wie man dem CDP sein Wassermanagement mitteilt

When we talk about sustainability and environmental conservation, topics like climate change and waste management often come to mind first. Maybe your organization has spent a lot of time on carbon accounting, or put effort into reducing hazardous chemicals in your products.

One sustainability topic that doesn’t always get a lot of thought – aside from very resource-intensive industries – is water conservation. Most of us, in both our personal and professional lives, are used to turning on a tap, taking the water we need, and moving on with our day.

But water scarcity is a real concern. On our blue planet, less than 3% of all water is fresh, and more than 68% of that is locked up in ice and glaciers. In fact, just 0.3% of all freshwater is available in lakes and rivers, with the rest in groundwater.

For companies implementing Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) sustainability programs, future-focused water stewardship is increasingly becoming a material concern. As such, ESG reporting can help you to protect water resources and identify water-related risks, but for those new to disclosure, reporting can seem arduous. 

In this article, we’ll take a look at the disclosure process and explore water stewardship frameworks, including how to file a CDP report.

But first, let’s take a closer look at water stewardship.

How Is Water Stewardship Reported?

If you’re taking water directly from the watershed, either through groundwater or pumping it out of a lake or a river directly to your facility, you probably already have legal reporting requirements.

Most jurisdictions require permits to take water if you’re not connected to municipal sources as this helps to track available water for downstream users, whether that is other industries, cities, or for agricultural purposes.

You probably also have legal reporting requirements if you’re discharging process water to local sewers or back to the natural environment, either through direct discharge, or via onsite treatment or retention ponds.

Beyond mandatory reporting, however, many companies are now coming to realize how water stewardship and protecting water resources into the future poses a material risk to value creation. For this reason, we’re seeing an increase in water reporting as part of ESG programs. This goes beyond legal compliance to discuss potential business risks and opportunities related to how water is used, treated, and disposed of. 

Typically, a conservation and water stewardship report is prepared following one of several ESG frameworks with the information used by company leadership, community stakeholders, investors and financial institutions to verify the equitable protection of water resources and identify areas of future risk.

What Is the CDP?

The CDP, formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project, is an environmentally-focused sustainability reporting program and non-profit organization. Its standards cover water reporting as well as reporting on climate and forests, with questions around equity and leadership as part of its sustainability reporting frameworks.

Organizations that work with the CDP include:

• Companies
• Cities
• Governments
• Supply chains
• Investors
• States and regions
• Public authorities
• Private markets

To reduce the reporting burden, CDP questionnaires are tailored to your industry and the size of your operations. This ensures you don’t waste time reporting on aspects that aren’t material to your company’s sustainability risks and opportunities.

What Is in the CDP Water Stewardship Questionnaire?

There are 12 modules in the questionnaire, with a total of 85 questions covering the following topics:

• Corporate water accounting metrics
• Value chain engagement activities
• Business impacts
• Risk assessment procedures
• Risks, opportunities, and your responses to them
• Facility water accounting metrics
• Water governance and business strategy
• Targets
• Verification
• Plastics

The level of detail required to report depends on your sector, and some companies may notice questions are skipped if they are not material to your industry. Those sectors considered the most high impact include:

• Agricultural commodities
• Food, beverage & tobacco
• Electric utilities
• Oil & gas
• Chemicals
• Coal
• Mining

Other industries may still complete the water stewardship questionnaire but will find their requirements are significantly reduced or streamlined.

Introduction

In this section, which is common to all sectors, companies provide basic information on their business operations and reporting period. This includes a general description of the organization, as well as drop down menus for details like the reporting year, location of operations, and the currency used for financial information.

This is also where the boundaries of the report are described, along with any exclusions and a rationale for these exclusions.

Business Impacts

Now that the current state of operations have been documented, business must disclose any detrimental water-related impacts in the reporting year. This includes not only a description of the events, but also the business’s response and total financial impact.

Business impacts include not only environmental emergencies like unauthorized discharges, but other concerns like severe weather that impacts water quality and availability, litigation or negative media coverage, and transition stress as businesses move to a less water-stressed area or change processes to require less water.

If the business experienced any compliance-related water incidents or had to pay any water-related fines, these are also included here.

Risks & Opportunities

Water risks and opportunities that could carry a substantive financial or strategic risk to operations are detailed here, including what percentage of company facilities could be affected. Reports should show the company’s response, both in direct operations and in the value chain, and if no risks or opportunities have been identified, the rationale for this should also be included.

Governance

The governance section is where organizations report on how policies are developed and reviewed. This includes who has management responsibility for developing and approving policies and which board member positions will oversee water policies.

These disclosures should include details on the competencies of managers and board members responsible for water policies and how C-suite employees and board members are incentivized to incorporate water policies into business operations.

Governance disclosures also include how the organization is positioned to influence water-related public policy. For example, this might include direct engagement with policy makers, through trade associations, or by funding research organizations.

Targets

Now that accounting, policies, and strategies have been documented, companies should detail their targets related to water pollution, water withdrawals, or water, sanitation and hygiene services. After the first year, along with targets, companies should detail any progress made.

Plastics

Plastics pose a specific risk to water resources, so this section goes beyond details of water withdrawals and discharges and looks instead at how organizations manage the use and production of plastics up and down the value chain, even when this use or production may not directly involve water.

Companies should disclose identified environmental and human health impacts of their plastic usage as well as plastics-related risks that might have a financial or strategic impact on their business. Organizations will also report plastics-related targets and their progress in meeting them. Finally, this section includes an accounting portion where companies report the total weight of packaging sold and used.