The Water Resilience Coalition announced new progress on its 2030 goal to accelerate private sector action to build global water resilience.
Unveiling its 2030 ambition at the Private Sector Forum during UN General Assembly week, the WRC is aiming for its Faster Forward initiative to speed private sector actions in five areas: gender equality, climate action, living wage, water resilience, and finance and investment. The progress means that there are 21 collective action projects now underway to build water resilience in 15 water-stressed river basins across Asia, Africa, South America, and North America, WRC said.
The private sector water resilience target was previously launched during the March 2023 UN Water Conference as the “Business Leaders’ Open Call for Water Action.”
“Building on momentum from the historic UN Water Conference in March, the Water Resilience Coalition’s 2030 ambition has set the private sector high bar for acting on water,” Sanda Ojiambo, CEO and executive director of the UN Global Compact, and co-chair of the Water Resilience Coalition, said in a statement. “The imperative now is to expand this leadership group to a critical mass of leading companies to ensure we move forward faster to reach SDG 6 targets by 2030.”
WRC was launched in 2020 as a CEO-led initiative that aims to put water stress at the top of corporate agendas. It includes 35 global companies across multiple sectors with a combined market cap of $4.8 trillion and operations in more than 140 countries. The coalition aims to recruit 150 of the world’s most influential companies by 2030 with the potential to influence one-third of the world’s water withdrawals. WRC is an initiative of the CEO Water Mandate, a partnership between the United Nations Global Compact and the Pacific Institute.
The coalition has a goal of building water resilience in 100 priority basins by 2030. The basins are identified on the Water Action Hub by WRC. Building water resilience in 100 basins will ensure water security for 3 billion people and enable equitable access to water, sanitation, and hygiene for more than 300 million people.
As part of the announcement, more companies, including Ecolab, Gap, and ABInBev, have become “Basin Champions” to serve as convening agents for collective action in specific basins. Organizations involved in the effort are leading many of the collective action projects in the first 15 of the 100 Priority Basins.
For example, Ecolab, which was the Coalition’s first Basin Champion, is tackling drought in the Colorado River Basin to contribute to closing California’s 2040 water supply gap. The company is working to advance public-private partnerships that will help shore up water access in California. It aims to deliver water savings based on targets set by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s California Water Supply Strategy.
“The Water Resilience Coalition and its Basin Champion initiative are the premier pathways for harnessing the collective power of diverse stakeholders to achieve our common goals,” Christophe Beck, chairman and CEO of Ecolab and co-chair of the Water Resilience Coalition, said in a statement. “The business imperative to address the water crisis is clear, and we need more corporate action to accelerate progress on SDG 6 and build a sustainable future conducive to profitable growth.”
