Conclusion

 

 

This discussion piece posits the merits of quantifying the gap between a community’s water needs and desires and existing conditions, as a basis for designing water stewardship plans and activities and as a basis for interactions and negotiations among interests in a local water community. It also illustrates how such quantification can be achieved practically, both for situations in which very little local information or data exist, as well as for settings where considerable data and water models may be available. Although this quantification adds another layer of complexity to corporate water stewardship efforts, it is essential to affect meaningful change and to narrow the sufficiency gap in the places companies operate.

Unfortunately, the data and model outputs illustrated in this paper are not yet easily accessible to companies or other water users and stakeholders. For instance, accessing the water budget information generated by the global WaterGAP3 model can presently be accessed only by special request of the model developers in Germany, and their response to such requests can take considerable time. As a critical next step to improving the ability to assess sufficiency of water stewardship strategies, the authors of this paper propose that interested companies support efforts to make this type of information available in an easy-to-understand and readily-accessible web platform.

There also exists a need to demonstrate the application of the sufficiency concept for water quality interest exists, the authors of this paper will be happy to discuss the possible timing and feasibility of generating these additional examples. We also believe that this concept of sufficiency can best be advanced and refined through multiple real-world applications. We are particularly interested in the role that companies have been playing in related activities and how effective these efforts have been. The authors of this paper welcome the opportunity to discuss possible case study applications with interested companies. We are also interested in making these approaches as easy to apply as possible; we would welcome any suggestions in this regard.

Lastly and most importantly, we are most interested in understanding better how companies may be able to quantify the contributions that they are making toward reducing their water-related risks. We have offered the proposition that quantifying a “sufficiency gap” can provide some perspective on such progress. We invite further discussion about the ways that companies can meaningfully communicate their progress to stakeholders, including investors.

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