Why Your Company Needs a Water Strategy
If you head over to NYTimes.com today, you'll be confronted with a fairly horrifying picture of a polluted, sludge-filled Chinese river. The photo accompanies one of a series of articles on the environmental cost of China's rapid economic growth. It concludes that the ever increasing usage and pollution of the country's water supply will soon harm not only citizens' health but also economic growth.
You might think you only need to be concerned if you're an environmentalist, or if your supply chain runs back to China (and whose doesn't?), but a new report out this week from Business For Social Responsibility and the Pacifica Institute reveals that, with both population and industrialization rising steadily, water issues will soon be pressing across the globe. The report urges all businesses to formulate a corporate water strategy. Why?
As freshwater resources become ever more scarce or polluted, a global crisis in access to clean water is emerging. While this is most acutely felt in Africa and West Asia, a lack of freshwater is already an economic constraint in major growth markets like China, India, and Indonesia, as well as commercial centers in Australia and the western United States. According to the United Nations, if present consumption patterns continue, two-thirds of the world's population will live in water-stressed conditions by the year 2025.The report urges companies to conduct a "water footprint" assessment, looking not only at direct operations but also at the water situation down the supply chain, as well as at product distribution and usage. Armed with this knowledge, companies can mitigate the risks of either too much or too little water in all the various areas of their business. The Global Environmental Management Initiative offers a water planning tool for free download to help businesses get started.
(Image of dirty glass of water by Wespionage, CC 2.0)