Water Stewardship
Developing practices that promote the equitable and sustainable management of water resources
Activating Water Sustainability
Increasing population and economic growth, as well as shifting consumption patterns, caused global water use to increase sixfold over the past century, growing at about 1% per year. 2030 global water demand is now expected to outstrip supply by 56%, a 40% increase over the 40% gap projected ten years ago.
Why Now?
Climate change is further exacerbating these global water scarcity challenges, and is also contributing to degraded water quality, increased flooding events, and the lack of access to drinking water and sanitation.
In response, businesses must develop water stewardship strategies that manage risk, cut costs, and build trust while promoting long-term water security.
A robust water stewardship strategy:
- Improves water management
- Mitigates risk through the value chain
- Identifies new opportunities to increase value through innovation
- Builds better community relationships to foster collective action.
The Water Stewardship Journey at Anthesis
| Value Chain Water Footprinting & Accounting |  |
At Anthesis, the typical client begins their water stewardship journey with value chain water footprinting & accounting to better understand water-related impacts across business operations. |
| Value Chain Water Risk Assessment | |
Next, they complete a value chain water risk assessment to assess their physical, reputational, and regulatory risks, and identify associated mitigation options. |
| Water Goal & Target Setting | |
After these steps have been completed, our water experts help set context-based water goals & targets that are integrated into a larger water strategy and roadmap. |
| Implementation | |
Finally, clients are given the tools to help their water stewardship strategy and meet the targets associated with their goals. |
Anthesis’ Strategic Approach
Anthesis views the water stewardship journey as an aggregation of many mutually supportive activities and concepts, including operational performance improvement, risk & opportunity assessment, benchmarking, target & goal setting, stakeholder engagement, governance, reporting & disclosure, and value chain performance improvement.
These activities do not represent an exhaustive list, but rather offer key considerations to minimize risk and deliver social, economic, and environmental benefits. Developing an appropriate and effective water stewardship strategy is very much an iterative process, often jumping back and forth between the various activities.
Our Water Stewardship Services
Anthesis offers the following comprehensive water stewardship and strategy development services.
Anthesis also works to integrate water-related insights into a client’s broader sustainability strategy to maximise resource efficiency and minimise environmental and social impacts.
- Water Footprinting
- Water Accounting
- Stakeholder Engagement
- Supplier Surveys
- Inventory Management Plans
- Hot Spot Analysis
- Water Data Review
- Data Illustrations and Tools
- Benchmarking & Materiality
- Risk Assessments
- Water Stewardship Strategy
- Goal & Target Setting
- Water Stewardship Implementation
