Five thoughts on the future of corporate water stewardship

Companies are rethinking how they invest in water. Sebastian Hancox unpacks five key takeaways from major industrials at the annual Corporate Water Leaders workshop.

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Where water has historically been seen as a cost centre for risk mitigation, it is now being reshaped as a strategic investment area capable of driving business value. This was the key message that came out of this year’s annual Corporate Water Leaders workshop at the Global Water Summit. 

More than 60 industrial water representatives came together for a four-hour closed-door workshop to tackle the most pressing challenges facing water stewardship today. With scarcity pushing water up the corporate agenda, companies are looking more closely at how investing in water can do more than just mitigate risk. Here are five things I took away from the room: 

Water is moving from a cost centre to a value driver: Companies are increasingly treating water as a source of business value. As industry competes more directly with residential areas for dwindling water supplies, those investing in basin health initiatives or local water infrastructure not only secure operational resilience, but protect a social licence to operate that is becoming increasingly fragile. These actions can generate direct returns, as well as reduce risk. One participant from a food and beverage company described how funding water projects in its agricultural supply chain had increased its crop yields, raising profits while also reducing water footprint. Another participant from the textile and leather industry has been able to reduce its insurance premium by mitigating water risk in its basins through water resilience projects, resulting in a direct impact on the balance sheet. 

Onsite efficiency alone is not enough: Historically, it has been much easier to make the case for site-level optimisations that show clear gains and a measurable return on investment than collaborative water initiatives at the basin level. While efficiency upgrades can still be valuable for many companies, much of this potential has already been realised, and these measures alone are no longer enough to address the water risks they face. Increasingly, companies are looking at where else impact can be made, whether that be inside or outside the fenceline. There is a growing sense that companies are looking to break out of their silos and work more directly with other industrial water users. For example, two textile and leather companies that would ordinarily be classified as competitors have commissioned a joint mapping of a shared watershed. This has allowed them to gain a better understanding of flood risk, water availability and pollution, from which they have started to develop a shared roadmap to act on this information. 

Closer municipal-industrial partnerships are key: The most advanced companies in the room are actively reaching out to local utilities to finance infrastructure upgrades and secure residential and industrial supply. For example, one data centre operator finances purple pipe infrastructure for local utilities in return for access to recycled water. In such cases, these upgrades can be designed to leave capacity for other industrial users to connect later, meaning the utility ends up with a recycled water network it couldn't have financed alone, serving the wider community. The winner of this year’s Water Stewardship Programme of the Year, Cemex, also demonstrated an impressive example of industrial collaboration by repurposing wastewater from a number of local utilities and industries to achieve 67% alternative water use across its operations in Mexico in 2025.   

Industries are paying closer attention to who they work with: A strong preference was conveyed for targeted, context-specific action with local partners over working solely with global NGOs. With the rise of water positivity in recent years, companies have increasingly collaborated with NGOs to replenish watersheds, fund nature-based solutions or advance payment-for-ecosystem services schemes. These approaches are still popular, but companies are becoming more selective about who they work with, and how, wanting both to keep their work specific to the local context and to avoid the large overheads that global NGOs absorb in administration. “We are entering into a new period of ‘water stewardship in practice’, locally with real people, real issues, constraints and barriers," one source at a major global player in the food & beverage space told us. 

There are still pain points that need addressing: While these new ways of working are gaining traction, they raise governance questions of their own: how to allocate investment and distribute benefits among multiple companies working on the same project, how industry and municipalities can approach each other to work together, and how to act together when no company wants to be the first mover. These are the kinds of kinks that must be worked out if industry is to turn its water spending into something that delivers for both the balance sheet and local communities. The good news is that there is appetite for it. This year's workshop was more action-oriented than ever, with clear interest among the companies in the room in working more closely together, and with the wider water sector, to help deliver the water transition.