How can you improve your water stewardship?

It's World Water Day, so it's an ideal time to examine your company's use of the stuff that gives us life, says Stuart Orr
water stewardship
Water is the lifeblood of business meaning that taking water stewardship seriously is crucial. Photograph: Paul Hilton/EPA

In October 2009, NASA scientists deliberately crashed a probe into the moon. Normally, this story would not have grabbed my attention, but this time they were looking for something specific – they were in search of water. And they found it. Not much, but enough to answer a question people have been asking for decades: Yes, there is water on the moon.

I was with a friend when we heard this news, and his reaction has stayed with me. "There's water, so there must be life." It's a fair conclusion, if premature. We are taught from an early age that where there is water, life can follow.

Each year on March 22, we mark World Water Day – and it's important to take a couple of moments on this day to be reminded of the basics. When you hear news stories about water from across the world, they generally emphasise the scale and magnitude of the challenges we face. The stories make for sober reading and many of the statistics will boggle the mind. It's hard to imagine that we have paid so little attention to the stuff that literally gives us life.

While we are reminded of water's intrinsic nature for people, plants and animals, it's also worth remembering that water is the lifeblood of business, too. Nearly every business sector is water-dependant in some way or another. The first 15 minutes of your day – coffee, jeans and t-shirt, e-mail – have a global water footprint that touches Central America, Pakistan and China. Yet the supermarket chain, clothing company and microchip maker are just beginning to understand what this life-giving substance means to them, their profits and their long-term viability.

This new understanding brings its own set of jargon, and "stewardship" tops the list. Stewardship is defined as the "conducting, supervising or managing of something; especially the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care." In corporate circles, stewardship has come to represent how some sectors and companies are defining their role in environmental management challenges.

Water stewardship specifically is in its infancy as a guiding principle; there are no rules as to what makes a "water steward." Generally, the concept instructs us to act within reason and be mindful of limits. It's deceptively simple, really. Because while consultants and scientific advisors can tie companies in knots discussing the complexity of "participatory water management" and "environmental flows," the crux of stewardship is common sense. Act within reason. Be mindful of limits. Be responsible.

There is perhaps no better advice than that when considering the management of the world's water resources. To do otherwise is to risk the converse: unreasoned and unlimited use and abuse of water, which, in the long term, depletes the fundamental element on which we all depend.

Stuart Orr is freshwater manager for WWF International
