This section explores the nuances of global water challenges, featuring insights by our researchers, collaborative pieces with our partners, and Q&A styled dialogues with industry experts. It complements our work by providing context, commentary, and a deeper understanding of our research findings.
Blog
Business Engagement with Water Policy
March 19, 2013
Many water-related business risks stem from ineffective or non-existent public water policy and management. These risks are much more difficult to address than those associated with internal business practice since companies have limited influence in public water governance and decision making.
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Business Case for Water Sustainability
March 19, 2013
Emerging corporate practice and research suggest that the environmental, political, and social realities of the 21st century mean that environmentally and socially responsible corporate water management is not only an ethical responsibility for companies, but also increasingly an integral part of ensuring business viability and reducing business risk.
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Water, Conflict, and Business
March 19, 2013
Water resources have rarely, if ever, been the sole source of violent conflict or war.
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Popular Education and Leadership Development
March 19, 2013
Popular education is an approach to building leadership that draws upon the everyday experiences of the people most affected by an issue as an important source of knowledge. In this approach, people “scale up” their individual experiences by creating a space of trust to share and discuss patterns in their experiences at a community level.
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Bottled Water
March 18, 2013
Sales and consumption of bottled water have skyrocketed in recent years. From 1988 to 2002, the sales of bottled water globally more than quadrupled to over 131 million cubic meters annually. Bottled water sales worldwide are continuing to increase annually far faster than almost any other category of commercial beverage.
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Sustainability Standards Systems
March 18, 2013
Over the past two decades, there has been a rapid increase in the number of people who have looked to align their social and environmental values with the way they spend their money. This nascent shift in capitalism spans from the certified organic food people eat, to the ethically produced shoes and clothes they wear, to the Socially Responsible financial investments they make for retirement. Partly in response to this emerging societal phenomenon, companies large and small and other institutions (including government and the financial sector) are also seeking to work with suppliers and partners that have a positive track record regarding their social and environmental practices.
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Soft Path for Water
March 18, 2013
The soft path directs governments, companies, and individuals to focus on sustainable ways to satisfy the needs of people and businesses, instead of just supplying water.
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Salton Sea
March 18, 2013
Since 2005, the surface elevation of the Sea has fallen by about a half foot per year, exposing thousands of acres of former lakebed to the desert’s blowing winds. Salinity at the Sea now exceeds 50 g/L – a third saltier than the ocean. And salinity continues to rise. Legislation enabling the 2003 water transfer agreement required the state to develop a restoration plan.
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Recognizing the Human Right to Water
March 18, 2013
The failure of the international aid community, nations, and local organizations to satisfy these basic human needs has led to substantial, unnecessary, and preventable human suffering.
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Peak Water
March 18, 2013
Freshwater resources are fundamental for maintaining human health, agricultural production, and economic activity as well as critical ecosystem functions.
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Desalination and Alternative Supplies
March 18, 2013
Traditionally, freshwater has come from rivers, lakes, streams, and groundwater aquifers. As demand increases and climate change alters the location and timing of water supply, these traditional sources are becoming unavailable, more difficult, or increasingly expensive to develop. As a result, many communities are switching to alternative sources of water, including rainwater, stormwater, greywater, reclaimed water, and brackish and seawater desalination.
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Business and the Human Right to Water
March 18, 2013
Expectations for businesses to respect and in some cases help fulfill internationally recognized human rights have increased over the past decade. In turn, businesses also recognize how important appropriate management systems are in order to respond to these expectations and to protect core resources needed in their own business practices.
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Water Quality
March 18, 2013
Surface water and groundwater are not always static in their natural reservoirs. The water particles are always moving either vertically, laterally, or a combination of both through the banks and bottom of the reservoirs.
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Water Privatization
March 18, 2013
In the past two decades, water privatization — turning over some or all of the assets or operations of a public system to a private company — has been growing rapidly, as has concern and opposition to privatization.
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Alliance for Water Stewardship
March 17, 2013
Solving water challenges worldwide cannot be achieved through policy responses alone. Indeed, complementary sustainability strategies rely on economic tools (i.e., market-based instruments) that incentivize voluntary improvements in practice.
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Notes from the Field: What We Know about Indonesian Urban Residents, Water Utilities, Local Government Agencies and NGOs at the Beginning of Our Third Year Developing WASH SMS
February 5, 2013
Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success. – Henry Ford.
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Sustainable Water Management
October 20, 2012
Water is life. Growing pressure on water resources – from population and economic growth, climate change, pollution, and other challenges – has major impacts on our social, economic, and environmental well-being. Many of our most important aquifers are being over-pumped, causing widespread declines in groundwater levels.
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Corporate Water Stewardship
October 12, 2012
Companies around the world increasingly recognize the risk that water scarcity, pollution, and weak water governance have to their core business. They are beginning to acknowledge the need to manage water as a key input to production and better address the ways in which their water use and wastewater discharge can affect nearby ecosystems and communities.
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Water and Poverty
October 10, 2012
It is everyone’s wish to be able to wake up each day and turn on a tap that provides a safe, constant source of drinking water, but this does not happen in the lives of nearly one billion people who live without access to potable water. With no option, they rely on polluted surface and groundwater sources which are also the main sources of water-related disease such as diarrhea, typhoid, cholera, and worm infection. Infectious, water-related illness can keep victims out of work for long periods of time, prevent school attendance, and even result in death: UNICEF reported that about 4,500 children die every day from preventable, water-related diseases.
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Water-Energy Nexus
October 10, 2012
Throughout the 20th century, the connections between water and energy were largely ignored. Water systems were designed and constructed with the assumption that energy would be cheap and abundant.
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