The post New horizons – Building a resilient water future appeared first on The Source.
]]>‘Water Horizons 2025: Transforming Utilities for a Resilient, Net Zero Future’ is a new conference on the IWA calendar, taking place on 24-25 September in London, UK. Organised by IWA Conferences Ltd, this event will bring together global leaders in the water sector to explore the latest innovations and strategies for building resilient, sustainable water utilities, with a particular focus on opportunities for technology, digital transformation, and regulatory compliance.
“The technological opportunities for digital water are exploding but there are still challenges in taking them from research and practice through to implementation,” says Janelcy Alferes, who is R&D project leader monitoring technology and digital water, WaterKlimaatHub – VITO, Belgium, and Chair of IWA’s Specialist Group on Instrumentation, Control and Automation (ICA). “This conference will be a great platform to discuss this.”
Facilitating the digital transformation
IWA is playing an important role in this, and Water Horizons 2025 is the latest part of the Association’s drive to help water practitioners grasp the very best that digital technologies can offer to deliver sustainable, smart, efficient water systems.
“IWA is already doing a lot to facilitate this,” says Alferes. “They really recognise the value of digital solutions and how they can support many aspects of water management.” She references IWA’s impressive Digital Programme, the three editions of IWA Digital Water Summits in Bilbao, Spain, and IWA’s Specialist Groups that are promoting the use of digital solutions. She says: “There is a lot of support for really pushing the idea of finding digital solutions to improve our water systems. And there is increasing interest in finding synergies between different Specialist Groups.” As Chair of IWA’s Specialist Group on ICA, she is very conscious of the potential for IWA’s membership to come together to develop opportunities and enhance the role and power of existing and emerging technologies.
Advanced technologies
Focusing on how water utilities can future-proof their services while advancing their climate and carbon goals, Water Horizons 2025 will open with the theme of ‘Technology opportunities, digital transformation, and the regulatory horizon’. This first day of the two-day programme will explore how utilities are embracing advanced technologies – from AI and IoT to smart water networks and digital twins – to drive operational efficiency, compliance, and system resilience. The second day will build on the theme of day one, focusing on ‘Building resilient water systems and advancing net zero solutions’ shifting the focus to implementation and how utilities can apply innovation to reduce emissions and build low-carbon, circular water systems.
Alferes explains that she sees Water Horizons 2025 as an opportunity to look at the new technologies that are currently available and focus on how they can be used most effectively to improve water systems and the management of water resources in applications across drinking water, wastewater and industrial processes. “It’s about how to make use of the technology,” she explains. “I’ll cover different aspects ranging from sensors to digital twins to support tools and how to bring those tools forward to help support decision-making.”
Stakeholder engagement
Alferes also highlights the importance of collaboration between stakeholders and the need to avoid looking at water in isolation. She says: “If we are to face the challenges that we have today and those that we will have tomorrow, we really need to consider water as a part of our ecosystems, and to consider the important links between water and energy, food and agriculture. We can’t just consider water in a silo. We need to collaborate with the different stakeholders – with the water utilities, the technology providers, researchers, and the community and municipalities. It is important to take into account the different parts of the puzzle.”
Alferes says that there are still gaps that need to be bridged to enable digital water to be as effective as it can be and much of that is to do with taking research from theory into practice and facilitating cross-sector collaboration and learning. “There are still some gaps that need to be bridged,” she says. “We need efforts to be made in different directions, but I think that we are going along the right track. My interest is in helping to bridge these gaps and enabling research and innovation to be applicable in practice.”
Water Horizons 2025 provides the ideal opportunity whether you are starting out on your net zero journey or looking to network and share experiences with others building resilience into their systems to future-proof a water sector facing the challenges of climate change, urbanisation, and increasing population and consumption. The challenges may be great, but if we work smarter the rewards will be too. Join us at ‘Water Horizons 2025: Transforming Utilities for a Resilient, Net Zero Future’ to be part of this transformation.
More information
Visit https://www.waterhorizonsevents.org/home?event-key=wh2025 to find out more about ‘Water Horizons 2025: Transforming Utilities for a Resilient, Net Zero Future’.
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]]>The post Government to fast-track Independent Water Commission proposals appeared first on The Source.
]]>This is one of five recommendations from the IWC to be fast-tracked by the government – including the creation of a real-time sewage map with automatic data, giving more power to campaigners and environment groups over the clean-up of local rivers, and the creation of regional water boards with powers to clean up rivers and seas locally, and plan essential infrastructure.
