Aqueduct
Aqueduct User Stories
Does your organization use Aqueduct? Submit your story to us.
Abbott is committed to maintaining sustainable, efficient and comprehensive water management programs that minimize their water use, safeguard water resources and are respectful of the needs and concerns of the communities where they operate. With manufacturing and research and development (R&D) locations throughout the world, it is critical that Abbott uses a global water tool that allows them to efficiently evaluate water risks down to the basin level to help prioritize actions across their sites. Abbott has used the World Resource Institutes (WRI) Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas tool since 2013 to conduct annual water-stress mapping and analysis in support of their water management strategies. WRI’s commitment to transparency, open data and peer reviewed methodology in the tool is a key reason why Abbott selected the Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas for their risk evaluation process. | Accenture has used the Aqueduct tool to assess risks related to water scarcity near their operations, both today and projected into the future.
While Accenture is not a water-intensive company, insight into water-related issues gives them a greater understanding of potential impacts near their locations and clients around the world, including impacts to the local communities where Accenture’s people live and work. |
"Ansell is pleased to join the Aqueduct Alliance and engage with WRI and other Alliance members to gain insights into leadership-level strategic water stewardship activities and contribute towards a shared global goal of achieving a water-secure future. Collaboration to overcome our shared water risks will be critical to the success of this effort — and Ansell is excited to work with the Aqueduct Alliance, supporting Ansell’s ongoing efforts for a more sustainable future. We look forward to achieving great things together!"
—John Marsden, SVP Global Operations and Supply Chain | Anthesis is a specialist global sustainability services and solutions consultancy that develops technically led & financially-driven sustainability strategies to help businesses identify and reduce sustainability risk, increase resilience, and capitalize on opportunities. The WRI Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas is integral to Anthesis’ water stewardship work, enabling Anthesis to customize application of leading hydrologic/socioeconomic data and climate scenario analysis to develop appropriate water strategies. Anthesis has employed Aqueduct in both public and private sector engagements across diverse industry sectors, such as food and beverage, apparel, and technology.
Aqueduct is Anthesis’ most frequently used water risk tool due to its ease of use, transparency in providing raw indicator values, and alignment with more robust source vulnerability assessments. Anthesis primarily uses Aqueduct to evaluate a client’s water-related risks at facility, catchment, and company-wide levels for sustainability reporting (e.g., CDP Water, GRI) and strategy development. This includes determining water withdrawals from water stressed areas and whether current and/or future water-related risks could generate a substantive financial or strategic impact. Anthesis utilizes various Aqueduct indicators, such as overall water risk, baseline water stress, flood occurrence, drought severity, and projected change in water stress across various climate scenarios. This data is combined with other water risk tool outputs, in conjunction with company-specific data (e.g., withdrawals/discharges, water quality, production, revenue), to establish water risks across a client’s portfolio.
Anthesis also employs Aqueduct in more complex assessments specifically tailored to better inform strategic decision making. For example, Anthesis has used Aqueduct to:
|
For years, CDP has used the open source data available in Aqueduct and WRI’s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas to map corporate risk exposure and mobilize the world’s largest corporations and financial institutions to tackle the global water crisis on an industrial scale. Financial institutions, when armed with the right data, are uniquely equipped to help advance water security. Aqueduct has allowed companies to provide comprehensive and comparable information on water risks to financiers via CDP, thereby informing better decision-making and identifying opportunities to achieve a water secure future. | Colgate-Palmolive Company (C-P) uses Aqueduct as the main source of data to identify water risk and inform water stewardship strategy across its value chain. For example, C-P has mapped key agricultural raw material suppliers on Aqueduct to monitor both current and future water stress and engage accordingly on water stewardship and data collection. Within the company’s four walls, Aqueduct is used to determine the level of water stress in manufacturing facilities. Water stress scores are factored into C-P’s decision-making alongside water cost and volume when prioritizing water efficiency investments. Lastly, the largest share of Colgate-Palmolive Company’s water footprint happens when consumers use their products. C-P uses Aqueduct’s Country Rankings of Domestic Baseline Water Stress, alongside other internal and external metrics, to identify key consumer markets facing water stress. |
Danone’s vision, “One Planet. One Health” translates their approach: bringing health through food and beverages in a way that is healthy for people and for the planet.
