Why business leaders should sign up to the CEO Water Mandate

What is the CEO water mandate?

The CEO Water Mandate calls on business leaders globally to take action on water stewardship.

The endorsing companies recognize that much more can be done to reduce water risks to businesses, seize water-related opportunities, and contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals. Doing so places a value on shared water resources; sustainability of water usage is interwoven into business strategy. The CEO Water Mandate works to “address challenges related to water scarcity, water quality, water governance, and access to water and sanitation”.

What benefit does signing up to the CEO water mandate bring to businesses?

The private sector recognizes that there is a need to understand the risks posed by climate change, and plan for future uncertainties. The Business Alliance for Water and Climate calls for collaboration between companies to :

• Share and analyse water-related risks in order to develop response strategies.
• Measure and report water use data
• Reduce impacts on water supplies in operations and throughout the value chain.

In addition to collaborating with others to better understand the water-related risks to your business (a benefit that is in itself a reason to join such a movement), the CEO water mandate also allows you to:

• Strengthen your brand by reaffirming your commitment to sustainable business practices
• Optimize your supply chain and operations, by identifying where these areas may be exposed to water-related risks
• Build relationships with key partners who share your values
• Access the experience and expertise of other like-minded organisations
• Increase your ability to affect public policy, as a thought leader in your field, and as part of a partnership of leading organisations
• Engage with your customers and community through working groups, collective action, and meaningful corporate and social responsibility strategies.

Many businesses have risen to the challenge of reviewing and improving their water usage to create a more sustainable relationship with local waterways. The Business for Water platform has been working with corporations to do just this for the last 20 years, using verifiable metrics.

Business water risks infographic:

Who has signed up to it so far?

The current list of endorsing companies is expected to grow as more and more businesses come to understand the importance of water stewardship to their future success.

The Innovation diffusion model tells us that behavioral change broadly follows 5 phases – the innovators are the first to embrace new concepts or products, followed by the early adopters, early majority, late majority, then the laggards.

The names of the innovators and early adopters who signed up in the early days of the CEO Water Mandate are hardly a surprise – many are known for progressive workplace policies, work done to create sustainable supply chains, or authentic and high profile corporate and social responsibility activities.

In more recent times, we’ve seen personal products company Colgate Palmolive, Japanese food products maker Kikkoman, the Ford motor company, and educational research institutions such as the International Water Centre also endorse the mandate.

They are diverse in the products and services they offer, yet the one thing these organisations have in common is that they are leaders in their respective industries – Because water stewardship is for everyone.

Don’t be a laggard. Read this article to see if your business may be at risk, and consider signing up to the CEO Water Mandate if your organisation has not already done so. Take action and follow the business alliance for water and climate, or join a working group to develop tools and resources that will help your business tackle water-related challenges and needs.

Finally the words of the highly successful CEO of Pernod Ricard, Alexandre Ricard states: We are a business, first of all. In today’s world, every single business has a duty of giving back to society.

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Your career does not define you but your actions do

I started this website when I was at a cross-road in my life. Some of you might know the one. You realize that you’ve done reasonably well so far in your career, but you’ve spent the last 15 years of your career chasing one opportunity after the other, balancing someone else’s P&Ls, and helping someone else to manage their business. Running on the hamster wheel. You have more or less enjoyed your work (or not!), and have met some great people along the way, but now there’s this gnawing feeling of “what else is there?”. You may even have an existential crisis or two. If you’re a millennial, you probably already know that this is not an uncommon phenomenon for your generation. If you’re a Xennial like me, you’ve probably still got a handful of friends who’ve been at the same company for the last 15 years, but also friends who keep jumping at the next big opportunity. I don’t know the secret formula to a long, successful and fulfilling career.

What I do know is that there’s no right or wrong way of doing things. You are not defined by your career.

This one cup can save the world

The quote “Be the change you wish to see in the world” is often wrongly attributed to Mahatma Ghandi, but this convenient bumper sticker slogan holds a certain amount of truth. It is aspirational and excitingly laden with hope.

There are some great TED talks out there on making a difference while making a living. I’m going to leave you with one that I listened to today by Audrey Choi – I’m totally that person who hopes that my one reusable cup may inspire others to use one too, and that this one cup may just cause some kind of ripple effect to save the world.

TED: How to make a profit while making a difference

Today, we’ll do better

If you’re an individual, you can choose any time to find your true north in your career. Do it today. Do it now.

If you’re a business executive, now is the time to build your business case for better environmental stewardship in your organisation. Business heavyweights like Richard Branson, Elon Musk and Bill Gates are investing in sustainable innovation, greener supply chains and clean technology. Not to mention other household names like Ikea , Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Marks and Spencer and other companies on the Forbes World’s Most Sustainable Companies List – and it’s not just greenwashing, it’s an investment in the future.

 

Christmas is coming! Reach out more, waste less.

Don’t judge me – I LOVE CHRISTMAS. Love it. As much as I did as a child – possibly even more, because I now have my own child to share the joy with (my partner’s family never got into Christmas festivities much so he suffers through my excitement as any dutiful husband would!).

However, I’m not a fan of all the crap. All the plastic. The foam. The glitter. The waste.

What I like about Christmas is that it gives us all an excuse to reach out to people who we ordinarily might not make the effort to reach out to. Because we’re busy. Because they’re busy, and little Susan has swimming on this day, or little Mike has a birthday party to go to. Or the singletons – too cool for family activities, or too busy with work or hobbies. That’s ok, it’s modern life.