In the biggest overhaul of the country’s water sector since privatisation, the new water regulator will take responsibility of water functions across those previously administered by Ofwat (the Water Services Regulation Authority), the Environment Agency, Natural England, and the Drinking Water Inspectorate, bringing the sector’s economic, environmental and drinking water regulation under one body.
The Commission’s proposals will be consulted on this autumn and form the basis of a new Water Reform Bill.
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]]>The post Report calls for immediate action to mitigate snow decline in Hindu Kush Himalaya appeared first on The Source.
]]>The ‘2025 Snow Update Report’ published by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Nepal, finds that the region experienced its third consecutive below-normal snow year in 2025, with snow persistence (the fraction of time snow is on the ground after snowfall) falling to a 23-year record low of -23.6%.
With nearly two billion people across 12 major river basins relying on seasonal snowmelt from the region, the report’s authors are calling for immediate targeted actions towards adaptive water resource management at basin-level to mitigate impacts on agriculture, hydropower generation, and other vital ecosystem services.
The report finds the most concerning declines in snow persistence impacting the Mekong (-51.9%) and Salween (-48.3%) basins, followed by the Tibetan Plateau (-29.1%), the Brahmaputra (-27.9%), Yangtze (-26.3%), and the Ganges (-24.1%) basins.
The report highlights the need for adaptive infrastructure, including seasonal storage systems, water efficiency measures, national preparedness and response plans, along with national water strategies for hydropower, agriculture, and allied sectors, and a strengthening of evidence-based decision-making and sectoral coordination.
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]]>The post Digital data analysis – the devil is in the detail appeared first on The Source.
]]>When we think about the digital transformation of the global water industry, we immediately start to jump to concepts such as digital twins, 3D physical models, and, of course, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. All of these technologies and their adoption into the mainstream are important as we move to a modern water industry. However, underpinning all of these technologies, to a greater or lesser extent, is data.
Data transformation
For me, the fundamental start to any data transformation journey (although this has been an unpopular opinion in the past) is stakeholder engagement. From the CEO of a water operating utility to the frontline operatives and technicians, there is a need for data and situational awareness – an understanding of how everything is operating from the grand scale of the whole utility to the individual scale of a single treatment works or pumping station.
Nowadays, in a water utility environment, all of this data is pushed into a data lake, or whatever data repository you choose (lake, pond, ocean, have all been touted). I believe the distinction is the size of data you have and whether it has been structured or is unstructured. This last point of whether the data is structured or unstructured is the important one here, and was the subject of an IWA project on meta-data that was concluded earlier in 2024.
Meta-data collection
IWA’s Meta-Data Collection and Organization (MetaCO) Task Group, led by Kris Villez, aimed to describe a number of data models – i.e., structured approaches to the management and storage of meta-data – that have been deployed successfully in recent years. In addition, its scientific and technical report included:
Meta-data collection will be essential to underpin the data lakes that are currently being proposed within the industry or are actively growing in size – giving the data the structure that it needs to be used effectively in a number of different applications.
Streamlining and accessibility
The industry as a whole has been brilliant at collecting data for a single purpose, but when a single piece of data is needed for multiple purposes – and potentially in multiple different databases or models – this is when things historically became unstuck. As the industry’s collection of data is increasing significantly, the lack of meta-data becomes a significantly larger problem as we enter the realms of big data.
UK duration monitoring programme
An example of this is the event duration monitoring programme in the UK and how it ties in with different datasets. Between 2014 and 2022, around 14,000 event duration monitors were installed on combined storm overflows. However, some of these were within the wastewater network and some were on the overflows from storm tanks.
The UK is moving – from a regulatory point of view – to install monitors on overflows to storm tanks, along with monitors on emergency overflows, in addition to flow meters measuring compliance with flow to treatment conditions across the country. This is on top of the water quality monitors that are going to be installed up- and downstream of all overflows to the environment.
From a non-regulatory perspective, the water companies are also using sensing and machine learning to look at wastewater network performance and blockages, with data coming in from tens of thousands of sensors.
What is not available currently is a system to join together all of this data so that it may be operated in a logical way. This, for example, could include sewer network level monitors working with regulatory event duration monitors to give an idea of the situational awareness of network performance – something that is happening with suppliers, however. In addition, current network performance indicators could work with the front end monitoring of wastewater treatment works in a way that is compatible with the water quality monitoring that is going to be installed over the coming decade.
