such a meeting, template slidedeck from which you can build your presentation, and accompanying notes on how you can speak to each slides.
We will continuously update this resource to ensure it is useful, relevant, and up-to-date. To offer suggestions on how we can improve it, click the button below.
Proposed Agenda
- Welcome & Greetings – 5 minutes
- The World’s Water Challenges – 10 minutes
- The Business Case for Water Stewardship – 10 minutes
- The Water Stewardship Journey – 10 minutes
- Relevant Tools & Initiatives – 10 minutes
- Questions & Discussion – 15 minutes
- What are the core water challenges in our country?
- What actions are already underway to address them?
- What are our best opportunities to advance water stewardship here?
- What else do we want to know about water stewardship, the UN Global Compact’s, CEO Water Mandate, and the tools and initiatives presented in this workshop?
Slides & Teaching Points
- Replaces logos and slide template as needed to represent your network. We would appreciate if you left some credit to the CEO Water Mandate and GIZ NatuReS somewhere in your presentation.
- Remove slides as needed to shorten presentation
- Add slides where possible to add context about the unique circumstances of your locale
- Overview of this presentation
- The facts of the global water crisis
- Why water stewardship is good for business
- How companies set and achieve water goals
- And some tools from the CEO Water Mandate and others that can help companies get started.
To start off, let’s talk about the world water crisis, including issues of water scarcity, pollution, and climate change
- This image shows the Aral (air-ul) Sea in Central Asia, which has seen increased water withdrawals for irrigation over the last 60 years, destroying the local fishery and community water supply
- Humans withdraw about four thousand cubic kilometersof water globally every year, which is triple what we withdrew 50 years ago, and withdrawals continue to increase
- Global demand for water is predicted to increase by 55 percentbetween 2000 and 2050
- We face a growing challenge to meet all of humanity’s water needs.
Image https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea#/media/File:AralSea1989_2014.jpg
Info https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/AralSea
- Today 1.7 billion people live in river basins where water demand outstrips supply, known as water-stressed areas.
- By 2050, that number is expected to jump to 5 billion.
Source: UN Water https://www.unwater.org/water-facts/scarcity/
MIT https://news.mit.edu/2014/predicting-the-future-of-global-water-stress
-Even if there is adequate water in an area, the basin can still experience water stress due to pollution.
-Nearly all human uses of water, from agricultural to industrial to municipal, result in water pollution.
-2 million tons of sewage and industrial and agricultural waste are discharged into the world’s water every day (UN WWAP 2003).
-Currently, over 80 percent of the world’s wastewater is discharged back into rivers, streams, and oceans without any treatment, causing widespread damage to ecosystems and contamination of critical human water sources.
-Access to clean water is always crucial for the health of individuals and families. But in the era of COVID-19, access to handwashing is crucial to stop the spread of the pandemic.
-Worldwide, 2.5 billion people lack access to improved sanitation, more than one third the world’s population
-As of 2017, 2.2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water (source: WHO)
-Over 800,000 children younger than 5 years of age perish from diarrhea each year, often caused by inadequate WASH access, according to UNICEF
-Although COVID is not a water-borne disease, handwashing is necessary to combat the spread of the pandemic.
–https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/global/wash_statistics.html#four
-This is the World Economic Forum top 5 global risks published each year
-Water crisis has been in the top global risks for the past seven years
-Climate change is already creating water crises. In fact, the effects of climate change are felt as water crises – if climate change is the shark, water is the teeth.
-Already seeing increased intensity of water-related natural events like droughts and floods, and this trend is expected to continue
-This National Geographic chart shows the dramatic increase of worldwide catastrophic events linked to climate
-The climate crisis affects the water cycle:
-As temperatures rise, snow melting earlier and faster, causing flooding, while in summer water supplies are diminished causing droughts
-Number of people at risk from floods is projected to hit 1.6 billion in 2050, with $45 trillion worth of assets at risk.
-On the other extreme, as discussed, drought will intensify the already increasing global water demand
-Globally, climate change effects will cause US$4.2trn of damage to assets – at a minimum – up to three times that much in extreme scenarios
–https://www.climate.gov/news-features/featured-images/2017-state-climate-global-drought
-Water stewardship is good for the planet and good for people, but this section is about the business case
-Not as a charity or philanthropic opportunity that creates good will
Let’s start with some definitions
Now, I want to talk about water risks
-Companies conduct water stewardship to understand the water related risks to their business
-Water risk falls into two general categories
- Caused by company’s actions: because they are polluting or wasteful and stakeholders have concerns
- But also due to context that a company can’t control. A company could be incredibly efficient and responsible, but if it’s acting in a place where shared water resources are poorly managed, it still faces risk
-Water stewardship is not just about being a good actor, but about ensuring that river basins in which you operate are sustainably managed
-One way water challenges affect business is through disrupting the operations of the company or their suppliers
-Many leading industries require water as a production process input or product ingredient
- Vulnerable to water shortages, drought, even if abundant water but it’s polluted
- Even if a company’s own facilities are not experiencing water stress, if its suppliers are, the company may still be unable to procure the goods to produce its own goods
For example, Brazil recently faced a drought that caused both water and electricity costs to rise, which cost General Motors by US$2.1 million extra for water and $5.9 million for electricity
-Even if there is physically enough water for companies to continue production in a basin and prices remain stable, companies can also still lose their license to operate if they are perceived as unfairly contributing to a river basin’s water-related challenges through pollution or excessive water use
-can lose their legal license to operate if regulators sanction business
-can lose their social license to operate if concerns from local communities disrupt business
- Example: Coca Cola was forced to close its plant in Plachimada, Kerala due to perceptions that the company used too much of the community’s groundwater
-Consumers are growing more and more deliberate about the social impacts of their purchases by “voting with their dollars”
-Companies reporting to CDP in 2017 identified brand damage as one of their top five risks related to water.
