Companies’ understanding of water has grown considerably in recent years. As a deeper understanding of water issues emerges, so too does the realization that to properly mitigate and ultimately reduce water risks, companies must address underlying shared water challenges. However, the ability of collective action to achieve shared outcomes will require coordination, alignment of targets, and a consistent approach that will allow companies to work together with other stakeholders to contribute to solutions. Science and stakeholder input will be core to setting CBWTs because both are central to ensuring targets are more meaningful, defensible, and ultimately more effective in addressing water challenges. Data, along with monitoring and evaluation systems, will be critical to establish water system boundaries and allow each water user to understand and fulfill their role in achieving these shared basin goals. In so doing, the process must be rooted in, and can in turn contribute to, good water governance. With the launch of the SDGs, both governments and companies face a unique opportunity to align company water target setting with commonly accepted global water development priorities. A set of common context-based water metrics can help to ensure meaningful contributions to publicly accepted basin goals, while simultaneously driving improved efficiency, effectiveness, and measurable progress in companies. Such an approach of objectively measured improvements in shared water challenges will allow companies to better assess (1) reductions in water risk, (2) positive impacts from collective action, (3) response to investor and other stakeholder concerns, and (4) ability to ensure sustainable growth environments. Next Steps CDP, CEO Water Mandate, The Nature Conservancy, World Resources Institute, and WWF, along with UNEP-DHI – who have agreed to join this initial group – have committed to work over the next two years to establish a roadmap for mainstreaming the concept of corporate CBWTs based on a collaborative and multi-stakeholder oriented process. The project team is currently seeking interested organizations to support this effort in one or more of the following ways: Advisory Committee, to guide the technical development of the context-based target setting approach and roadmap; Stakeholder Consultation Group, to vet initial results and ideas resulting of this initiative; and Pilot Testers and Early Adopters, to test the approach and provide feedback and insight into the value and applicability for the recommendations put forward.