Water is both the limitation and the enabler to how Danone helps feed the world. And so Danone and other companies must fundamentally change their mindsets: by respecting the natural water cycle, rethinking the way they source water, how it is used in production processes, and how they share its access with communities.
Danone is using the Aqueduct tools to answer worldwide coverage on different perspectives such as water quality and quantity with detailed indicators. These indicators feed Danone’s Water Risk Assessment process on Operations and Supply Chain.
Danone fully supports the Aqueduct tool improvement, specifically on groundwater data, and wish a good equilibrium will be found between stability of results and evolution of the tool to better protect the Planet and People. | Ecolab leverages WRI’s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas data for two key publicly available tools: The Water Risk Monetizer and the Ecolab Smart Water Navigator. These tools help industry monetize business risks, benchmark metrics and provide operational guidance to improve enterprise and facility water management.
The Water Risk Monetizer (WRM) is a global water risk assessment tool that monetizes the full value of water and risks to businesses. By placing a value on the full value of water, businesses are better positioned to support water-related investments for change. The quantity-related data within the WRM is the Baseline Water Stress metric from WRI’s Aqueduct Tool and helps businesses make more informed decisions to protect against water quantity and quality constraints to growth.
The Smart Water Navigator (SWN) bridges the gap between corporate goals and local action, offering comprehensive roadmaps to build circular water management at the site level. Water stress data from WRI gives users insights on the current state of water on a local level.
By using WRI’s leading and credible datasets, both the WRM and SWN are grounded in the best-in-class data and scientific methodologies to provide businesses the most relevant and up-to-date outputs to move toward improved circular water management, protecting businesses from water risk and conserving this valuable resource.
Ecolab is a member of the Aqueduct Alliance, a coalition of organizations that provide essential support to Aqueduct maintenance, improvement, and development. |
Environmental Resources Management (ERM) works with a wide variety of clients, across the globe, including leading corporations from the oil & gas, chemical, mining, consumer goods, power, technology, and manufacturing sectors. Many of these clients operate in areas of water stress and foresee increased stress with growing populations and climate change. ERM has found WRI’s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas to be an excellent tool from two, key perspectives: (1) to clearly communicate to clients (graphically but backed with comprehensive data) the locations and extent of water stress, and (2) as a research tool to help formulate strategies to help their clients mitigate business risk stemming from water stress. | International Paper is one of the world’s leading producers of renewable, fiber-based packaging, pulp and paper. Aqueduct data is a key component of International Paper’s Facilities Water Risk Assessment. The flexibility of the tool allows them to use specific indicators in a way that makes sense for their industry and geographic locations. They combine data from the Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas with their own internal research in a site-based risk model that is informing the development of their comprehensive water stewardship strategy. International Paper joined the Aqueduct Alliance in summer 2019. They see WRI and the Aqueduct Alliance as key partners in helping develop their water strategy, set ambitious and relevant targets, and deliver on their commitment to water stewardship. WRI’s thought leadership and data-driven resources like the Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas, plus the network of leading companies at the table, were key in their decision to join.
International Paper is a member of the Aqueduct Alliance, a coalition of organizations that provide essential support to Aqueduct maintenance, improvement, and development. |
Water is critical to Kimberly-Clark’s business and the lifeblood of their tissue manufacturing business. Aqueduct enabled Kimberly-Clark to start looking at site level water risk and prioritize which facilities needed the most help. They collaborated with World Resources Institute in 2013 to identify “hot spots” around the world that coincided with where they had operating facilities. They sent out a mill-specific questionnaire and analyzed them based on criteria like regulatory compliance, seasonal variability, flooding and droughts. The analyses was combined to create a unique water scarcity index, from which Kimberly-Clark was able to ascertain that 12 of our 44 tissue manufacturing mills were located in high water stress regions. From there, they began implementing water management plans in those locations. Kimberly Clark expanded their scope to the watershed surrounding the mills, engaging with local stakeholders to collectively identify the risks and work together on water stewardship programs. Aqueduct has helped Kimberly-Clark hone in on their facilities located in the highest risk regions and thereby achieve meaningful impact where it matters most.