-It’s vital to give workers access to handwashing facilities at work
-Lack of access to to drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services – now more than ever — harm workers and greatly diminishes productivity for companies
-As one example, Levi Strauss invested in health education and on-site health services. Absenteeism fell by 55% and staff turnover dropped from 50% to 12%. One factory calculated a $4:$1 return on investment (ROI).
–https://ceowatermandate.org/files/4-Business-case-WASH-10-PRINT.pdf
-If you want proof that there’s a business case for water stewardship, look no further than the investment community
-Increasingly demanding that companies demonstrate awareness of water risk
-For example, through CDP, 650 investors with US$87 trillion in assets urge companies to both report their water-related risks and impacts, and to take action to mitigate them
-In addition to managing short and long term risk, water stewardship can directly save money
-For companies new to water stewardship, the payback period for initial water efficiency investments can be less than 1 year
-Diageo: reduced the volume of its water withdrawals by nearly 1 million cubic meters
-Cisco: introduced new soldering practice that reduced water use and wastewater
-opportunity to create products
-As we wrap up the water risk section, I want to emphasize, if you take one thing away from this presentation, it’s that the world water crisis creates real risk for businesses
-Again, not a philanthropy or charity action to create goodwill
-It’s about ensuring your business can continue operating and save costs in the process
Now that I have introduced why water stewardship is a crucial step for businesses, I want to discuss how businesses can begin to take action on water
-Every business is going to have its own unique water stewardship journey depending on the industry sector, suppliers, locations
-With that said, the CEO Water Mandate has developed this framework called the Water Stewardship Journey to show the major parts of a really strong water stewardship strategy
-To unpack this diagram, it illustrates the ideal range of water stewardship activities
-Starting at the left, actions around operations typically are a good starting place, as you move to the right, actions become more involved but more impactful
-Ensuring company’s own house is in order, from corporate offices, ag site, or manufacturing sites
-Establishes your company’s credibility when you engage with stakeholders, fellow businesses, and NGOs on water issues
-One important aspect of water challenges is that they are inherently local
-Climate is different. emissions reduction will have the same benefit regardless of where a company reduces emissions, so for companies the goal is to reduce their global emissions.
- For water the impacts and risks vary substantially by location. If you reduce water use only where water is abundant, it will have minimal impact.
- For water, really considering the location allows you to have the greatest impact.
-Risk assessment means understanding which of their operations are experiencing the most water stress and where to prioritize actions
-The goal is to prioritize where and how to act
– Integrating water stewardship into the business plan is about developing a comprehensive water stewardship strategy that is part of business, not as charity but as protecting business
-As I discussed, much of the risk companies face is not due to their own operations but to the context in which they’re operating. Engagement is about going beyond the fence line to work with other businesses, value chain partners, NGOs, and stakeholders to ensure water security in a watershed
-This is where the good work you have done within your fenceline will help establish credibility
-It’s crucial that throughout this process, a company’s understanding of its risks and approaches is done in dialogue with the stakeholders most affected.
-Ongoing process of communicating with and reporting to stakeholders
1.Endorsers commit to report annually and improve across the six commitment areas
This slide shows logos from a few Mandate endorsers — so you are in good company
- Endorsers commit to improve across the six commitment areas
- Every year, endorsers report on their efforts to the Mandate and stakeholders
-Separate from Action Platform
-New initiative launched this World Water Day, CEO-led coalition to preserve the world’s freshwater resources in the face of climate change through collective action in water-stressed basins by setting concrete, measurable targets to achieve by 2050
-The Mandate develops and hosts many resources and publications. This is just a selection
-In addition, the Mandate holds webinars, events, and conferences
-The Water Stewardship Toolbox offers filters to locate the most relevant resources
-As well as suggested collections of resources by topic
-The Water Stewardship University offers free classes to introduce stewardship topics
-The first course, Water Stewardship 101: The Basics, gives a brief intro to the most important water risks for businesses
-The Water Action Hub is a free global online platform for collaboration and knowledge-sharing
-Connect with other companies, NGOs, technology providers, and more
-This image shows one section of the map search with pins for different projects and organizations
-In summary, water stewardship can both achieve sustainable water management and strengthen your business
-It’s not a charity or philanthropic activity but a way to address short and long term risk
-The CEO Water Mandate can help you understand those risks and make a plan for action