We are facing a global water crisis with increasing competition to access freshwater resources of declining quantity and quality, exacerbated by climate change. Addressing this challenge requires urgent collaborative action by all stakeholders across the private, public and civil society sectors – as reflected by Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6) of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Joined-up conversations are required at all scales, however targeted action is often focused at the catchment scale reflecting the local nature of water and the need for a local collective response.
Despite the urgency of this need, there remains no simple, consistent method for all stakeholders to measure and communicate their water needs and practices, leading to misunderstanding and misalignment.
As a co-partnership, the CEO Water Mandate and the Water Resources Institute (WRI) propose to develop a a simple common water accounting framework which can be applied by all water users, in all water contexts, at all scales.
The framework will enable impactful collaboration at catchment level, generating ‘apples with apples’ conversations between all stakeholders by:
- providing common metrics and terminology;
- accommodating the wide variety of data formats and qualities inherent across different water contexts and actors; and
- allowing simple aggregation of data to any scale of interest e.g. from the facility to catchment, to sub-national, national or supra-national levels.
- Find the common language to facilitate water-related collective action; and
- Encourage as many people as possible to use it to catalyze more sustainable approaches to water security.
The Common Water Accounting Framework (CWAF) will tease out the concepts of what already exists for water accounting and create consensus on what is essential standardization to allow dialogue between different water users in different business sectors and the public sector.
The CEO Water Mandate and WRI will be convening a workshop for this research at the Radisson Hotel, Stockholm on Tuesday 27th August, during Stockholm World Water Week. To participate in the event please register here.
We will also be presenting on this work to the investor community at UN-PRI in Person, in Paris, on Wednesday 11th September. To attend this session, please register here.
If you’d like to discuss in more detail how you and your organization can get involved or to hear more about upcoming events or workshops for this initiative please contact Karina de Souza kdesouza@pacinst.org or Amy Herod aherod@pacinst.org with any questions, suggestions, or opportunities or alternatively please sign up to our mailing list (above) for future communications.
- Academic and research organizations
- Assessment tools for water
- Climate
- Donor organizations
- Finance and investor organisations/platforms
- Government agencies
- Industry bodies
- Industry
- NGOs
- Natural Capital
- Reporting standards, Disclosure & Certification
- UN Agencies and partner organisations
We want to engage with actors from the private sector, public sector, academia, and the broader water-related community to gather opinion and recommendations on how to develop our research scope and where to focus our energies in the short-term to start building a strong foundation for enduring results. We also wish to understand from attendants how our research might ‘plug in and play’ with other water accounting and corporate reporting initiatives that aim to improve the lives of our broader society in areas of public health, food security, climate mitigation & adaptation, and sustainable livelihoods, so that nobody gets left behind.