Terminology

Recognizing that terminology such as “context-based metrics,” “targets,” and other related terms can be confusing, here we provide the following working definitions of key terms:

Metric: any form of quantitative or qualitative measure used to track progress at a site, whether corporate, basin level, or other levels. For example, “water efficiency” or “water withdrawal.”

Target: a specific time-bound objective that sets the desired outcome at site, corporate, basin, or other levels. For example, “By 2020, a 20% increase in total water efficiency as compared to 2015,” or “By 2020, a 10% decrease in total nitrogen discharges as compared to 2017.”

Local water context: according to the Alliance for Water Stewardship’s Standard,¹ “the social, economic, and environmental conditions of a surface or groundwater basin,” including:

• Surface and groundwater governance, policy, and regulation;
• Surface and groundwater stewardship initiatives;
• Physical conditions, related to water quantity and quality, environmental flows, and water-related infrastructure, including both built (gray) and natural (green) infrastructure;
• Social conditions, including cultural and community tradition, and social equity concerns;
• Economic conditions, such as water productivity, water-related employment, and income; and
• Future changes in social, economic, and environmental conditions.

Context-based: informed by sustainable thresholds or limits of a given basin based on science; respects the basin’s environmental, economic, and social needs, and current and future conditions; and supports public sector objectives such as the SDGs. Thresholds should be informed by non-unilateral (and ideally consensus-driven) method. Efforts that strive to consider and address basin context, but that differentiate based on local conditions (e.g., citing the number of initiatives that take place in water-stressed basins), are not considered context-based for this project.

Context-based water metric: a water measure used to track progress on a company’s efforts relative to the thresholds of the basin. Such metrics include both a component that speaks to performance and a component that speaks to the basin’s thresholds.

Context-based water target: a specific time-bound objective that sets the desired outcome to include both a component that speaks to the company’s water performance and a component that speaks to the basin’s conditions. Context-based water targets better inform audiences on the extent to which performance respects the agreed upon thresholds of the basin or supports public policy. See Box 1 for an example.

Science: For the purposes of this paper, science refers to the factual basis and knowledge covering general truths of a basin, including water demands, withdrawals, consumption, availability, quality, and accessibility, obtained and tested through the scientific method. Furthermore, the approach for setting context-based water targets, including the level of stakeholder engagement, will be developed in the next stage of this initiative.