Volumetric Water Benefit Accounting 2.0: Guidance for implementing, evaluating, and claiming volumetric water benefits of water stewardship projects
This guidebook provides corporate practitioners and project implementers with a clearly defined six-step approach for identifying water stewardship activities and quantifying, tracking and communicating their volumetric water benefits. It offers voluntary, principle-based, and nonprescriptive guidance that is applicable to a broad spectrum of water stewardship activities.
Since its initial publication in 2019, Volumetric Water Benefit Accounting (VWBA) has been broadly adopted and is regarded as a best-practice resource for providing transparent, credible, and comparable methodologies to quantify volumetric water benefits (VWBs) derived from water stewardship activities. The release of VWBA 2.0 represents a methodological advancement, responding to an identified need for expanded and refined guidance on VWBs. This update incorporates insights and empirical lessons from years of practical application to strengthen the guidance use for real-world implementation.
Developed through extensive partner consultation, this guidebook offers a six-step process and describes how to do the following: gain an understanding of the local context and shared water challenges; identify and evaluate potential projects and partners; credibly quantify volumetric water benefits; plan and agree to a project; implement projects and track progress; and communicate claims. This principle-based, voluntary, and nonprescriptive guidance is designed for water stewardship practitioners and companies seeking to make consistent, credible volumetric water benefit claims across diverse geographies and water stewardship activities.
This guidebook is limited to volumetric water benefits, but many elements of the guidance are designed to help practitioners identify and implement the type of water stewardship activities that will be most relevant to the catchment context and therefore deliver the most value to the catchment and its relevant parties.
Executive Summary
This guidebook describes six steps that companies can use to identify water stewardship activities and quantify, track, report, and communicate VWBs.
1. Understand the local catchment context.
Since water challenges are influenced by local factors that vary significantly across catchments, it is important to first understand the local context, which can help to identify and prioritize shared water challenges. This first step typically involves building an understanding of the political, hydrological, social, and governance conditions of the catchment as well as identifying relevant parties and their respective roles.
2. Identify and evaluate potential project activities and partners.
Ensuring alignment between a company’s stated commitments and goals and how and where VWBs are generated based on water stewardship activities is essential for making credible claims. Companies and practitioners can use VWBA 2.0 guidance to evaluate potential projects against a set of six eligibility criteria that should be met to ensure the project has the potential to generate a credible VWB. The guidebook also includes a set of 10 project selection considerations that can help practitioners identify, prioritize, and select projects to strengthen potential outcomes and impacts. Guidance is provided on strategies for partnering with reputable and experienced implementing partners who can help identify and evaluate meaningful water stewardship activities that deliver quantifiable VWBs.
3. Quantify the VWBs of project activities.
After practitioners understand the local context and shared water challenge(s) and identify project activities that address those challenge(s), they can select a volumetric objective and associated indicators and methods and quantify the VWBs. The following principles are provided to help practitioners quantify VWBs:
- Understand the primary objective of each project activity
- Use practical and scientifically defensible methods
- Identify, document, and apply conservative inputs and assumptions
- Use an appropriate temporal scale
- Avoid double counting VWBs
A variety of methods and indicators are provided with guidance on scenarios for appropriate application.
4. Plan and agree.
Companies partner with others in many ways to support water stewardship activities. Prior to final project selection and contracting, it is important for all parties (sponsors and implementers) to develop a shared understanding of the VWB attribution plan, implementation timeline, cost, and duration of the activity and associated VWBs as well as the tracking and reporting plan. Where possible, when multiple project sponsors are involved, there should be alignment among all parties to apply a consistent method and approach for VWB quantification. By considering these components and including them in the agreement process, companies can help ensure they will be well positioned to track, report, and communicate VWBs following implementation.
5. Implement project and track progress.
Once the project is contracted and the attribution and tracking & reporting plans are in place, corporate practitioners and project implementers can execute project activities and document VWB outputs with sufficient information to make VWB claims. Where possible, companies can work with project implementers and tie into existing monitoring efforts to evaluate broader desired outcomes and longer-term levels of impact.
6. Confirm and prepare for VWB communications.
VWB claims are any statement, accounting, or communication regarding the delivery of existing or anticipated VWBs that result from voluntary actions taken by the entity making the claim. Before making claims, practitioners should confirm that VWBs being claimed are
- delivered by activities that meet VWB eligibility criteria;
- aligned with company goals;
- representative of the activity’s status and duration; and,
- representative of the company’s contributions to the activity.
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