In recent years, voluntary sustainability standard systems have been challenged to definitely “prove impacts”. The credibility of such systems arises from a mix of certification, multi-stakeholder governance, and impacts. Indeed, the International Social and Environmental Accreditation and Labelling (ISEAL) Alliance has developed codes in these areas precisely because they are so critical.
Four years ago, the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) Standard was launched. Since that time, over 50 sites have registered to certify against the standard and the organization is able to demonstrate the benefits of implementing the standard. However, while proving positive contributions (e.g., water savings, pollution reduction, etc.) are generally a great thing, there remains the underlying question of: what level of contribution is enough to address basin water challenges and fundamentally mitigate basin risk? This question has driven the exploration of context-based water targets (CBWTs) — an effort to set meaningful, context-based numbers that respect social and environmental thresholds and are guided by a proportional contribution to solving the shared basin challenge.
Work is underway to develop a more comprehensive methodology that could enable a company (or a site) to set a CBWT and at the same time, the AWS Standard is currently in a consultation phase to gather input that will inform Version 2.0. As both of these approaches are developed, we believe it is important for others to understand how these approaches are both distinct, and mutually beneficial.
Both AWS and CBWTs can be effective water stewardship resources that a site can deploy but both resources are distinctly different and don’t aim to deliver the same outputs. In fact, a well executed implementation of AWS can set a strong foundation for developing a CBWT, which in turn can better support a site in demonstrating that its actions are positively contributing to improving water stewardship outcomes.
How AWS and CBWT are different
The primary aim of AWS is to drive the uptake of water stewardship by setting out a series of actions, criteria and indicators that enable a site to both manage water at a site level but also engage in water stewardship beyond the boundaries of a site. As such, AWS could be described as a comprehensive framework that enables the creation of a contextually appropriate, site-level water stewardship plan that addresses risks, opportunities and shared water challenges.
The purpose of a CBWT is to enable the creation of water performance targets (precise values) that are directly linked with shared water challenges to ensure that a site’s water performance meaningfully contributes to water stewardship outcomes by being directly linked to the site’s surrounding hydrological context.
In principle, both AWS and a CBWT will be similar in that they are focused at the level of a site and use internal and external water-related data to inform their implementation and development. However, a CBWT won’t deliver a comprehensive site-level water stewardship plan, but it can be integrated into an AWS deployment as a tool to set more effective, hydrologically responsive targets.
How AWS and a CBWT deal with hydrological context
AWS requires an understanding of multiple dimensions of a site’s catchment context. It requires a site to consider stakeholders, socio-economic characteristics, the status of water governance, water balance, water quality, important water-related areas and water infrastructure within a defined hydrological boundary. The standard requires a site to take a broader, general view of the site’s catchment to ensure its water stewardship plan is responsive and aligned to its catchment context.
In contrast, a CBWT is focused on a single dimension of water (e.g., water quality), which is often selected due to dependency or impact risks. CBWTs are very specific time-bound target and assesses the site’s water performance based on the site’s proportionate contribution in creating more sustainable catchment. Simply put, a CBWT is more focused on a single shared water challenge, whereas AWS is more generalized.
How a CBWT aligns and can support AWS
As we have seen, AWS enables a site to better understand its catchment context and develop a water stewardship plan to respond. This is done by guiding a site through 6 steps (version 1.0) that help a site to commit to water stewardship (Step 1), gather internal and external water data (Step 2), plan its response (Step 3), implement its plan (Step 4), and then evaluate and disclose the results (Steps 5 and 6).
The emerging CBWT Step-by-Step Approach that will underpin a more detailed CBWT, developed by a group including WWF, CDP, WRI, TNC, UNGC/CEO Water Mandate and UNEP-DHI, purposefully includes some similarities to the steps within AWS. it is important to recognise that a site that is seeking to develop a CBWT may (or may not) have a water stewardship plan and so the CBWT approach helps sites to set a CBWT without the need to use AWS.
In setting a CBWT, internal and external data needs to be collected to enable the quantification of a baseline level of water performance for the site (akin to AWS v.1.0 Criteria 2.4), and the status of the basin’s most pressing shared water challenges (2.3 & 2.6). This alignment means a site using AWS is well positioned to establish a CBWT, and conversely, a site with a CBWT has likely completed some aspects needed for AWS implementation.
Step 3 (Develop a water stewardship plan) of AWS Version 1, covers water performance targets via the water stewardship plan, linked to four water stewardship outcome areas of AWS, namely: good governance, sustainable water balance, good water quality status and healthy status of important water-related areas. AWS (v. 1.0) does offer guidance on what should be considered when designing a water performance target, namely a target should enable decision making using its outputs, be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-based) and be a specific description of a desired result of one or more activities undertaken by a site.
Outside of these guidance points, AWS does not provide any specific and explicit guidance on how a water performance target could be linked to the site’s catchment context’s needs. This is where a CBWT can add the greatest value into the implementation of AWS at a site as it provides very specific guidance/methodology on setting water performance targets that are linked to the site’s catchment context and the basin’s most pressing shared water challenges. Moreover, a CBWT metric can explicitly demonstrate whether a site’s performance (and the basin’s status), for a given outcome, is adequate or not.
Conclusion
AWS is a comprehensive resource that can be used to develop a site’s water stewardship plan (as well as implement, evaluate and report on water stewardship). A CBWT is a specific part of a plan (target setting) that can be integrated into a site’s plan to provide the site with more precise mechanism to link its water performance targets, within its plan, to its catchment context and measure whether it is meaningful. Context, through the lens of AWS, is far broader than that of CBWTs. Yet CBWTs offer AWS the ability to set meaningful performance targets — something that the world is increasingly calling for when it comes to sustainability standards. For this reason, we hope that version 2.0 of the AWS Standard explicitly considers how to begin integrating CBWTs to further enhance the credibility of its impacts.