By bringing this data together with models of the wastewater network, treatment works and the riverine environment, we would have a very powerful tool to not only monitor the performance of wastewater systems, but also their impact on riverine environments.
Underpinning the success of this is the availability and quality of the data – a subject that was addressed in the MetaCO scientific and technical report, ‘Digital Water: The value of meta-data for water resource recovery facilities’, which adds to other IWA work undertaken on this subject.
Garbage in, garbage out
We have all heard, or even potentially used, the phrase ‘Garbage In, Garbage Out’. It was a phrase that was first used by William Mellin in the 1950s when the majority of instrumentation within the water industry was still mechanical. (Gustaf Olsson’s book, ICA and me, provides an insightful history of the development of instrumentation, control and automation [ICA] in water and wastewater.)
Mellin highlighted that if you put poor quality data into a computerised system, you will, of course, get garbage out – the computerised system will not realise what is and what is not useable data. For an industry that is increasingly using machine learning and trying to make sense of huge datasets to garner insights, poor quality data would make it impossible to see the wood for the trees.
While it may be laudable to collect data for the sake of collecting data, in reality there is a cost to gathering data, and if the value of that data is not recognised, then its collection will not be maintained. This point has been highlighted by an IWA Digital Water Programme White Paper on digital transformation and instrumentation, ‘Digital Water: The role of Instrumentation in Digital Transformation’, which proposed the concept of the instrumentation life-cycle.
Instrumentation life-cycle
The first part of the life-cycle asks the user to define the ‘instrumentation need’ – or, taking it up a step, the ‘data need’. If the need for the instrument is understood and the data that it provides has a value higher than its cost, then the data quality should be ensured.
Understanding uncertainty
The next step is to understand the uncertainty associated with the data, which was a subject that was covered in another IWA Digital Water Programme White Paper, ‘Measurement Uncertainty in Digital Transformation’, published in early 2024.
Next steps to digital transformation
As the water industry transforms digitally, ‘digital tools’ are going to help the sector address global challenges and targets – most importantly, the acceleration of the drive to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 6, access to safe water and sanitation for all.
To manage water effectively, the industry as a whole needs to adopt the concepts that digital water offers. But we need to get the fundamentals right and ensure that the data collected is accurate and in a format that can be used. For this to be achieved, we need to garner the situational awareness to which I referred, to ensure data quality and understand its limitations through our knowledge of measurement uncertainty, so that we know what the data is for and where it fits into the system as a whole. Only by doing this will the water industry apply meta-data effectively.
More information
Digital Water: The value of meta-data for water resource recovery facilities, iwa-network.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/IWA_2021_Meta-data_IWA.pdf
Olsson, G., ICA and me – A subjective review. Water Research (2012),46, (6), 1585-1624
See: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0043135411008487?via%3Dihub
Digital Water: The role of Instrumentation in Digital Transformation,
iwa-network.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IWA_2020_Instrumentation_WEB.pdf
Measurement Uncertainty in Digital Transformation,
iwa-network.org/publications/digital-water-measurement-uncertainty-in-digital-transformation
The author: Oliver Grievson is an Associate Director at the global engineering consultancy AtkinsRéalis and a Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor of Digital Water at the University of Exeter. He is also Chair of IWA’s Digital Water Programme.
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]]>The post EEA report finds Europe’s water bodies fall short of water quality targets appeared first on The Source.
]]>The report, Europe’s state of water 2024: the need for improved water resilience, finds that in 2021 approximately 37% of Europe’s surface waters qualified as having at least a good ecological status, with just 29% achieving a good chemical status. This is despite the EU introducing water management rules to improve the quality of Europe’s water bodies over nearly 25 years. Falling short of the target set to be achieved for the quality of European water bodies by 2015, the deadline has now been extended to 2027.
The report found agriculture had the biggest impact on Europe’s surface water and groundwater through extraction and the pollution of water sources. The report also found coal-fired power plants to be significant polluters of water sources.
The authors of the report found the continent’s groundwater was in better condition than its surface water, with 91% rated as having at least a good quantitative status and 77% achieving a good chemical status. However, on both metrics, groundwater quality had only improved by 1% since 2015.
Solutions suggested by the EEA to improve the quality of Europe’s water bodies include demand reduction measures, the release of fewer harmful substances, and river and wetland restoration. The authors of the report highlighted the increased urgency to act in response to the extreme weather events that have impacted Europe, including the devastating floods across central Europe in September.
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]]>The post On the agenda at the SIWW Water Convention 2024 appeared first on The Source.
