Aqueduct CDP Corporate Water Disclosure Webinar (8 May 2013)

Editor's Notes

1. Talk about Aqueduct project and step-by-step process of how the tool can be used for corporate water management
2. World Economic Forum 2013 Global Risks reportFor the second year in a rowWater was among the top 5 risks (at the top of the chart) – most likely to occur; and highest impact
3. Risks to governments, companies and investorsAqueduct was launched in response to corporate and investor concern in exposure to risks across operations and supply chainsFloods in Thailand impacted automotive industry in Japan and USATexas drought drove up cotton prices leading to financial impacts to major clothing brands Increasing demands in megacities has lead companies to truck in water Risk materialize and investors know it – they want to know where, why and what is being done about it
4. WRI Aqueduct launched new information global, up-do-date and comparable
5. Information displayed in the form of maps, to accurately capture the details and particularities of water and how these vary across basins, regions, countries, in a visual and comprehensive form, translating complex hydrological information into actionable information that can be understood by corporates, investors and other stakeholders
6. Because there are many sources of risk, Aqueduct chose to use a framework of indicators that would account for many of these and aggregate them into three main categories based on how companies perceive the risks – quantity, quality, regulatory and reputational Indicators include measures of water stress (most important), also variability in supply, storage, flood, drought, groundwater stress and others. Additionally, Aqueduct also provides estimate of the future conditions, via indicators of projected change in water stress computed using scenarios of supply and demand changes based on IPCC climate change scenarios and socioeconomic growth patterns
7. All of this information is publicly available on our project website, where it can be used to evaluate exposure to risk across operations or supply chains as well as downloaded for free and used internally by companies, governments, investors or academics The next few slides will explain how to use the Aqueduct tool to evaluate your companies exposure to risk
8. Three steps
9. First go to project website at www.wri.org/aqueductClick on map
10. Enter the tool – 1st step is to select weights based on industry, these will determine the importance of each indicator and drive the aggregation of these into aggregated scores of quality, quantity and reg rep. This can be done from the drop down menu on the water risk indicators panel on the top right The tool allows for customization of weights but not recommended
11. Second, once you have set the weights, you will need to import information on the location of your facilities, assets or suppliers, depending on what part of your organization or value chain you intent to assess for exposure to risk For that bottom left side, analyze location panel
12. Click on import locations, and import coordinates or addresses from excel document, by copy and pasting
13. Once you paste the locations, the tool is ready to geo-reference them, click “add locations”
14. Tool automatically populates the location information and provides you with the results for each individual indicators. These can be vizualized in the panel below, sorted from high to lowFor each location it also provides the country and major watershed
15. One can click on any given location to obtain the information
16. And most importantly you can export the results onto your computer and save them as an excel document
17. Exel is quite simple, includes location name, country, catchment and results for each indicator and aggregated scores (these will have been calculated based on the selection of weights) Results include level of risk, score 1-5, as well as the raw value for that indicator
18. So what can be done with this type of information, information on the water risk landscape surrounding your assets or suppliers? Most importantly it characterized the water use and intensity, putting into context the relationship between internal water use and efficiency and the surrounding environment (including naturally occurring variables as well as other demands) From the corproate water management cycle proposed by WBCSD, we see that information of this type can help in three of the 5 distinct steps of this process: assessing global and local water situation,Identifying water risks and opportunities (by combining with water use, intensity and discharge data)Finally, helping communicate this information to internal and external environmental, financial and other stakeholders, also know as disclosure Today’s webinar is going to focus on how Aqueduct can help report water risk to CDP water, the main vehicle for corporate disclosure around waterWith that I will pass the floor to Cate Lamb, head of water, for CDP Water based in London.
19. High to extremely high
20. Question 2.2 – other indicators, depends on companyQuestion 2.5, referring to inputs and raw materials, can be answer by plotting key sources and suppliers and evaluating which of their locations are exposed to high levels of water risk, looking first at aggregated scores to evaluate overall exposure to risk, then determine the source of risk using the 12 metrics
21. Question 3.1 – substantive change depends on company, exposure to water-related risk can be determined as discussed, first aggregated score and then determining the source of risk by indicator Question 3.1a – same; results help you fill out the three first columns: country, basin name and risk type
22. As far as future water-related risks, at this point Aqueduct can help evaluate future exposure to increased water stress, working on flood, drought and supply variability, not yet available. The results of future stress metrics are also in the excel document, at the endAlthough only one of many types of risk, water stress is central and critical to understanding water-related risk and is a key indicator for other water issues likely to be present in that area due to high levels of demand relative to supply – good metric to identify future risks