Water vs. Carbon: Why Achieving Water Sustainability is Uniquely Challenging
What I’m Learning as I Help Set Science-Based Targets for Cities & Corporations
Carbon’s hard. But water’s harder. Hang on — I’ll prove it.
One of the most exciting initiatives I’m part of is the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN), a group of experts from more than 45 NGOs, business associations and consultancies that are collectively defining science-based targets (SBTs) for sustainability — measurable objectives for corporations and cities that want to contribute to regional and global sustainability in socially equitable ways.
I’m part of the SBTN’s Water Hub. The SBTN has already addressed science-based targets for carbon — and water is among the targets now in process. And what we’re finding is three big differences in target-setting between water and carbon.
Three Big Differences: Models, Local Impacts, and Stakeholdering Finesse
First, with carbon, there’s a well-known set of scientific models published by the IPCC that provide the framework for the science. That means nobody has to decide which model to use for carbon. There is a portfolio of integrated models and a set of agreed upon scenarios. With water, on the other hand, the models currently have to be customized anew for each company in each watershed.
Second: All carbon is bad, and all carbon emissions are shared globally. Your carbon impact in one place can be integrated across your enterprise pretty easily. But because water is local, we can’t do that. Water impacts have to be dealt with where they’re happening, without the option of offsets.
Third: The process for stakeholdering with water is very different than that for carbon. Because water is local, it requires finesse that you don’t have to have in other realms. To get the targets to mean something in the context of an entire watershed, you have to factor in a host of local variables — culture and religion, for example, as well as the capacity and functionality and potential corruption of local agencies.
A company also often will have to leverage their target in a basin to get collective action among all the basin water users in order to hit the target. And the company has to decide if it’s worth it — should it just go for low-hanging fruit on its own, or should it push for harder, collective wins that impact the entire basin? That doesn’t happen with carbon.
Corporations might be big enough to persuade governments to play into this leverage. In Pakistan, for instance, textile companies are a key part of the national economy, so they have leverage to work with government to get things done. These companies could pilot innovative new solutions to Pakistan’s water problem — say, on recharge — because the government would partner with them to actively promote the solutions.
Because water is local, it requires finesse that you don’t have to have in other realms. To get the targets to mean something in the context of an entire watershed, you have to factor in a host of local variables — culture and religion, for example, as well as the capacity and functionality and potential corruption of local agencies.
— John Sabo
If my company has a small footprint, for instance, but my basin needs a lot of work, how do I make that happen? Perhaps the best way is to bring other companies to the table that get you closer to the objective. These private-to-private conversations are often much easier than the private-to-public.
How is the SBTN Water Hub Approaching These Challenges?
All of the above are themes that we return to over and over again in our SBTN Water Hub discussions. Here’s how we’re approaching solving for these complexities.
First, we’re explicitly acknowledging that water security writ large has a quality and a quantity component, and we’re dealing with that by being really agnostic about our modeling approach. We use the tool that matters the most instead of trying to force one method, one tool, one risk-filter, if you will, on the solution of the problem. And that agnostic approach turns out to be working pretty well, because we’ve had the ability to respond to companies and basin stakeholders in ways that are really responsive to their needs.
The second thing we’ve been doing is thinking hard about telescoping models — using the same model of the global scale that would cover the enterprise that we do at the watershed scale when we’re drilling down to actually address a problem.
The upshot of that work: The company using the targets can more easily navigate between their enterprise goals and their local goals, and balance their budget and portfolio of action across their enterprise in a more strategic way in most cases. In some cases the science may need to be overridden in order to balance progress at the enterprise level. That part is so interesting from a social-science point of view — because it’s the intersection of private governance and science.
Our hope is to focus companies on basins that really need attention. But there will always be a balance between private governance wanting to get to the finish line in a year, and the science telling the company: “No, you need to work on harder problems.”
The Final Carbon vs. Water Difference: Where’s the Technical Expertise Coming From?
The goal of our SBTN Water Hub work is to have a methodology that we could hand off to any company for implementation. But we have to admit: Some companies will be able to implement, but by and large most won’t.
Our hope is to focus companies on basins that really need attention. But there will always be a balance between private governance wanting to get to the finish line in a year, and the science telling the company: “No, you need to work on harder problems.”
— John Sabo
This is the final difference between carbon and water: Doing fully calibrated physically based models to create scenarios of better futures requires technical expertise that is sometimes far outside the company’s sphere of normal activity. We need to make this process and this capability accessible to companies that a) don’t have the capability now, and so b) may not be able to afford consultants forever to get their work done.
Science is done by scientists, not by magic algorithms. But producing customized science for every company in every watershed is prohibitively expensive. Ideally, we can get the process down to a cost point where corporations could invest in several basins per year. Or come up with a much- easier-to-deploy technical tool — a machine-learning emulation of models.
We also have to recognize that targets without time won’t work. No company is doing this kind of work except for the companies doing pilots within SBTN. Coca-Cola has been talking about doing a strategy like this for a long time. But it’s hard: While a company’s people doing water sustainability projects on the ground are measured annually on their success, some of the strategies we’re producing in the Water Hub will take much longer than a year to unfold. To execute a fully scientifically driven vision takes time.
Science is done by scientists, not by magic algorithms. But producing customized science for every company in every watershed is prohibitively expensive. Ideally, we can get the process down to a cost point where corporations could invest in several basins per year.
— John Sabo
There are ways to achieve that vision that could still meet the annual KPI model — you look at your enterprise and you set a five-year set of goals, with several basins in each year. But to get where we need to go with corporate water sustainability, we need more than targets. There needs to be a mechanism and funding for the sustainability teams and their companies to set longer-term visions and chart the path to achieving those visions, so that the companies aren’t just attacking low-hanging fruit that doesn’t add up to impact.
Despite the challenges, I remain optimistic. The piloting process is going to allow us to identify and address some of the challenges of doing local water sustainability in a quantitative way and codify a standardized approach that would include tiers of engagement with science. For the entry-level company, this might be applying a global model or a local model that’s already available. For companies with more experience as water sustainability stewards, this approach could involve building new but standard models that more robustly point to future strategies for improving the way aquatic ecosystems function for humans and nature. This process will take more time, but the results on the ground will be more material.
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