World Water Week

World Water Week, organised by SIWI, is the annual focal point for the globe's water issues. In 2018, World Water Week will address the theme "Water, ecosystems and human development". In 2017, over 3,300 individuals and around 380 convening organisations from 135 countries participated in the Week.

Experts, practitioners, decision-makers, business innovators and young professionals from a range of sectors and countries come to Stockholm to network, exchange ideas, foster new thinking and develop solutions to the most pressing water-related challenges of today.

As this milestone event draws closer, we're proud to announce the launch of our latest white paper on corporate water risk management practices.

Our team analysed the response strategies of 49 companies from the food, beverage, and metals & mining sectors, based on their reported their risk responses through CDP over the last three years. Here is what we found out:

• Companies engage in activities that focus beyond their direct sites ('beyond-the-fence') in more than 50% of their risk responses, steadily rising to 56% over the last three years
• Nature-based solutions (NBS) - the use of the natural ecosystem to manage water quantity and quality - are becoming the preferred infrastructure investment among companies for addressing water-related risks
• A water risk response strategy focusing on 'beyond-the-fence' activities seems to be more cost-effective: results showed that the median costs of strategies that exclusively focussed on such activities were four times cheaper than strategies that only entailed site-specific solutions.

The paper will be discussed by CDP at the event titled Ecosystem based water management: From innovation to practice on Thursday 30 August at 9am (FH Congress Hall A). Don't miss their presentation Industry in action: case studies of ecosystem-based water management!

Want to delve deeper into water-related challenges and corporate water risk management approaches with us? Meet us at World Water Week:

Addressing Challenges to Unlock Financing of Nature-based Solutions for Water

Monday 27 August | 16.00-17.30 | Room: FH Little Theatre

Naomi Rosenthal, Senior Consultant at South Pole, will be speaking about Nature-based solutions for Water (NbSW). To schedule a meeting with her or our Sustainability Consultant Alexandra Frank, author of our new white paper, please feel free to reach out to them directly or send an email to events@southpole.com.

Ecosystem based water management: From innovation to practice

Thursday 30 August | 09.00-10.30 | Room: FH Congress Hall A

CDP will explain how rivers, forests, wetlands and numerous other ecosystems underpin modern economies, with many corporations depending on these systems to deliver their products and services. They will use their data to show how companies are financially impacted by disruptions to ecosystem services, providing industry case studies of how this has happened. There is a positive story too: the number of companies setting goals around watershed and habitat restoration, and/or ecosystem preservation has become the most common goal reported in 2017.

For more information on our involvement at World Water Week here, please click here.