Nov 10 – CEO Water Mandate Convenes Conference in South Africa

(Cape Town, 17 November 2010) – The UN Global Compact’s CEO Water Mandate this week convened its sixth working conference – an event that featured the global release of the initiative’s new Guide to Responsible Business Engagement with Water Policy.

The conference drew more than 100 experts and practitioners from business, civil society, Government, the UN, and other interests and was notable with respect to its focus on water challenges in the context of South Africa and the region.

“We thought it very important to take our conference and work to a specific region that is experiencing serious water stress and related issues”, said Gavin Power, Deputy Director the UN Global Compact and Head of the CEO Water Mandate. “Water is a decidedly local issue and to truly make progress it is crucial that all stakeholders collaborate and implement solutions at the catchment-watershed level”.

Convened in partnership with the Pacific Institute, which serves as the operational arm of the CEO Water Mandate, the conference featured the global release of the CEO Water Mandate’s Guide to Responsible Business Engagement with Water Policy. The Guide, developed for the CEO Water Mandate by the Pacific Institute and WWF, is the first-ever comprehensive resource designed to help companies understand how they can engage responsibly in public policy related to water.

The conference focused on three topical issues, aligned to the three declared workstreams of the CEO Water Mandate – i) water and public policy; ii) water disclosure; and iii) water and human rights.

Related to water and human rights, the CEO Water Mandate also issued at the conference a white paper titled, “The Human Right to Water: Emerging Corporate Practice and Stakeholder Expectations”.

A full report of the working conference will be issued in the coming weeks.

Contact

Gavin Power

UN Global Compact
powerg@un.org

Jason Morrison
Pacific Institute
jmorrison@pacinst.org

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CEO Water Mandate Secretariat
The CEO Water Mandate is a special initiative of the UN Secretary-General and the UN Global Compact, implemented in partnership with the Pacific Institute. These key partners work together as the CEO Water Mandate Secretariat. The Mandate Secretariat supports the initiative’s mission in many ways, including: 1) developing research, guidance, and tools that advance corporate water stewardship; 2) convening multi-stakeholder events to identify, explore, and solve key water challenges; 3) facilitating meaningful collective action to improve conditions in at-risk river basins.