Water

Overview

Water is a crosscutting issue in sustainable consumption and production:

• Water is an essential natural resource that industry needs to produce goods and services that consumers use.
  
  
• Water is scarce (has limited availability) in various regions of the world, and particularly in many under-developed regions limiting prospects to enhance human welfare and achieve economic development.
  
  
• Water as a medium is a receptor of emissions that influence its quality (and hence availability) and cause environmental damage.

Because of its primacy, water is addressed by numerous UN-led initiatives coordinated under the UN water mechanism for follow-up of the water-related decisions reached at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development and the Millennium Development Goals. It will support Member States in their efforts to achieve water and sanitation goals and targets. UN Water's work encompasses all aspects of freshwater, including surface and groundwater resources and the interface between fresh and sea water. The United Nations Environment Programme focuses on freshwater, the work on water is being led by the Division of Environmental Policy Implementation (DEPI). Within the Division of Technology, Industry and Economics (DTIE) the International Environmental Technology Centre (IETC) focuses on water and environmentally sound technologies (ESTs) and sanitation.

UNEP DTIE has the mandate to work with business and industry, in close collaboration with Global Compact, and is pursuing new business models and corporate social and environmental responsibility through its SCP Branch. We have longstanding experience in working with business (including multinationals) on cleaner and safer production, eco-design and life cycle management for more efficient resource use. We are aware that for those companies which consume important quantities of water the issue of water use and scarcity is becoming a matter of real risk as they face interconnected and concerned consumers that are asking more questions and financiers that are looking beyond traditional boundaries when examining material risk.

Specifically, SCP Branch works with companies to:

• Apply cleaner production and life cycle approaches to improve water efficiency in their water use (reducing, reusing, recycling) in house and in the supply chain, including efforts to promote investments in water efficiency contributing directly to poverty alleviation;
  
  
• Help them to enable their consumers to use water more efficiently (product eco-design, product information, labels, awareness raising campaigns),
  
  
• Support them in their work with stakeholders (e.g. in a public private partnerships/ infrastructure projects or tourism development schemes or supply chain partnering) to ensure that wastewater issues and water scarcity is adequately addressed in environmental impact assessments and joint operations.
  

An example is the African BREwery Water saving initiative (ABREW). Other activities focus at the broader policy level - linked to the Marrakech Process. An example is the Resource Panel where water consumption- as a natural resource and its life cycle in particular in relation to biofuels - is discussed. In the 2nd phase of the Life Cycle Initiative, a water impact indicator is expected to be developed in a project which will help to consider impacts on water availability in life cycle based product development processes carried out by industry.

"The water cycle and the life cycle are one"
Jacques Cousteau