Kimberly-Clark is a member of the Aqueduct Alliance, a coalition of organizations that provide essential support to Aqueduct maintenance, improvement, and development. | Thermoelectric power generation withdraws 43% of all water across the European Union. The way the power sector interacts with the availability and quality of water will be an important consideration in their Energy transition. The European Union has positioned itself as a leader in renewable energies, but researchers at Leiden University wanted to see if the consented and planned development of the electricity grid was fast enough to adapt to the changes in water availability driven by climate change. Leiden used Aqueduct to assess the water vulnerability of energy generation per water basin across the European Union in 2020 and 2030. They found that although the electricity generated by thermoelectric power will decrease, water vulnerability will stay nearly the same, while the number of water basins with vulnerable generation will increase. This research was published in 2017 in Nature Energy. |
As a consultant that helps companies develop and implement impactful water stewardship strategies, we start with an understanding of where a company touches water across the value chain and the associated risks. With this understanding, businesses can make informed decisions about investment and innovation opportunities that mitigate risks and impacts.
The Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas has been a valuable resource in our work for large global companies with operations and supply chains around the world because the tool enables the screening of multiple locations across a variety of indicators. We have also found the data sets related to agriculture exposure to water stress to be helpful in understanding water risks in the supply chain.
As water scientists and engineers who routinely work with large data sets and models, we place a high value on resources like Aqueduct that convey complex data and information through a user-friendly interface backed by transparent documentation. We also appreciate that the data layers are available for download, which provides flexibility in how we use and present results to our clients. | Mars is reducing its environmental impacts in line with what science saying is necessary to keep the planet healthy. They’ve identified that water stress is a material and increasing risk to their business, impacting the operation of their factories and raw material supply chains, especially those for crops such as rice and mint that are heavily irrigated and sourced from water stressed countries like India, Pakistan, and Spain. Mars has been using Aqueduct since 2014 to help identify water stressed locations in their value chain, and Aqueduct’s Baseline water stress indicator continues to be used by Mars to help inform our water risk assessments and to help set context based targets to reduce unsustainable water usage. |
MSCI ESG Research evaluates a company’s water management strategy through a risk based lens as an input to our MSCI ESG Ratings model for companies and industries. As of August 2019, water stress is evaluated as a key issue for approximately 20% of companies in the MSCI ACWI Index . The risk assessment is based on two key components: the water dependency of a company’s lines of business and the location of a company’s operations in water-stressed geographies. As water stress is a local issue, our assessment requires a systematic means of combining corporate asset-level data with a highly granular map of water stress. MSCI ESG Research relies on WRI Aqueduct’s baseline water stress indicator to gauge the degree of water risk faced by a company’s operations globally. | Nestlé recognizes that the long-term success of their company is built upon sustainable access to water in the regions where they source raw materials, their factories are located and their consumers live. Nestlé uses WRI’s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas as an input for internal assessment of water stress at any given location. This helps Nestlé determine the risk associated with potential reduced water quantity, rank Nestlé sites, and develop action plans that help to ensure sustainable water management. |
Newmont has used WRI’s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas to evaluate and report on water risk (physical, reputational and regulatory) for a number of years. Newmont recently collaborated with the Aqueduct team to use the tool for a more detailed assessment of these risks at a watershed-level, which supported internal watershed-based target setting workshops. These assessments support mitigation of Newmont's operational risks, and broaden their focus to incorporate watershed-level context and their potential impacts to business. Through this work with Aqueduct, Newmont now has a better understanding of the role they can play in water stewardship through a broad range of partnership and project opportunities. | Nissan recognizes that water issues vary by region. As a first step in their water risk assessments , they have used the Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas to understand the scope of water challenges across their operations globally. Nissan then asks individual plants for detailed information to identify high risk areas, and prioritizes measures in at-risk sites to improve water security – such as building reservoirs to collect rainwater. |
P&G has been a member of the Aqueduct Alliance since 2013. As it embarked on its water stewardship journey, P&G chose to use the Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas given its robust data, ease of use, and transparent scoring system. Data from the Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas underpins P&G’s Water Risk Assessment Framework, enabling the Company to effectively identify priority river basins and pursue its goal to protect water for people and nature across the value chain. Aqueduct 3.0 will help P&G advance its water stewardship strategy into the future as the company works towards meeting its 2030 goal.
