September 9th, 2010
Discussions at the Stockholm World Water Week continue to reveal broad consensus on many water-related issues and the immediate need to address them. This guest post from attendee EcoMundi CEO Alex McIntosh, provides valuable insights in the the thinking of thought leaders on water ….
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Reporting real time on Day 4 of World Water Week: Stockholm, Sweden (9/9/10)
(posted by Alex McIntosh, founder, Ecomundi Ventures)
By Day Four of the 2,500-attendee conference, a few overarching themes have begun to emerge. First, in the majority of the watersheds across the globe, we know too little about the amount of water available, the amount extracted in aggregate for human use, or the quality of the watershed. For this reason, in the seminar On the Road the Corporate Water Reporting, panelists from Nature Conservancy, CERES, Quantis, PepsiCo, CH2M HILL, Unilever, Borealis and other organizations all agreed that the trend towards greater water reporting transparency would continue, primarily driven by businesses’ need to obtain and manage their supply chain water resources, and in response to consumer/customer/investor stakeholder pressure.
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Tags: alex mcintosh, stockholm, Water, Water Quality, water scarcity, world water week
Posted in Right to Water, Scarcity & Supply Issues, Water, Water Quality | No comments so far »
September 9th, 2010
What comes to mind when you think about water?
Perhaps a swim in the pool on a hot day, ice cubes in your favorite drink or the relaxation of a long, hot shower after a tough day at work.
Well what if you could have none of those things? What if water – and the necessity of its use – translated into stomach cramps …diarrhea …malnutrition …death?
For 884 million people a source of safe drinking water is unavailable, according to UNICEF, and for 2.5 billion people there is no access to clean sanitation.
Over 3 million people a year die as a result of water-borne diseases. In the time it took me to type that sentence, a child died from lack of clean water.
On July 28 the United Nations General Assembly passed a nonbinding resolution affirming access to clean water and sanitation as fundamental human rights – that means that every, single human being on the planet should be able to raise a glass without fear of getting cholera.
Make it a reality is a huge challenge.
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Tags: resolution, Right to Water, united nations, water scarcity
Posted in Infrastructure, Right to Water, Scarcity & Supply Issues, Water, Water Quality | No comments so far »
September 8th, 2010
The working sessions of the Stockholm World Water Week are underway … Alex McIntosh takes a look at new initiatives getting off the ground.
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“Day 2 of World Water Week: Stockholm, Sweden (9/6/10)”
(posted by Alex McIntosh, founder, Ecomundi Ventures)
The luminaries of the water field took the podium today. Dr. Rita Colwell of the US was recognized as the 2010 Stockholm Water Prize winner (equivalent to the Nobel Prize for water) for her groundbreaking work on cholera. And Achim Steiner, head of the United Nations Environmental Program shared his agency’s Green Economy Initiative program focus–responding to one of the most pressing social needs today–on integrating water into the larger policy and market-based decisions made by officials at local, regional, national and global levels.
Connecting the dots is important, as the science is often a few steps ahead of the social debate, and bad policy today will have profound implications for the 9 billion humans projected for earth in 2040–and for the corporations that depend on reliable water resources for their operations.
Later in the day, the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS), a consortium of NGO’s and institutes including Nature Conservancy, WWF, and Pacific Institute, provided an update on their efforts to develop a global water certification program. To bring this water certification program to life, the AWS is building a global non-profit through an extensive stakeholder engagement process. The non-profit will eventually include international standards for water management, a verification process, a recognizable brand, and an independent governance body. The scope of the voluntary water certification program will include the private sector (including agriculture), as well as water service providers. A “launch meeting” was just held in Brussels in June, with some 200 stakeholders addressing a series of framing questions and reviewing key principles: water quality, biodiversity, and governance.
Post-Brussels, the AWS will form a global steering committee, and facilitate the piloting of the certification program with stakeholders in each of the 7 global regions. Coca-Cola, BASF, HOLMEN Paper and other corporations are currently participating in the regional certification pilots.
Companies interested in learning more, or in participating in the water certification pilots should visit the AWS website at: http://www.allianceforwaterstewardship.org/
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Tags: achim steiner, alex mcintosh, alliance for water stewardship, ecomundi, pacific institute, stockholm, water certification, world water week, wwf
Posted in Business & Human Rights, Infrastructure, News & Events, Right to Water | No comments so far »
March 22nd, 2010
From Matt Turner, Director, Global Stakeholder Initiative, Water Program:
Today, we commemorate World Water Day, the annual day designated by the United Nations to raise awareness to the severe global freshwater access and quality challenges. Here in North America and abroad there are a number of events taking place in support of this year’s global theme to promote “support for safe, affordable and sustainable drinking water, sanitation and hygiene worldwide.”
It’s a day when there appears to be coordination and agreement among many of the key players on the need to advance awareness to what may very well be the dominant environmental and social issue of the 21st Century.
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Tags: access, climate change, freshwater, human right to water, hygiene, sanitation, supply, sustainable water use, world water day
Posted in News & Events, Right to Water, Scarcity & Supply Issues, Water | No comments so far »
January 6th, 2010
From Matt Turner, Director, Global Stakeholder Initiatives, Water Program:
Discussions on water issues are likely to gain prominence in 2010 as the world’s focus shifts away from the climate change policy questions that dominated 2009 in the run up to the Copenhagen summit.
While government, business and civil society will continue to grapple with national and international climate policy in the coming year, the affects of the water crisis on business, supply chains and impacted populations are widely acknowledged and being felt right now. Calls for more corporate reporting on water and accountability from civil society actors is certain to increase.
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Tags: global water crisis, pacific institute, Water, water disclosure project, water scarcity, water shortages
Posted in Climate Nexus, Infrastructure, Right to Water, Scarcity & Supply Issues, Water | No comments so far »
