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E-book Organizational Water Footprint : Analyzing water use and mitigating water scarcity along global supply chains

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Penilaian

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Freshwater is sustaining life on our planet but is under increasing pressure due to popula-tion growth, increased water consumption and pollution as well as climate change. Facing freshwater scarcity is one of the major challenges of the 21st century and included in the Sustainable Development Goals as a fundamental target of the international community UN (2015). Also the World Economic Forum has been highlighting the “water crisis” as one of the top global risks for many years (WEF 2020).Water resources are unevenly distributed across the globe, which makes water scarcity a local problem at many places around the world. At the same time, international trade is ex-panding, and supply chains have an increasingly transnational character. Water that is used in basins subjected to scarcity, often located in the Global South, is integrated in production processes of industrialized countries (Lenzen et al. 2013; Tukker et al. 2014). Thus, a sustain-able use of the world’s limited freshwater resources is a global responsibility.So far, most organizations only measure water use of their own facilities by means of envi-ronmental management systems or other internal accounting methods. These approaches, though giving an overview concerning on-site water demand and potential uction measures at the facility’s location, do not account for the whole sphere of influence of an orga ni zation on the world’s freshwater resources. Water footprint studies of industrial products have re-vealed that water use at production sites is usually the tip of the iceberg only. The largest part of a product’s water use and resulting impacts often occur in supply chains, e. g. in the production of agricultural goods, the mining of mineral resources, or the generation of fos-sil-based electricity (Berger et al. 2012; 2017; Forin et al. 2019). In order to address this mismatch between water related hotspots along value chains and the focus of organizations on water use on their premises, the research project “Water Footprint for Organizations – Local Measures in Global Supply Chains (WELLE)” has been launched. It represents a multi-stakeholder research cooperation between TU Berlin, Evonik, German Copper Alliance, Neoperl, thinkstep, and Volkswagen and was funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) within the funding measure GRoW (Global Re-source Water). WELLE aims at supporting organizations in:• Analyzing water use and resulting local consequences “beyond the fence” along value chains, i. e. determining the Organizational Water Footprint• Identifying local hotspots in global supply chains• Taking action to reduce the Organizational Water Footprint and mitigate water scarcity at critical basins and in cooperation with suppliers and local stakeholdersTypically, an organization is broadly defined as an entity which pursues a specific goal or activity such as producing goods or providing services, for example, companies, public au-thorities, NGOs, etc. Within the WELLE project a method for analyzing an organization’s Water Footprint has been developed (Forin et al. 2019) along with a database1 and the WELLE Tool2 supporting its applicability. The method, database and presents the WELLE Tool have been tested and refined in case studies conducted by the industry partners. While the results of this research project have been published in great detail in scientific journals, this document intends to provide guidance for practitioners who want to analyze water use and the resulting local consequences along the supply chains of their organization. The next section describes the procedure for conducting an Organizational Water Footprint study. Section 3 presents the WELLE Tool, which supports the application of the method. Finally, measures which can be taken to reduce an organization’s Water Footprint and to mitigate water scarcity along supply chains are discussed in section 4. Practical examples from a case study conducted by the industry partner Neoperl are used throughout this guidance to illustrate the application of the method and WELLE Tool.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

628.5 FOR o

Penerbit

Berlin : Universitätsverlag der Technischen Universität Berlin., 2021

Deskripsi Fisik

46 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9783798331242

Klasifikasi

628.5

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

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Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

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