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Business in the world of water: WBCSD Water Scenarios to 2025
 The H2O scenarios ( 1 MB) offer three stories about the role of business in relation to the growing issue of water in the world. These stories do not try to cover everything but attempt to bring to life a limited number of alternative future environments that will challenge our economic viability, social legitimacy, and global fitness in the marketplace.
Everyone understands that water is essential to life. But many are only just now beginning to grasp how essential it is to everything in life – food, energy, transportation, nature, leisure, identity, culture, social norms, and virtually all the products used on a daily basis. With population growth and economic development driving accelerating demand for everything, the full value of water is becoming increasingly apparent to all.
Like people and governments, businesses tend to ignore water until it becomes scarce, polluted, too expensive, or in some way is mismanaged.
But in the near future – as a result of changes in both human and natural systems that affect water availability, access, affordability, and quality – the water management challenges facing humanity will become more complex. The prospect of water shortages, scarcities, and stresses will increase.
We chose to build scenarios because scenarios provide a platform for coming to a more systemic and shared view of the bigger and deeper picture. Furthermore, building and using scenarios can help forge shared commitment, as well as shared understanding, by acknowledging uncertainties, by respecting differences in perspectives, and by pointing beyond the problem to explore what solutions might unfold and to what effect.
Messages from the Scenarios as a Set
- Business cannot survive in a society that thirsts
- You don’t have to be in the water business to have a water crisis.
- Business is part of the solution, and its potential is driven by its engagement.
- Growing water issues and complexity will drive up costs.
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While the three stories together – H, 2, and O – were created in relation to each other, as part of a ‘molecular set’, they are intended to present mutually exclusive worlds as platforms for discussion.
- H = Hydro is the story of efficiency (more value per drop and more drops for less). In Hydro, there is a strategic advantage to being the first to market with the flexible, right-choice solutions rather than being locked out.
- 2 = Rivers is the story of security – enough water of suffi cient quality for both the haves and the have-nots. In Rivers business cannot choose to operate only in the economic realm, which is just one side of the management challenge, if it wants water security.
- O = Ocean is the story of interconnectivity – accounting for the sustainability of the whole system. In the world of Ocean, business realizes that it cannot help particular communities survive and prosper at the expense of causing water stress elsewhere.
Our vision is that businesses – together with others everywhere -can play an active and responsible role in ensuring socially equitable, ecologically respectful, and economically viable water management.
Download
Resources
Events
- Business for Social Responsibility
New York, USA,
8 November 2006
Speakers: Jan Dell, CH2M Hill; Albert Wong, Shell Group and Eva Haden, WBCSD
Presentation ( 1.8 MB)
Audio/Podcast (MP3)
- WBCSD LD Meeting
New York, USA,
24 October 2006
Speakers: Joppe Cramwinckel, Shell Group; Jack Moss, Suez
Summary ( 12 kb)
Presentation ( 1.6 MB)
- National Business Initiative
Johannesburg, South Africa,
18 September 2006
Speakers: Eva Haden, WBCSD; Pancho Ndebele, South African Breweries Limited and Marius Claassen, CSIR
Summary ( 2.2 MB)
Presentation ( 127 kb)
- Stockholm World Water Week
Stockholm, Sweden,
21 August 2006
Speakers: Jack Moss, Suez; Joppe Cramwinckel, Shell Jürg Gerber and Eva Haden, WBCSD
Summary ( 17 kb)
Presentation ( 1 MB)
Additional material
- Business in the World of Water ( 821 kb)
- Contagious Water Risks
- Water Stress and cities
- The Ten Most Urbanized Countries
- Mega-cities
- Water Footprint and Population
- The Supply-Sanitation Gap
- People and Water
- The Energy-Water-Food Nexus
- H = Hydro ( 412 kb)
- Urbanization and Water
- China Water Facts
- New Technologies for Water Solutions
- Water Reuse
- 2 = Rivers ( 679 kb)
- Political Economy of Water
- Emerging Middle-Class Lifestyles
- Political vs. market-based models of reallocation of water in South Africa
- Africa
- Water and Energy
- More Water in Meat
- Water Wars: Is Conflict Inevitable?
- O = Ocean ( 552 kb)
- Blue and Green Water in the Big Water Systems
- Virtual Water Flows
- Cityplex
- Coastal Cities and the Rise of the Sea
- Mismanaging Water and the Collapse of Civilizations
- The Energy-Climate-Water Nexus
- Local Water Dialogues
- Planning, the Public, and the Panama Canal
- Water Scores for Business
- Switzerland—what happens when you don’t tie the knots together
- Taking Action Together
- Valuing Nature
- Valuing Water
- Water Use in the Life Cycle of Goods and Services.
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10 Aug 2006 |
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Publications
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Water
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WBCSD
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5.4 MB) 
