Primary Functions
- Find good practices to help support organizations at the beginning of their AWS journey.
Detailed Description
The Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) is a global membership collaboration of businesses, Civil Society Organisations (CSO) and the public sector. Our members contribute to the sustainability of local water resources through their adoption and promotion of a universal framework – the International Water Stewardship Standard or AWS Standard.
The AWS Standard is intended to drive water stewardship which is defined as: The use of water that is socially and culturally equitable, environmentally sustainable and economically beneficial, achieved through a stakeholder-inclusive process that involves site- and catchment-based actions.
Good water stewards understand their own water use, catchment context and shared concerns in terms of water governance, water balance, water quality, Important Water-Related Areas (IWRAs), and safe water, sanitation and hygiene for all (known as WASH) and then engage in meaningful individual and collective actions that benefit people, the economy and nature.
This Good Practices report is a snapshot in time and will be added to as more sites register and/or get certified. It is a living document and AWS welcomes and will be collecting and sharing further examples of good practice from members and implementers.
This report provides findings on Good Practices of AWS Standard implementation and is considered informative but not comprehensive.
The good practices were drawn from interviews and a range of AWS reports that are diverse in length, style and format. For example, some Audit Reports contain detailed narrative, while others provide less detail in terms of identifying Good Practices but do meet the AWS Assurance system requirements. In general, Audit Reports tell us only part of the ‘Good Practices’ story of a site. This means AWS sites with Good Practices, but whose Audit Reports are less detailed, may be less represented in these findings. This issue was partly overcome by integrating information from interviews with AWS CABs, and other water stewardship specialists, with site knowledge.
