Many business risks stem from increasing pressures on the natural foundations of our water security: rivers, lakes and aquifers. Water scarcity or pollution can take their toll (pdf) on your company’s operations and supply chains, especially if you work in (or if you invest in) the food or beverage sectors, textiles, mining or energy.
The best way to reduce the risks to your company is through collective action, working with other stakeholders, including NGOs, community organisations, researchers or local and national government agencies. It might take you into formal or informal partnerships to directly tackle problems, or you might jointly try to influence public policy.
The environmental, socio-economic, political and cultural context in one river will be different from that in another, but nevertheless some patterns repeat. So here are the five things you should know about rivers before you embark on collective action to tackle business water risks.
Death by a thousand cuts
Water-related risks seldom stem from a single problem. A decline in the health of rivers, lakes and aquifers is the result of a combination of overuse of water, pollution and fragmentation. In the Ganges basin, for example, irrigation of thousands of farms both contributes to and suffers from water scarcity and drought. Pollution from numerous sources of sewage and industrial effluent are serious challenges too. India’s planned dam-building boom along the upper Ganges might add to the river’s burden by altering the timing and quantity of water flowing downstream. So you may need to help heal more than one wound.
Enter the dragons
In simple terms, successful collective action to restore rivers or improve water management often boils down to institutional effectiveness and many lack basic capacity. In sub-Saharan Africa, local and basin-scale water managers are frequently under-resourced. Simply getting hold of data on river flows is often impossible. In other countries, institutions might work in silos. Chinese experts often refer to the “nine dragons”: the various ministries and state agencies that have some decision-making authority for rivers including the mighty Yangtze. Nine is probably an underestimate. Understanding how to engage and support institutions is essential.
Mystic rivers
Abuses of water systems act in concert to produce a cocktail of risks to river health. Taking too much water from the river reduces its ability to assimilate pollution. Pollution can be the final straw for wildlife which has clung on, even after prized habitat has given way to dams. A new upstream dam can throw a spanner into the most carefully constructed local water allocation plan.
Questions of scale further complicate matters. Collective action at the city level might successfully address local pollution priorities, but if a heavily-polluting factory opens in the neighbouring municipality the river will remain filthy. The politics of water is tricky too, as recent protests about water charging in Ireland testify. When it comes to rivers, complexity – mystery, even – is the norm. Simple diagnoses and remedies are rare.
Uncertainty rules ... probably
Old-school water engineers were skilled at gauging the height of the dam you needed to build or the volume of water storage required. They built their analyses on historic rainfall and river flow data. As our climate changes, this approach is becoming inadequate. Rainy seasons are less predictable; extreme events are intensifying. Last winter’s floods in the UK and the ongoing drought in California might be a teaser reel from the film of our water future. Beware anyone who professes certainty on future river flows and water availability.
Known unknowns
The trick is to figure out where collective action is most likely to help reduce pressure on a river and to build a business case around that. If your chief financial officer is used to neat equations of capex and return on investment, you’ll need to explain that ostensibly attractive technical fixes are unlikely to work if they don’t take account of complexity and uncertainty. Humility, in the form of explicit recognition of the limits of your knowledge and influence, is critical. As another Greek sage, Socrates, once concluded: “From confusion comes wisdom”.
Dave Tickner is acting director of science and policy at WWF-UK and a visiting fellow at the University of East Anglia.
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