P&G is a member of the Aqueduct Alliance, a coalition of organizations that provide essential support to Aqueduct maintenance, improvement, and development. | PGGM is a pension fund service provider and manages some US$220 billion in assets. PGGM uses Aqueduct to conduct portfolio-level analysis of which of their investments are most exposed to various water-related risks. Their data providers combine Aqueduct’s contextual data with company data, with missing data derived from sector averages or inferred from alternative sources. This helps PGGM to target its company engagements and mitigate its water-related risks. Aqueduct maps also support the calculation of impact of PGGM’s Investments in Solutions program. |
Assessing water risks is a critical first step in the corporate water stewardship journey, enabling companies to identify if shared local water challenges within their operations and supply chains are important drivers of business risk. Quantis uses Aqueduct’s reliable water risk data to help clients scan their supply chains for water issues, identify hotspots and prioritize risks. This is key for setting relevant strategies and context-based water targets, and driving water stewardship projects that reduce water risks while generating social and environmental benefits. | Good water stewardship is a journey. The Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) Standard serves as a framework to guide companies and sites along the journey towards good water stewardship. An important component of good water stewardship and the AWS Standard is understanding context and water risk. The WRI Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas is a great tool for companies that are looking for ways to identify high-risk sites amongst their portfolio of sites to identify the places to implement the AWS Standard and undertake water stewardship efforts. It also helps sites that are implementing the AWS Standard to identify their water risk and contextualize their water stewardship objectives. |
For a beverage company, effective water risk management is key to running a sustainable business and driving growth. The Coca-Cola Company, with its global footprint of bottling operations, has a long history of assessing its exposure to water risk by collecting an extensive amount of data on a regular basis, across the hundreds of watersheds where it operates around the world. In 2011, The Coca-Cola Company’s internal global water risk data were donated to the World Resources Institute (WRI), to support the first iteration of the Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas. Today, the Coca-Cola Company continues to see WRI’s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas as an extremely valuable tool for companies to understand their business exposure to shared water challenges. The Coca-Cola Company is returning to this new and improved version of Aqueduct to conduct their latest, global, enterprise water risk assessment, which will form the back bone of their future global water strategy. | The interdependency of water and energy is set to intensify in the coming years. Since 2012, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has analysed this intersection in its World Energy Outlook, underpinned by WRI Aqueduct data.
In 2016, IEA undertook the first systemic global estimate of the amount of energy used to supply water to consumers. To do this, they used data from leading water institutions, including municipal water withdrawal and consumption projections from WRI. Their analysis showed that energy demand for the water sector will more than double by 2040, with the largest increase coming from desalination, large-scale water transfers and a rising demand for wastewater treatment.
IEA also used WRI data on future freshwater availability to examine the impacts of water stress on coal-fired power plants in China and India and to assess how different energy transition pathways and clean energy technology choices may impact future water use. Their analysis showed that constraints on water can challenge the reliability of existing energy operations as well as the viability of future projects.
The combination of water data from sources like Aqueduct with the best-available energy data is instrumental to the IEA’s analysis of the linkages, stress points and implications for energy and water security. This then enables them to advise policy makers and other stakeholders on how to address these risks. |
The Aqueduct tool provides the most up-to-date data on water risks across countries and water basins globally, helping to make water risk analysis more mainstream. The Pacific Institute in its capacity as the CEO Water Mandate uses Aqueduct to identify and evaluate strategic regions of the CEO Water Mandate along with an understanding of the locations of corporate supply chains and local partners. The companies, in turn, leverage the potential of Aqueduct to map regions, river basins, and individual sites to prioritize mitigation action.
For the site corporate water targets project, the Pacific Institute applies Aqueduct to obtain a high-level information on water risks in various catchments, such as those related to WASH, water quantity and quality, water-related ecosystems, water governance, and extreme water-related events. Such analysis, in addition to local water risk data, provides clarity on when to set targets that are operational and collective to address water risks and improve water security.
