Forty per cent of world species depend on the world’s rapidly degrading wetlands, including humans. Water stewardship is already delivering huge benefits in water availability in our communities. Why not do it for nature too?
IF THE SLEW of recent sustainability conference themes and blogs is anything to go by, nature is having a moment.
It’s long overdue. The world’s forests, rivers, oceans and soils provide our food, air and water, as well as raw materials for the goods and services that power our economies.
Around 55% of global GDP (US$58 trillion) is dependent on nature to some degree. Yet, all around us, ecosystems are in crisis, habitats are vanishing and species are facing extinction.
Stakeholders including consumers are getting worried too. According to the latest Biodiversity Barometer, 90% of people think humans need to protect nature and 83% believe companies should contribute to the effort.
On top of that, the relatively new Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) is piling political pressure on companies disclose their impact on nature and set targets for protecting it.
How water stewardship can help turn the tide on nature decline
The challenge for corporate sustainability professionals is that, unlike carbon, fixing nature doesn’t fit easily into a nicely reportable metric that’s easily offset.
If you want more pollinating insects for your source crops, it gets pretty complicated. You need to improve the health and availability of all the habitats they need at every stage of their lifecycle.
The good news is that those same professionals already know how to do this. After 40 or more years of addressing ever harder, bigger and more entwined issues, they are adept at assessing complicated holistic systems and influencing them for the better.
In fact, many of the sustainability initiatives companies are taking right now might already be making positive contributions to their impact on biodiversity. Things like actively replenishing water supplies or protecting forests to partially offset their carbon footprint.
And, as in so many areas, artificial intelligence (AI) systems are helping them ‘understand complexity and optimise processes for holistic business, social and environmental outcomes’.
Leveraging the linkages between water and nature
Let’s take water as an example, because that’s what I know best.
Water has been called the teeth in the climate change shark because negative impacts like drought and flooding are often the first major sign that things are going badly wrong.
Just like nature, water risks are exacerbated by the economic over-exploitation of freshwater sources like rivers, lakes and aquifers.
These wetlands are incredibly rich ecosystems. As well as supplying almost all our freshwater, wetlands support 40% of world species and sequester carbon far more effectively than rain forests.
And, just like water, nature risks are felt locally. Tackling water risks needs to be done in the very watersheds where the problems lie. It’s even more localised for species. Alleviating risks to biodiversity takes action in the specific habitats plants and animals need to survive and thrive.
Carefully targeted, improving the quality and quantity of water in the name of water replenishment can have associated benefits for biodiversity.
Scaling up nature outcomes through habitat-specific water replenishment
Corporate water stewardship and water positive programs which replenish water in local communities can make a positive impact if they’re in areas of high-water stress or act to reduce abstraction in sensitive wetland habitats.
This can be achieved at scale by helping municipalities and water utilities reduce water leakage. Despite the fears about the water footprint of new technologies, FIDO AI is already leading the way in doing this and has the potential to make great savings which more than compensate for its own water use.
Currently, around 30% of the water which is expensively and carbon-intensively pumped from the environment into pipeline distribution networks never actually reaches consumers.
By reducing this water loss in areas whose freshwater comes predominantly from sensitive and stressed wetland habitats, companies can deliver on many goals.
- Water: reducing leakage instantly making more water available to local communities
- Nature: reducing leakage cuts the need to source additional water from stressed or sensitive wetlands
- Carbon: reducing leakage avoids using additional carbon to abstract, treat and transport the replacement water
Accepted reporting metrics on biodiversity and water impacts
What’s more, the metrics are well understood by consumers, investors and regulators. These include: cubic metres of water replenished in areas supplied by a protected wetland, or a cubic metre reduction in water abstracted from such a source.
Such water sources are already well mapped and known by water companies. Building them into existing water stewardship programs shows how actions can be re-purposed to deliver multiple benefits.
If anything can bring sustainability efforts together into a coherent whole, it’s working towards improving biodiversity.
It is the ultimate nexus issue touching every one of the UN’s sustainable development goals.
Getting nature right will pull all those SDGs with it.
Article originally published on Victoria’s Linked In feed on November 24. Go to the original here
