Where Mandatory Reporting and Water Stewardship Meet
5 takeaways from a new whitepaper on the connections between CSRD & Positive Water Impact (PWI)
9 March 2026
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Water scarcity, declining water quality, and inequitable access to freshwater and sanitation are accelerating globally, intensified by climate change, population growth, and competing demands across water users. For companies, these pressures translate into operational disruption, regulatory exposure, supply chain instability, reputational risks, and rising costs. What was once treated as a local environmental issue is now appearing as a material, enterprise-wide business risk that spans operations, value chains, and communities.
At the same time, expectations around corporate water stewardship are evolving rapidly. Companies are facing mandatory disclosure requirements and rising stakeholder expectations, most notably the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). These expectations and requirements are further reinforced by voluntary corporate water stewardship best practice guidance such as Positive Water Impact (PWI), a framework championed by the CEO Water Mandate’s Water Resilience Coalition. This landscape can feel fragmented – but navigating it doesn’t have to be.
The solution: aligning compliance with impact
A recent deep dive by Anthesis Group and the Pacific Institute’s CEO Water Mandate and Water Resilience Coalition led to the development of The CSRD-PWI Crosswalk, a white paper demonstrating that mandated regulatory reporting and meaningful water stewardship are not separate efforts. Instead, the two are strategically aligned:
- CSRD* establishes a robust reporting foundation requiring companies above a specific size threshold that deem water a material risk to identify, assess, and report on material water-related impacts, risks, opportunities, dependencies, governance, and performance.
- PWI provides the implementation pathway guiding companies to move beyond risk identification and mitigation—toward measurable, basin-level, positive water outcomes across water availability, quality, and access.
*Note: CSRD guidance was under revision at the time of the white paper’s publication, which reflects the CSRD requirements as of October 2025. This crosswalk is designed as a living document and will be updated as CSRD and its specific disclosure requirements continue to evolve. While after the Omnibus changes of February 2026, fewer companies will be required to report and the level of granularity has been significantly reduced, the key insights of how CSRD’s water-related disclosures align with the PWI framework remain.
Together, these frameworks enable companies to shift their focus from reporting on water risk to actively building water resilience for both their business and the river basins they depend on for their sourcing, manufacturing, operations, and customers.
The crosswalk was created to help companies:
- Use CSRD as a foundation, not a ceiling, for water stewardship ambition
- Avoid duplicative effort between CSRD reporting and voluntary water initiatives
- Operationalise PWI by leveraging the same water-related data, governance, and processes already required by CSRD
- Strengthen credibility of water targets, actions, and investments with regulators, investors, and other key stakeholders.
Our 5 key takeaways
These five themes illustrate where CSRD and PWI intersect – and how companies can use that alignment to drive stronger water outcomes:
1. CSRD and PWI are complementary, not competing
The analysis demonstrates strong alignment between CSRD’s water-related disclosure requirements and PWI’s five implementation steps, particularly around water risk assessment, baseline setting, target setting, and performance measurement. Companies do not need to choose between allocating effort to regulatory compliance and taking steps toward water stewardship, as actions to pursue one align with the other. For example, CSRD requests disclosures of processes like identifying and prioritising water-related risks and opportunities, evaluating water impacts of operations, and integrating water considerations into core business strategies. These are all essential building blocks of the PWI journey as well.
2. CSRD provides the “what”; PWI provides the “how”
CSRD defines what companies must disclose, such as material water risks, impacts, policies, actions, and metrics. It aims to ensure that companies disclose relevant sustainability information in a structured, consistent, and comparable manner. PWI outlines how companies should assess and act upon that information, whether prioritising sites and basins, engaging stakeholders, investing in solutions, or tracking outcomes. By linking both, PWI helps facilitate the translation of reporting into implementation.
3. Water stewardship is shifting from sites to basins
Both frameworks reinforce the need to move beyond isolated facility-level actions. Effective water stewardship requires a basin-level perspective, collective action, and engagement with affected communities, with a particular focus on water-stressed regions. PWI’s basin focus directly aligns with CSRD disclosures related to basin water risk, resilience, and social impact.
4. CSRD’s data and governance can unlock greater impacts
The data systems, controls, and governance structures required under CSRD, such as double materiality assessments and water accounting, are the same foundational aspects needed to scale PWI effectively. Companies can leverage regulatory readiness to accelerate meaningful water stewardship – and vice versa – rather than starting from the ground-up.
5. Compliance as a competitive advantage
When CSRD is treated as a strategic input rather than a reporting burden, companies can develop a future-proofed water strategy, align science-based and nature-related frameworks, strengthen investor confidence, and demonstrate credible action and even leadership for water stewardship.
Turning obligation into transformative water impact
Water risk is no longer seen as a peripheral topic. Companies across sectors are increasingly recognising that access to sufficient clean water is critical to build business resilience across their value chains. The CSRD-PWI Crosswalk demonstrates how companies can connect compliance, strategy, and impact through an integrated approach to water stewardship.
Anthesis can support organisations across this journey, from CSRD reporting readiness and technical water stewardship support, to developing PWI-aligned water strategy, target-setting, tactical roadmaps, and basin engagement approaches. To address these shared water challenges, companies must move beyond treating water stewardship as a reporting exercise and toward active, implementable action that delivers long-term value for business, communities, and freshwater systems.
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