The Pacific Institute and the CEO Water Mandate believe that tools, such as Aqueduct, can empower companies to address water risks to businesses and the local communities in which they operate. | The Water Foundry is a trusted advisor that helps global clients in the public and private sectors to solve water related challenges. The Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas is a groundbreaking effort to provide companies and other stakeholders valuable insights on water risks that impact business growth, economic development, social wellbeing and ecosystem health. Aqueduct has long been a valuable tool in supporting The Water Foundry’s work with private sector clients in building water strategies to mitigate water risks and support sustainable and resilient business growth. The Water Foundry highly values WRI’s commitment to transparency and collaboration with other NGOs and the private and public sectors to understand and solve water related risks. |
The Yamaha Motor Company is a global company with headquarters in Japan and over 100 subsidiaries across the globe. Accelerating climate change and its impacts, such as extreme weather, flood, and drought put Yamaha Motor’s operations at risk.
However, water risks largely vary based on local conditions. With many locations spread across the globe, it is very difficult for Yamaha Motor to collect information from subsidiaries and asses water risk information at their headquarters. Yamaha Motor uses the Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas in their Risk Management Division and Environment Divisions to make sense of water challenges across these locations. Their Risk Management System, which features Aqueduct data, feeds into decision-making across all Yamaha Motor Group Companies. This information is used to ensure awareness, push for risk management plans, and monitor risks from a long-term viewpoint.
Yamaha Motor finds Aqueduct is beneficial not only in regular risk management work, but also in increasing awareness regarding water risk amongst employees as well as top management. In addition, it helps them work towards the goals set by their “Yamaha Motor Group Environmental Plan 2050”. | Tyson Foods uses WRI’s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas to easily screen for water-related risks across its facilities, and segments of its value chain. Aqueduct data is a key input into the Tyson Foods facility prioritization process, which determines the level of need for site water stewardship plans, targets, and local engagement. The open source data provided by Aqueduct has enhanced Tyson Foods understanding of current and projected future water risk, provided valuable internal communication resources, and laid the foundation for engaging outside the company’s walls as we respond to shared water challenges in the watersheds where Tyson Foods operates in and sources from.
Tyson Foods is a member of the Aqueduct Alliance, a coalition of organizations that provide essential support to Aqueduct maintenance, improvement, and development. |
In 2015, Veolia decided to launch a Water Stress Project as part of its 2016-2019 Group's Environmental Objectives Plan. The Plan includes targets to enhance the protection of water resources, among them, a specific target for water stress related issues: to conduct a diagnosis on 95% of sites with a significant water stress. The objective is to identify the risks related to water, at medium term for the assets, taking into account the use of the watershed by other actors and coming changes in the regulation.
As part of the methodology applied to identify sites which have “significant water stress issues”, Veolia decided to use the Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas to identify the water stress levels of different watersheds. In addition, Veolia has adopted a scoring approach that combines the quantity of water withdrawn from the environment by a site with the local stress level (as a large amount of water extracted from a fairly stressed area can be as risky as a medium amount of water in highly stressed area). To do so, geographical coordinates of sites from Veolia's Reporting System were used in the WRI Aqueduct tool. | Verdani Partners is a leading full-service sustainability consulting firm with over 20 years of experience in sustainable real estate. Verdani uses the Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas as part of a comprehensive resilience risk assessment for their clients’ existing assets. The team has also found the tool to be valuable in identifying future water risks as part of the diligence process for new acquisitions. Incorporating this data into the process allows their clients to make informed and responsible investment decisions. The Verdani engineering team and clients can also use this information to identify properties with high water risks that may benefit from implementing water efficient strategies and prepare for future water risks and stressors. |
WRAP UK used Aqueduct to look at water risk in relation to the countries where cotton—a particularly thirsty crop—is sourced from for clothing production. Through its Sustainable Clothing Action Plan, WRAP works with retailers and brands to make more sustainable choices on sourcing materials such as cotton. For its 2017 report Valuing Our Clothes – the true cost of fashion, WRAP used Aqueduct to provide a particularly strong visual depiction of global water risk to help show that there is a real and urgent need to take action. |