Aqueduct | WRI Insights

Complementary Tools to Evaluate Water Risk and Response

Submitted by Betsy Otto on April 24, 2012

Around the world and throughout every sector of the economy, companies and investors are increasingly aware of risks associated with their dependence on fresh water. For example, a recent report by the Carbon Disclosure Project’s Water Disclosure branch looked at water-stressed South Africa and revealed that 85% of water-intensive companies in the country are exposed to water risks, with 70% expecting to face water impacts to their operations within the next five years.

A Proliferation of Tools

In response to the growing urgency of water risk, there has been a proliferation of tools, frameworks and surveys aiming to help companies, investors and others understand and respond to these water risks. The different tools and approaches provide a valuable diversity of expertise and a better understanding of the nature of water stress, but it is not always clear which tools should be used by whom, for what, and how they overlap or complement one another.

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Aqueduct News Roundup - Water is Important to a Variety of Audiences

Submitted by Robert Kimball on April 16, 2012

This edition of the Aqueduct News Roundup looks at recent articles and some wrap-up from World Water Day as well as the 6th World Water Forum in Marseille, France. The last several weeks have been exciting for Aqueduct, which introduced a streamlined new water risk mapping interface and comprehensive water risk maps for southern Africa’s Orange-Senqu basin,which are available online.

The stories in this edition of the Aqueduct News Roundup are focused on the growing importance of water to a wide variety of audiences, especially in the private sector.

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World Water Day: Understanding Water Risk

Submitted by Manish Bapna and Betsy Otto on March 22, 2012

It’s rare for water to make waves at the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering of business leaders and finance ministers.

But the most recent Davos summit was an exception. A new eye-opening report ranked water supply among the top five global risks in terms of impact– on par with systemic financial failure and fiscal imbalances.

As we mark World Water Day, the alarming statistics underlying water scarcity are worth repeating. Worldwide 2.7 billion people are currently affected by water shortages. As the global population races toward 8 billion and beyond, upward trends in food demand and economic growth promise to further strain freshwater resources, especially in the developing world. Climate change, of course, is exacerbating these water challenges.

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Aqueduct Brings Improved Water Risk Framework to World Water Forum

Submitted by Paul Reig on March 7, 2012

We are only a few days away from the world’s largest meeting around water: the World Water Forum. The Forum will take place this month in Marseille, France, with some 24,000 participants from the private and public sectors around the globe. There will be roughly 250 sessions and panels and 100 grassroots and citizenship events over six days. These events, and the audience of decision makers and experts attending them, provide an ideal context to showcase pioneering developments and solutions around water.

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Aqueduct News Roundup: The Importance of Water Data, and the Hidden Prices of Water Management

Submitted by Robert Kimball on February 27, 2012

The stories in this month’s Aqueduct News Roundup are focused on two central themes. The first theme is the importance of data in water management: February saw the introduction of compelling new data sets, as well as water users in the private and public sectors coming to grips with the importance (and difficulty) of acquiring good water data. The second theme is cost: several stories emerged in February that demonstrated the sometimes staggering price tags associated with water for governments and companies alike.

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Aqueduct Will Feature in World Water Forum’s “Village of Solutions”

Submitted by Robert Kimball on February 17, 2012

Last week Aqueduct was selected to be featured in the “Village of Solutions”, a collection of innovative new concepts in the world of water management that will be on display at the World Water Forum in Marseille, France.

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Aqueduct News Roundup: India, Trading on Water, Shareholder Challenges

Submitted by Robert Kimball on February 1, 2012

If you are a regular reader of news related to water risk, you may have seen data and observations from Aqueduct in several venues during the month of January. This is the first of a series of updates on news related to Aqueduct and the subject of water risk in general.

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Aqueduct and the Water-Food-Energy Nexus

Submitted by Charles Iceland on November 17, 2011

This piece was coauthored by: Joe Rozza, P.E., BCEE, Global Water Resource Sustainability Manager, The Coca-Cola Company; Greg Koch, Managing Director, Global Water Stewardship, The Coca-Cola Company; Jonathan Boright, Research Scientist, ISciences LLC; Nicole Grohoski, Research Analyst, ISciences LLC

The Aqueduct project is an effort to measure and map water related risks being developed by the World Resources Institute with the support of an alliance founded by General Electric and Goldman Sachs. As part of this effort, the Aqueduct team convened its hydrological modeling partner ISciences and experts from The Coca-Cola Company to develop and analyze a set of maps for the Bonn2011 Nexus conference that illustrate the complex relationships between water, food, and energy worldwide (see below).

Why focus on the water-food-energy nexus? Like water, food and energy are basic necessities of life that help support robust economies and stable political systems. Agriculture and power generation, moreover, account for the majority of water withdrawals in most developed countries.

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Aqueduct Partnership to Map Water Risks in Africa's Orange-Senqu Basin

Submitted by Paul Reig on November 2, 2011

Snaking across multiple international boundaries and supporting everything from villages and farms to industry and cities, the Orange-Senqu River is one of the most important natural resources in southern Africa. The complexity and significance of the Orange-Senqu basin made it a clear focus for the Aqueduct project, which aims to measure and map physical, reputational, and regulatory water risks in economically important river basins around the world.

With a prototype map for the Yellow River basin in China and global water stress maps completed, the World Resources Institute (WRI) is in the process of expanding its basin-level mapping into other basins around the world, including the Orange-Senqu.

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A Closer Look at Aqueduct's New Global Water Stress Maps

Submitted by Tien Shiao on October 3, 2011

The World Resources Institute and the Coca-Cola Company recently announced a partnership that made industry-leading global water risk maps publicly available for the first time. Coca-Cola has donated maps and data that they developed to help them towards the goal of understanding and managing their exposure to water risks in their facilities around the world. Through Aqueduct’s online water risk mapping platform, this information has been made accessible to the public in an interactive, easy-to-use platform.

Aqueduct’s new data from Coca-Cola takes the form of thirteen global maps that look at water stress, water reuse, and drought at a sub-basin level of geographic detail. This is a much more local perspective than existing water databases in the public domain, which tend to divide their maps at the country or basin level.

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