The closing plenary of the World Water Week
earlier today got us extremely energized – which is no easy task on the last
day of a very intense and busy week. Peter
Bakker, President of the WBCSD, underlined that water is the language the planet uses to talk to us. Any crisis you
look at, be it the melting of the arctic ice, floods, droughts, increasing food
prices, everything is related to water. Speaking to an audience of practitioners, academics, businesses, young people and many others, he made a very strong call to action: to address this crisis we need to scale
up solutions. Business is ready and business has examples. But for powerful scaling
up we need to collaborate. Next year’s water theme is collaboration. WBCSD will
be a committed partner in the effort to bring business solutions to the game.
Listen to him in the following video:
The unsustainable use of water and the risks it creates is on
the minds of many of the thousands of water experts from the corporate, NGO,
and government worlds who convened in Stockholm this week for World Water Week. As companies increasingly view
water as not just an environmental issue, but a complex driver of very real risks to their businesses, the
appetite for better information on how to manage these risks and become good
water stewards has grown substantially. In fact, many organizations have put
tremendous effort into developing tools and methodologies and compiling the
best publicly available water information so that companies can manage their
water use in sustainable, efficient, and equitable ways.
Listen to the call for 2013 nominations
for the Stockholm Industry Water Award by Liese Dallbauman, PepsiCo’s Director
for Water Stewardship.
This year, the Stockholm Industry
Water Award was received by the global food and beverage
company PepsiCo to rewarad major reductions in water consumption in its
production, and extended commitment beyond the company’s own operations to help
solve water challenges on a broad scale.
Any company today can use different tools
to identify water related risks in a given location and get different results
from each of them. Yesterday’s seminar “Towards sustainability: harmonizing
water tools for better water governance” convened by the WBCSD, WRI and WFN, was a
first step towards addressing this situation. Indeed, coordination efforts and
open communication between several organizations are needed to support private
and public players in better addressing sustainable water management.
Receiving the 2012 Stockholm Industry Water Award in
the name of PepsiCo, Sanjeev Chadha, President for Middle East and Africa, noted
that if one company can make very significant contribution to water efficiency
and preservation, community programs, strategic engagement and more, the
potential power that thousands of corporations can unleash is limitless. More
proactive, more progressive collaboration - he added - lies in the heart and
minds of people. We need to genuinely want it, and do it. Together.
PepsiCo’s example supports the fact that solutions
are there and best practices need to inform policy. Concepts have been proven. This
was at the heart of the discussion during the business founders’ seminar today
which brought together companies, policy-makers and NGOs, to explore more
efficient ways of collaboration. The conclusion is that we need to collectively
break down internal and external barriers that prevent us from taking existing
- and demonstrated – solutions to scale. Be they political, financial, or
cultural, these barriers should not be an excuse for hiding behind the walls of
our silos. The business community needs to be creative and governments need to
dare. Policies and planning are made under great risk and uncertainty. Rules
of the game are the same for all. Trust can only be built on performance.
Close your eyes and imagine the
world in 2050. 9 billion people have access to food, water, good hygiene, clean
toilets, energy, health care, education, transportation, communication
technology and all other essential goods and services. Ecosystem services are
valued and accounted for. Sustainable solutions have been developed, after
major innovations took place. Over the past decades we found solutions to
produce more food with less water, respond to water’s physical and economic
scarcity, all of that for a growing population and at times of financial crisis.
The World Water Week will gather the international water
community for the first time since Rio two months ago. My take away from Brazil
was that business is now demanding action
at scale, and doing so with a very clear sense of urgency. I am an optimist
who believes that we are on track for that to happen. Knowledge, energy and
enthusiasm that will be generated in Stockholm this week will bring us a little
closer to targeted, impact driven, cross-sector collaborative action to
massively improve sustainable water supply and management.
A year that's passed is always conducive to reflections about what was achieved and where more efforts are needed. WBCSD will be present in Stockholm with the whole water team: Joppe, Anne-Léonore, Violaine, Ankit and Tatiana to participate in these debates with a very clear goal in mind - encouraging cross-sector collaboration and action at scale. And we will keep repeating it over and over again: action is urgently needed!
I cannot resist sharing some of our reflections on the World Water Week. First of all, meet the other members of the WBCSD water team, Anne-Leonore Boffi, Violaine Berger and Ankit Patel. Together we covered sessions, managed the booth, organized side events, interacted with participants, celebrated the launch of our tools, met with partner organizations and members and had some fun in the evenings when there was time left for it. Without them it would have been an impossible to have had a successful water week.
Urban Water was the theme of this week, attracting several mayors from all over the world to participate in the discussions.
Being an elected city official is not an easy task and requires a lot of dedication, integrity, energy and a desire to make cities a better place for all its inhabitants, rich or poor. I could find these attributes with Jennifer Hostermann, Mayor of the City of Pleasanton USA, panelist in the Mayors Panel. If she ever decides to run for congress, convince the electorate that her increase in the water services rates was a good thing and win, the US congress will be a better place.
