World’s largest corporates commit to new water resilience coalition
Several of the world’s largest corporates including Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Heineken and Levi Strauss have committed to a new water resilience coalition that, among other things, is striving for net positive water impact.
The CEO Water Mandate platform recently announced the new industry-driven, CEO-led Water Resilience Coalition. Endorsing companies of the CEO Water Mandate (currently over 150) commit to action across six key elements and report annually on progress.
The new Water Resilience Coalition, which has among its members corporates like AB InBev, Diageo, Dow Inc, Ecolab, Gap Inc, Microsoft, PVH Corp, The Coca-Cola Company, Heineken, Levi Strauss & Co, and Woolworths, has now pledged a new commitment to collective action and issued a call to action for other companies to join them.
The new coalition, which will work with CEO Water Mandate, has been formed at the outset of the United Nations’ Decade of Action.
The decade is “one where business ambition grounded in real, measurable commitments is needed to support the future of our planet,” said Lise Kingo, CEO and Executive Director of the United Nations Global Compact, in an official statement.
“This new Coalition does just that by calling on business leaders to commit to action and collectively work together to address the challenges in front of us.”
The Water Resilience Coalition cites that over the next decade the world will experience a shortfall in freshwater supply due to population growth and climate change, threatening ecosystems, communities, businesses and the global economy.
The coalition will focus its work in building the resilience of water-stressed basins and will prioritise those that pose the greatest risk to local communities and economies, industry and long-term economic prosperity.
Companies joining the Water Resilience Coalition will have to sign a pledge to invest in their own operations and to work with supply chain partners and NGOs to accomplish three targets by 2050: (i) Net positive water impact, that is, contributing more to basin health than what is taken from it; (ii) Water resilient value chain: Develop, implement and enable strategies to support leading impact-based water resilience; and global leadership: Raise the ambition of water resilience through public and corporate outreach.