I enjoy having people over. My house is humble. It will never win any awards or be in any magazines. It can barely fit my family and all our belongings, especially now that we both do a lot of work from home. But our doors are always open to friends and acquaintances, for a chat, or just to hang out. At Christmas time I actually have an excuse to ask people over to our tiny abode and not just ask to “Meet up for coffee?”.

I also think that somewhere along the way, we forgot how to give and receive gifts in a way that is pleasant and genuinely brings joy. We receive gifts and automatically think of our reciprocal obligations. We give gifts because we feel we have to, or stoutly refuse to do so because we don’t want to conform to what we perceive to be a commercialization of an outdated tradition. It means there’s a whole seasonal economy being supported by the buying and selling of things people didn’t necessarily need in the first place.

Let’s also not forget that Christmas isn’t a happy time for everyone. It is a stressful time for many reasons and can be quite unpleasant for some. The Wayside Chapel in Sydney serves over 3,500 meals on Christmas morning to those who are lonely or homeless, and many other charity organisations have similar Christmas drives.

Christmas can bring people together and actually be a lovely time of year for joyously giving and graciously receiving, or it can be a lonely and anxiety-ridden event.

I’d love to hear some of your thoughts on how we can make Christmas a more pleasant, more sustainable, and less wasteful time for those around us, and ways that you can think of to reach out to others.

So however you celebrate (or not) this Christmas season, I hope that you’ll be happy and safe. Pass it on.

The beginning: smart phones, food production, sanitation. Let’s start the change and save ourselves.

We live in an age of technological advancement that the world has never seen. According to a Deloitte study of global mobile consumer trends, 78% of global consumers own smart phones. The number of connected mobile phones worldwide in 2014 exceeded the actual global population, and this isn’t confined to just the cities. A study of rural connectivity in Indonesia showed similar adoption and usage of smartphones in rural communities compared to the rest of the country.

This is no surprise to anyone. A smart phone gives us the power to do business and be connected to the global community in ways that have never before been imaginable.

However, we also still live in a world where 1 in 3 people don’t have access to a decent toilet, and 844 million people don’t have access to clean drinking water (this figure is arguable depending on your definition of clean, and a whole bunch of other factors we can go into in another post). It is a world where we are more connected than ever before, and yet a child under 5 dies every 2 minutes due to lack of access to clean water and sanitation. Cholera is totally preventable.

By the end of this century, the world’s population is expected to exceed 11 billion people, with over 60% living in urban centres. Although this means that more people will be located closer to modern amenities and jobs, it also brings a number of other social issues associated with urban poverty.

Water, Food, Energy and the world we live in

I’m not the first, nor the most vocal in saying that we have to think about the future. I know you’re already thinking about what we can do to make a difference. You already know that we need to do more than just update our Facebook statuses and switch our lights off once a year on Earth Day or feel good about sorting our recycling (and I’m not suggesting for a minute that any of these things are not worthwhile).

By 2050, the world will need to:

• Feed an extra 2.4 billion people by increasing food production by 60% (and they’ll want meat – lots of it!)
• Cater for an increase in 50% demand for fresh water
• Produce 40% more energy than we do today
• Adjust to a loss in 10% biodiversity, and prevent further loss

We’re talking about a mere 3 decades from now (2017 at the time of writing). From my years working in water infrastructure in London – a city of 7 million residents, I think about how challenging it is to upscale drinking water production by even 5%, and I have a good idea of what we’re up against.

People have a social conscience but are time poor

Take this conversation I had with a friend (a full-time doctor in a public hospital and mother of 2 young children) earlier this year, that was prompted by a question I posed to my readers about #plasticfreejuly. She’s the no nonsense, get-it-done type:

“Everyone has a too hard basket. I barely have time to sleep – so my efforts stop at anything that requires extra time out of my chaos. Choosing wisely at shops is OK, going to 5 different shops to do shopping unfortunately belongs with making bread and beewax [wraps] – which is not [a good use of time] for me. People can go several weeks without food, but die after 11 days without sleep”.

The world is full of sleep-deprived workers, parents, and students – all contributing to the global economy in some way (yes, even that college student spending money down at the bar is a contributor), and all contributing to, yet potentially part of the solution to, this wicked problem of ours – how do we make all our resources go around, and how do we make it as fair as possible for everyone?

Our core beliefs – what unites and divides us

All over the world, we are becoming more polarized in our ideologies, and yet more than ever we need to work together, across boundaries of all kinds if we’re to overcome all the threats from social, political, economic and climate uncertainty that we are faced with.

Tackling the issues of sustainable development isn’t confined only to those with the education or status to make a difference. It can’t be. Each of us has the ability to reach across a widening gap in everything we do. By opening our minds to others and by taking the effort to understand and not judge, no matter how strange, hostile or unpleasant another person’s views seem. This is how we take the first steps to being agents of change.

Let’s start the change

Let’s have a dialogue. Let’s share ideas. Whether you’re a professional who works in sustainability, a parent who wants a more certain future for their children, a student who dreams of changing the world for the better, a skeptical bystander, or anything in between, I’d love for you to tune in here and share your thoughts with us.

I’ll be sharing thoughts, success stories, useful links, and resources. I’d love for you to do the same, right here with me. If you’re a company that sells sustainable, ethical, and useful products, we’d love to hear about it (But please see my Policy on unsolicited advertising).

I’m going to end here by quoting one of the people I admire, Dr. Jane Goodall, who inspires me with her belief that every individual matters. She believes that every individual can make small differences in the world, and that it’s though all these small differences can we make the world a better place:

“Only if we understand, will we are. Only if we care, will we help. Only if we help, shall all be saved.” 

Other things I want to write about but haven’t gotten around to doing so yet:

• Food safety
• Security of water and electricity supplies
• Economic growth

Please stay tuned!