Standardization of global water stewardship landscape a critical step to a water secure future, finds BSI-commissioned research

 LONDON, March 27, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- A globally-agreed approach to water stewardship could contribute significantly to improved water security, benefiting people and planet. Yet an uneven application of the concept is holding back progress, a new study has found.

Research commissioned by BSI from the National Centre for Social Research identifies that international collaboration and standardized guidelines offer the opportunity to bring harmonization and enable scaled-up action on this pressing issue. The authors suggest a foundation of best practice has been built for corporate water action, with a diverse landscape of voluntary initiatives, however globally agreed guidelines could bring clarity and consensus, increasing transparency in target-setting, measuring and reporting, and helping to scale action.

In particular, standardization could better drive corporate action on water stewardship at the enterprise level by providing a model of good practice to allow for a verified mechanism to make claims.

Although many countries have local regulations, there is no internationally-applicable regulation governing water strategy and reportingⁱ, contributing to a lack of consistency between how different organizations manage concerns around local water quantity in their operations and contribute to water quality issues.

Water stewardship can offer organizations a route to manage concerns collectively. An important task of any new standardization effort will be to clarify what 'success' looks like and provide meaningful, tailored guidance that can be applied across different cultural traditions, language and business sizes. It could support consensus on key ideas and terminology like 'net-positive water impact' and 'replenishment' and align approaches to target-setting and metrics, bringing greater transparency to water stewardship performance.

Prior BSI research, Thirst for Change, highlighted that tackling water scarcity should be as much a priority as climate change. That report, in partnership with Waterwise, called for a circular economy mindset to support water security.

Jonathan Chocqueel-Mangan, Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer, BSI said: "Water stewardship, powered by international collaboration, provides a route to accelerate progress towards a sustainable world. Given the urgent global nature of both climate change and water crises, now is the moment to collaborate so individuals, organizations and society better understand and take responsibility for their impact on water quality and quantity through advancing commitments to practice good water stewardship. Globally-agreed guidelines could bring clarity and consensus and be a critical factor in enabling a water secure future."

Bernard Steen, Research Director, NatCen, said: "We were pleased to partner with BSI on this important research. The findings highlighted both opportunities and challenges for the standardization of water stewardship. A new global standard has the potential to accelerate progress, if implemented sensitively and carefully."

Will Sarni, CEO, Water Foundry Ventures said: "Water scarcity, pollution, and inequitable distribution pose significant challenges. Water Foundry is excited to collaborate on this important action to begin the process of defining a comprehensive international standard for water stewardship. Such a standard would provide a common language and set of guidelines for organizations across diverse sectors to drive value globally."

ⁱ Currently, impacts are governed by national legislation, regulations and guidelines, for example the Water Framework Directive in Europe and the Clean Water Act in the United States

SOURCE BSI