Water is a strategic resource for most businesses. However, there is still a reluctance to take water management seriously, despite the fact that water availability has become a serious factor in business risk assessments.

There are many different tools and techniques available to assist business managers and directors to understand and quantify that water risk. The Internet provides access to many of these tools, whose use needs to be considered carefully. Some are high level tools developed for policy makers and not relevant to the average businessperson. Others are very specific to, for example, a country or a business sector. As in most aspects of life, there is no “quick fix” or “universal solution”. The tools need to be examined, experimented with and, in some cases, adapted to site/area/sector/use specific needs and requirements.

The WWF has prepared a comparison of some of the major accessible water tools  but as it was compared by the team who developed the WWF water risk filter, there is a disclaimer which suggests that the comparison may not be entirely objective!

The CEO Water Mandate has assembled an extensive and varied list of water resource evaluation tools which cover a wide range of scenarios and situations. It takes time to work through these – be warned! Or you can follow the water stewardship toolbox and work through the suggestions put forward.

Indicated below is an abbreviated list of water tools which may assist businesses that need to draw up an objective view of their water risks using a combination of quantitative and qualitative information. Please feel free to provide feedback as this article will be updated periodically with new information, as it becomes available.

WBCSD Global Water Tool

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development Global Water Tool (GWT) is a free, publicly available resource for identifying corporate water risks and opportunities which provides easy access to and analysis of critical data. It includes a workbook (data input, inventory by site, key reporting indicators, metrics calculations), a mapping function to plot sites with datasets, and Google Earth interface for spatial viewing.

By comparing sites with the best available water, sanitation, population and biodiversity information on a country and watershed basis, including sub-basin data, the tool allows one to answer the following questions:

• How many of your sites are in extremely water-scarce areas? Which sites are at greatest risk? How will that change in the future?
• How much of your total production is generated from your most at risk sites?
• How many of your employees live in countries that lack access to improved water and sanitation?
• How many of your suppliers are in water scarce areas now and will be in 2025?

GEMI “Connecting the Drops” Water Sustainability Tool

The Global Environmental Management Initiative (GEMI) has developed an analytical process, the Water Sustainability Tool, to assist individual companies and other organizations to better understand what emerging water issues might mean for them, given their operations, needs, and circumstances. The tool is designed to help individual companies build a business water strategy. The tool encourages businesses to:

• Conduct a systematic assessment of their relationship to water;
• Identify specific opportunities and risks associated with this relationship;
• Assess the business case for action;
• Tailor a water strategy that addresses specific needs and circumstances of the organization; and
• Ensure that water-related opportunities and risks are tracked and managed effectively into the future using a continual improvement framework.

WWF Water Risk Filter

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Water Risk Filter tool helps companies and investors ask the right questions about water. It allows the user to assess risks and offers guidance on what to do in response. More than 2,500 organizations from 32 industry sectors have assessed facilities. Specific facilities or agricultural commodities can be viewed, each with an automated basin assessment and questionnaire to evaluate direct operations.

CERES Aqua Gauge

The Aqua Gauge offers a comprehensive Excel-based assessment tool for evaluating an existing water strategy or building one from the ground up. The Aqua Gauge helps companies:

• Frame and assess options for managing water risk.
• Prioritize and improve responses to water risk.
• Communicate key water risk information to stakeholders.

Global Water Footprint Assessment Standard

The Water Footprint Assessment is a four-phase process that quantifies and maps green, blue and grey water footprints, assesses the sustainability, efficiency and equitability of water use and identifies which strategic actions should be prioritised in order to make a footprint sustainable.

Indian Water Tool

The India Water Tool is an online tool for companies and other users to understand their water-related risks and prioritize actions toward sustainable water management. It combines data from Indian government agencies and water stress indicators from WRI and the Columbia Water Centre.

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) Global Water Tool is a free, publically available resource for identifying corporate water risks and opportunities which provides easy access to, and analysis of, critical water data. The spreadsheet-based Tool includes a workbook (data input, inventory by site, key reporting indicators and metrics calculations), a mapping function to plot sites with datasets, and a Google Earth interface for spatial viewing.

The Tool is quite sophisticated and potential users need to have a fairly good understanding of their site’s water usage including appropriate data. Not all of the Tool’s facilities work because of variable regional data availability. However, experimenting with the workbook and exploring its many facets is an education in itself on water availability and quality in an industrial context. Furthermore, it does highlight the importance of understanding your neighbours’ usage (and abusage!) of water and how this may affect your business and future.

The Global Water Tool can be freely downloaded from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development website (www.wbcsd.org ) which is a site that is packed with useful environmental management and sustainability tools and documentary resources.

The Promethium Corporate Carbon Footprint Tool was designed to do a basic calculation of your carbon footprint based on energy consumption and other data.  It offers a tutorial on the use of the Tool with reference to the source documentation.  The Tool reports on Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions (The Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol defines Scope 1 emissions as: All direct GHG emissions, and Scope 2 as: Indirect GHG emissions from consumption of purchased electricity, heat or steam.)  It analyses the carbon footprint against the currently indicated regulatory framework with respect to the following issues:

• Requirements for mandatory reporting
• Requirements for the submission of GHG mitigation plans
• Carbon tax impacts:
  • Scope 1 emissions
    • Access to relief measures
    • Impacts of offsets
  • Scope 2 emissions
    • Access to relief measures
    • Impacts of offsets

This is an Excel spreadsheet based calculation tool (freely downloadable from www.carbontax.co.za) which is aimed at companies. It allows boundary setting (one company or groups of companies), incudes clear guidance on what and why, and has good links to external sources of information such as the 2013 Treasury Carbon Tax Policy Paper, the GHG Protocol, and the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard and the National Climate Change Response Paper. It is a very good starting point and will tell the potential user what data he has and what data he needs to collect and analyse.

Although the Carbon Tax implementation in South Africa has been delayed, some form of carbon tax is on the horizon and commerce and industry would be well-advised to evaluate what the impacts upon business of this tax will be. There are many areas where businesses can significantly reduce their carbon footprint and they should seek professional advice if these are not clear to them.

The Wind Atlas for Southern Africa (WASA) aims to assist in the development of large grid-connected wind farms and to provide more accurate wind resource data to identify potential opportunities for off-grid electrification. Mapping has been carried out in the Western Cape, parts of the Northern Cape and the Eastern Cape. More funding from the Danish Government will see the Atlas being expanded into the remaining areas of the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and parts of the Free State.

The Numerical Wind Atlas Database contains generalised wind climate data sets (.lib files) for every 5km x 5km, corresponding to approximately 15000 data points that can be employed directly with WAsP (licensed version) for wind farm planning and wind resource assessment. Unlicensed WAsP software (free download from www.wasp.dk ) allows viewing of the generalised Wind Climate .lib files, but will not allow any calculations to be done. One can register for data downloads on the WASA website at www.wasa.csir.co.za

WASA (2009 to 2014) is an initiative of the South African Government, Department of Energy, and the project is co-funded by the UNDP-GEF through the South African Wind Energy Programme (SAWEP), and the Royal Danish Embassy. The South African National Energy Research Institute (SANERI) is the Executing Partner, coordinating and contracting contributions from the implementing partners: CSIR, UCT, SAWS, and Risø, now DTU Wind Energy.

A guide to downloading data and data set downloads can be found at http://www.wasa.csir.co.za/

The Global Environmental Management Initiative (GEMI) has been around for over 20 years and describes itself as follows:-  “…an organization of leading companies dedicated to foster global environmental, health and safety (EHS) and sustainability excellence through the sharing of tools and information to help business achieve environmental sustainability excellence.” (more…)