]]>The Water Convention at Singapore International Water Week is a platform for gathering professionals and technology providers from around the world to share their knowledge, practical experiences, and novel technologies to address current and emerging water challenges.
The inaugural Water Convention in 2008 came to fruition through a collaboration between IWA and PUB, Singapore’s National Water Agency. Co-chair of the Water Convention Programme Committee since 2009 and involved in the Programme Committee from its foundation in 2008, Darryl Day explains that collaboration between IWA and PUB has been key to the Water Convention’s success.
He says: “Because it is a partnership with IWA, we draw from the IWA family – the Ieaders of the Specialist Groups within IWA, and the thought leaders across IWA – and PUB brings a great network from the utilities, in particular, utilities from the region. It’s a match made in heaven.
“We work to bring together a programme that addresses solutions for the region, along with the emerging issues that are keeping water leaders, academics and policymakers awake at night. So, we are looking to the solutions we need today and into the future.”
Rising to the fast pace of change
Timeliness is key to any event programme, as Day acknowledges, explaining: “When we were framing the 2024 programme, we were conscious of the velocity of our changing climate. The pace of climate change is continuing to surprise us. The evidence is becoming more alarming in terms of both the impact and the urgency to have solutions for mitigation and adaptation, and coming to understand what resilience looks like. What does water security look like when you have less rainfall, higher temperatures, increased evaporation, rising sea levels?”
“This year for the first time we have introduced an expanded focus on flood and coastal resilience. We’ve been really progressive, looking at what the cities of the future will be like – water sensitive cities, sustainable solutions, the systems approach, how machine-learning can provide decision-making tools.
“We’ve recognised that many cities around the world are really challenged and concerned about rising sea levels and what that means for water supply and sanitation. The solutions will take decades to develop, and we need to start today.
“The focus in Singapore will be: What do we need to be doing? What are the research questions we need answers to? What are the practices that are emerging that we can learn from? Who needs to be working together and collaborating to find solutions? This is critical, because adaptation will be expensive, and we need to develop long-term, strategic solutions that embrace the needs of local communities.”
One Health
In addition to the expanded focus on flood and coastal resilience, a further new introduction to the programme agenda is the theme of Water Quality and One Health, an approach that recognises that the health of people is closely connected to the health determinates of our shared environment.
“We have a theme that from the start looked at those challenging issues related to water quality and health,” explains Day. “We are now taking a step back and looking at a systems approach to One Health, which brings together the health of the environment and water quality and considers what a systems approach can tell us there.”
One important element to this, will be a hot issues workshop focused on PFAS, a chemical challenge which is in the news almost constantly, and has gained increased momentum with the announcement of new guidelines for ‘forever chemicals’ in the USA, amidst concerns over the potentially carcinogenic nature of these pollutants.
“’Forever chemicals’ have become ubiquitous in some environments,” says Day. “Our understanding of them is critical to any discussions regarding water quality and health.”
Also featuring under the water quality and health agenda will be the challenge of antimicrobial resistance. “Antimicrobial resistant drugs entering our environment have become another key issue,” says Day, “especially when considering One Health.”
Sustainable solutions
Introduced into the Water Convention Programme in 2022, the water-energy nexus and the circular economy remain strong themes, along with digital innovation, machine-learning, and the challenges of cyber security.
Day says: “We have countries in the region such as Singapore, Japan, Korea, and Australia that are world leaders in the sector, but there are also countries in the region that have challenges due to lack of infrastructure. So, there will be the opportunity for these countries to consider what they can take away from the Water Convention and what their development path might be.”
Day concludes: “We already have areas that are unserved or underserved in terms of clean, safe drinking water and sanitation. Climate change is going to make that worse. The Water Convention will provide a dynamic environment to determine solutions and actions to meet the sustainable development goals, with the 2030 deadline just down the road.”
More information:
https://www.siww.com.sg/home
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]]>The post Five cities chosen to develop water resilience framework appeared first on The Source.
]]>Amman, Cape Town, Mexico City, Greater Miami and the Beaches, and Hull were selected because they represent the range of water challenges facing cities around the world. With the exception of Hull, each city is a member of 100 Resilient Cities–pioneered by The Rockefeller Foundation.
