Earth:Water positive

Short description: Having a positive impact on water ecosystems

The concept of Water Positive can be defined as the concept where an entity, such as a company, community, or individual, goes beyond simply conserving water and actively contributes to the sustainable management and restoration of water resources. This involves implementing practices and technologies that reduce water consumption, improve water quality, and enhance water availability. The goal of being water positive is to leave a positive impact on water ecosystems and ensure that more water is conserved and restored than is used or depleted.

History

The "Water Positive" concept took root in the construction industry in the early 2000s. This was in response to an agenda for optimizing construction practices- reducing its environmental impact through land and materials reductions and energy and water conservations to produce "zero impact buildings." To conserve water, rain harvesting was considered to minimize its dependence on freshwater consumption.

The Water Positive concept expanded to other domains and industries as concerns began to rise over the challenges of global freshwater scarcity. The idea gained momentum as it could be conveniently coupled with a previous agenda of "Net zero emissions" with a common agenda of healing the environment through sustainable management of vital resources through civil and corporate responsibilities to control resource consumption and manage waste to achieve a net positive impact. To achieve these goals, compensational incentives are introduced as credits (carbon credits or water-positive credits) that can be commercially exchanged for legal tender between the seller (authorized carbon credit or water-positive holders) and buyers, promoting positive environmental impacts.

Like the compensation of Greenhouse gases (GHG), the idea behind water positive is to balance the water footprint by implementing process efficiency measures, water purification, aquifer recharge, ecosystem conservation, and other water compensation projects. It focuses on managing this critical resource so that organizations contribute more to global water sustainability.

Water Impact Assessment

The Water Positive Initiative seeks to assess the environmental impact of water consumption across various industrial domains. This cannot be achieved by looking at an entity's direct or indirect water consumption without considering the product or service exchanged locally, regionally, or internationally. The commodity or service has a hidden water consumption value that is often overlooked. In the 1990s, Prof. John Anthony Allan, a British geographer, and expert in water resources and environmental management, introduced the concept of Virtual Water (VW), which implies that the exchange of goods and services has a tangible water exchange value associated with them and must be considered.

Water Positive and Virtual Water combine to provide a better impact assessment of direct, indirect, and virtual water usage.  Relating commodities to their virtual water footprints,

Expansion of the Concept

Global expansion of the Water Positive concept emerged in the 2000s driven by the United Nations Millennium Development Goals relating to access to drinking water and the need for industries to participate in water sustainability in its production.

Beverage companies like The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo were pioneers in establishing water positivity commitments for water stressed regions- investing in water efficiency and community projects. They set ambitious goals to reduce potable water used per liter product production, becoming models for other industries. In June 2007, Coca-Cola announced a multi-year partnership with World Wildlife Fund(WWF) on water conservation. E. Neville Isdell, Coca-Cola's chairman and CEO, then stated: "Our goal is to replace every drop of water we use in our beverages and their production. For us, that means reducing the amount of water used...recycling water used for manufacturing processes so it can be safely returned to the environment, and replenishing water in communities and nature through locally relevant projects."

With the UN Sustainable Development Goals established in 2015 and growing social pressure for companies to adopt environmentally sustainable practices, more companies across various industries publicly took on the goal of being Water Positive by 2030 to 2050.

The surge in commitment to this initiative occurs after 2015, when leading companies such as Microsoft, Google, Ecolab, Unilever, Nestlé, AB InBev, Levi's, IKEA, Cargill, BP, Gap Inc., Colgate-Palmolive, Meta, Diageo, Starbucks, Danone, IBM, Procter & Gamble, Intel and Mars proposed drastic reductions in their operational water consumption and also offsetting consumption by implementing strategies like; rainwater harvesting systems, water purification, reforestation projects, and aquifer recharge- among other initiatives, focusing on improving water stressed basins.

Definition

"Being Water Positive" refers to a concept where an entity, such as a company, community or individual, goes beyond simple water conservation and actively contributes to the sustainable management and restoration of water resources. This involves implementing practices and technologies that reduce water consumption and improve water availability. The goal of being Water Positive is to positively impact aquatic ecosystems, ensuring more water is conserved and restored than used or consumed."

Strategies to become Water Positive

The main strategies applied by companies and entities have been presented into the United Nations Conference on Water held in New York in 2023 and are summarized below. It is assumed that by systematically following these guidelines and with long-term commitments, various companies have set goals to be Water Positive within 10 to 15 years. The strategies are:

• Implementing technologies and processes to reduce direct and indirect water consumption through process optimization, circularproduction, and water recycling and reuse.
• Offsetting the residual water footprint through projects that increase and improve the availability and quality of water in impacted basins through the construction of wetlands and algal farms, the treatment plants, reforestation, aquifer recharge, rainwater harvesting systems, among other innovations.
• Investment in research and development to implement new technologies that optimize water use.
• Establishing partnerships with NGOs, local communities and other actors to advance integrated management of shared water resources
• Promoting a culture of water sustainability among employees and consumers through awareness programs on the responsible use of water.
• Establishing compensation incentives for the application of multiple barrier purification systems such as ultrafiltration, microfiltration, nanofiltration, reverse osmosis, ultraviolet radiation or their combination that sustainably purifies water and achieve Water Positive production goals.

Water Positive Compensation

On September 14, 2021, the Vice President of the International Desalination Association (IDA), Alejandro Sturniolo, and the President of the Spanish Desalination and Reuse Association (AEDyR), Domingo Zarzo, met in Alicante, Spain to draft the first framework for a water credit offset program through water purification, based on carbon emission trading schemes (ETS) or cap and trade. This work aimed to support companies supporting the UN CEO Water Mandate and committed to water positive goals by producing new water similar to carbon markets – first reducing consumption and then offsetting through seawater desalination, wastewater reuse to supplement insufficient cycles. From this meeting, Miriam Brusilovsky President of Israel Desalination Society (IDS), Esther Gonzalez, Daniele Strongone Co-chair of Young Leaders Program of IDA, Dr. Guillem Gilabert-Oriol, Eduardo Orteu convened over 60 water professionals, engineers, PhDs to form the Water Positive Think Tank, democratizing knowledge on generating positive impact through purification technologies for managed aquifer recharge and direct/indirect use - supporting companies' water positive commitments. Water footprint compensation allows companies or individuals to invest in positive impact projects in water purification or savings to neutralize their environmental footprint. These projects can range from the purification of sea, rain or wastewater regeneration. Compensation can be local or between regions when there is water footprint or virtual water trading, from a water scarce region to one with a high-water threshold.

The Water Positive concept, through water purification using unconventional resources, was presented for the first time during the open ceremony at the IDA 2022 World Congress during the “Charting Resilient Water Solutions” Opening Ceremony

The objective of water footprint compensation is to achieve a positive impact on global water resources. This is done by collaborating with various stakeholders to implement water purification systems in areas of scarcity, so as to increase the local supply. A more balanced trade in virtual water footprint," which is the water used to produce traded goods and services between regions, is also promoted.

Regulating this virtual water trade can improve the global efficiency of water use. Regions with abundant water resources could compensate part of the water footprint from regions with high water stress, thus helping to alleviate their dependence on virtual water imports. This two-pronged approach of increasing local supply and balancing trade between regions represents a comprehensive management of global water resources that only these decentralized treatments allow in a way similar to the carbon offset market.