“More than 60 percent of the applicants to 100 Resilient Cities identified water as a chief risk–either having too much or too little of it,” Andrew Salkin, Senior Vice President of City Solutions at 100 Resilient Cities, told The Source. “We’ve seen the extreme disruption that can accompany a city’s operations. Adding a resilience lens to water management is therefore an essential component of addressing chronic stresses and/or quickly responding to acute shocks. Resilience thinking keeps large threats like hurricanes or sea level rise in mind when planning, zoning, and investing on an ongoing basis.”
The cities were selected because of their diversity in terms of population size, geographic location and economic status, as well as their commitment to taking a strategic approach to resilience.
As part of this partnership, the project will explore each city’s specific water concerns through field research and stakeholder interviews. Data and findings will be used to establish qualitative and quantitative indicators to measure city water resilience, for use in any city anywhere. The resulting City Water Resilience Framework will be a global standard for water resilience, which enables cities to diagnose challenges related to water and utilise that information to inform planning and investment decisions.
“A changing climate coupled with rapid urbanisation is increasing the frequency of water related crises facing cities,” said Mark Fletcher, Arup Global Water Leader. “Increasingly, unpredictable rainfall, flooding and droughts are impacting cities across their water cycle. By understanding a wide range of issues, being played out in different contexts, we will be able to help all cities to understand how to assess the risks they are facing, and how to prioritise action and investments to become more resilient.”
A steering group is overseeing the development framework with representatives from The Rockefeller Foundation, 100 Resilient Cities, the World Bank, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Alliance for Global Water Adaptation and The Resilience Shift.
“Having a global framework for water resilience means that any city facing similar challenges can tap into lessons learned and best practices proven effective around the world,” added Salkin. “A framework will allow cities to begin understanding their challenges and systems using a similar language and approach. It allows for common conversations, enabling cities to speak the same language, share ideas, and implement ideas more quickly.”
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]]>The post Indian students win industry water prize appeared first on The Source.
]]>A national team of students from India have won the Xylem Water Prize 2017. Presented at the 14th annual International Junior Science Olympiad (IJSO) in the Netherlands, the theme of 2017’s IJSO was Water and Sustainability.
Team India’s video was deemed the winner for incorporating the three key elements to reduce, reuse, and recycle through the team’s floating solar-powered desalination plant. They were presented with a certificate and an iPad. To enter, invited participating students had to produce a video answering the question, ‘How do you solve water?’ All submissions were evaluated for impact, clarity, creativity and innovation by an international judging panel.
“The threats to our water resources have never been greater, but, increasingly, there are sustainable solutions to these challenges driven by advanced technologies,” said Patrick Decker, President and Chief Executive Officer of Xylem. “This is the next generation of the world’s problem-solvers and innovators and they won’t let their thinking or curiosity be constrained by the traditional models of the past.”
The 14th International Junior Science Olympiad was organised by the IJSO 2017 Foundation. During the competition, students were tested on their knowledge and skills in physics, biology and chemistry. The 2017 theme of Water and Sustainability’ was particularly fitting for the Netherlands–a nation that pioneered smart water management for generations.
“We find that one of the biggest obstacles and impediments to helping solve the water issue is education and awareness,” added Decker. “The fact that these teenagers are so excited by this cause and if I could capture that energy and that awareness and spread that across the planet, we’d solve water tomorrow.”
More than 300 students aged 15 years or younger from 50 different countries tested their scientific knowledge and skills in the competition.
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]]>The post Can heavenly words calm secular tempers in disputes over water? appeared first on The Source.
]]>The ancients knew water could be synonymous with conflict. So as scarcity elevated risks of thirst, hunger, and political instability, they began to engineer useful technology: pumps, pipes, dams, dikes, canals, qanat, aqueducts, and aflaj.
Physical infrastructure alone was rarely sufficient. So civilisations also wove the language of peaceful coexistence into the religious fabric of society. It is this latter resilient, cohesive ‘belief structure’ to which Aaron T. Wolf has devoted his professional career, and has now distilled into a slender book.
“Water management is conflict management,” he writes, “and our western model of conflict resolution is based heavily on rationality and economics. Most actual processes of dispute resolution rely on identifying shared values and developing a process for dialogue, not just for the apparent issue at hand, but for the underlying, often non-water issues as well.”
The Spirit of Dialogue, is certainly timely. In the last century, population growth, wealth inequality and pollution all combined to escalate water stress and ‘us versus them’ polarisation. Yet as predictions of ‘water wars’ reached a fever peak on the international stage, Wolf, a geography professor at Oregon State University, calmly debunked it, carefully documenting at the end of the 20th Century how, across the millennia, water was itself never a cassus belli, or trigger provoking war.
Not yet anyway, caution doubting critics. But Wolf remains devoted to the school of Thomas Aquinas, fusing and reconciling the divergent traditions of reason and spirituality into one coherent reality. He embraces enlightenment thinking, but knows science is “not enough” since human dynamics are shaped by larger emotional and linguistic forces. His synthesis here–part ‘how-to’ instruction manual, part ‘why-do’ digressions that draw on scripture–seeks to ease tension at interpersonal or international levels.
A strength is that the author preaches what he’s practised. Wolf draws on decades of experiences spent mitigating conflict, efforts that include workshops on the river Colombia among indigenous tribes; discussions on the Ganges with ecological activists and on the river Jordan with Israelis and Palestinians; and workshops on the Nile and Mekong with national security officials from riparian states.
Somehow he seems to have emerged from tedious negotiations as not just another scarred, bitter, jaded cynic too often seen propping up hotel bars at water confabs. If anything, they left him invigorated, due in large part to his interpretation of ‘faith traditions’.
“Both faith and water ignore separations and boundaries,” he writes. “Thus, they offer vehicles for bringing people together, and because they touch all we do and experience, they also suggest a language by which we may discuss our common future.”
Secular water professionals may counter-suggest they already have a common tongue, one measured in rational cubic metres, fluid dynamics, parts per billion, laws of nanotechnology, or kilogrammes pressure per square centimetre.
Yet surely it can’t hurt to learn (or relearn) this second language, shared by billions, which explains at the deepest levels of human consciousness why water purifies the soul (Christianity), water is sacred (Hinduism), water is symbolic of life (Judaism), water brings clarity and calmness (Buddism), and ‘sharia’ derives from ancient Arabic peaceful guidelines, or ‘the way to water’ (Islam).
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]]>The post Global food companies ranked on water risk management appeared first on The Source.
]]>Ceres, a sustainability nonprofit organisation, has ranked the 42 largest global food and beverage companies–nearly all US-based–on how effectively they are responding to water dependence, water security and operational water use efficiency.
Feeding Ourselves Thirsty: Tracking Food Company Progress Toward a Water-Smart Future, compares the companies to its first report released in 2015. It calls on major food companies to reduce the impacts of a warming climate–on both the global water supply and on their bottom lines–by adopting stronger practices to use limited fresh water resources more efficiently. It says that climate change is one of the biggest risks facing the US$5 trillion food industry.
“Smart water management is a business imperative for food companies, as the impacts of climate change and water scarcity and pollution accelerate around the world,” said Brooke Barton, Senior Director of Water and Food at Ceres, who co-authored the report. “Some corporate leaders are making strong progress, but the majority must do more to water-proof their businesses to protect and sustain our water supplies.”
Companies were divided into four industry categories: packaged food, beverage, agricultural products and meat, and analysed against actions in four categories of water risk management. The top scoring companies, out of a possible score of 100, by industry were: Nestlé (Packaged Food) 82 up from 64 in 2015; Coca-Cola (Beverage) 72 up from 67 in 2015; Smithfield Foods (Meat) 33 no change from 2015; and Olam (Agricultural Products) 49, which was not part of the 2015 analysis.
The report found a 10 percent improvement in the average score of the food sector’s management of water risk since 2015. The packaged food and meat industries made the biggest gains in improvement at 16 and 20 percent, respectively. However, the average score for the 42 companies benchmarked was still only 31 points and despite big gains, the meat and agricultural products industries continue to lag far behind the packaged food and beverage industries.
The analysis notes that the food sector is highly vulnerable to climate change impacts.
“Over 70 percent of the world’s irrigated land faces water shortage either chronically, seasonally, or during dry periods, and that means our food supplies are at risk,” said Kate A Brauman, Lead Scientist, University of Minnesota Global Water Initiative. “Food companies need to step up sustainable management of water resources, including by working collaboratively with their agricultural suppliers.”
The analysis found that, overall, companies need to improve most on governance and board oversight, wastewater management, integrating water risk into procurement processes and collaboration to protect watersheds.
“More than 85 percent of our water footprint is from growing and transporting crops, and turning those crops into food ingredients,” said Jerry Lynch, Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer at General Mills, a packaged food manufacturer. “This underscores the role we must play to address water stewardship issues in our agricultural supply chain. We continue to identify opportunities to increase efficiency and conservation upstream of our operations, which is where we can have the most impact.”
The report used publicly available data from annual reports, sustainability reports and the CDP Global Water Report.
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