Corporate Water Accounting: An Analysis of Methods and Tools for ...

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surement and communication of the water footprint
of products, processes, and organizations. While this
standard refers to itself a standard for “water footprints”,
it is important to note that “water footprints”
in this context refers to the broader range of water
accounting tools and not specifically water footprints
as developed by WFN. This standard intended to establish
a framework and set of principles that enable
existing water accounting methods to be consistent
with one another and with other standards. This will
consider regional concerns (e.g. relative scarcity, extent
of economic development, etc.). ISO has explicitly
stated that it does not intended to establish its own
methodology, but rather provide guidelines for the
important elements that water accounting methods
should address.
Other corporate water
accounting initiatives
Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s Water
Accounting Standards Board
As part of the Australian Government’s
Raising National Water Standard
Program, the Water Accounting Standards Board
(WASB) is responsible for the oversight and coordination
of the development of all the nation’s standards
on water accounting. It is housed with the Bureau
of Meteorology, but serves as an independent expert
advisory board. WASB recently published the Water
Accounting Conceptual Framework (WACF), which
provides guidance for the preparation and presentations
of general purpose water accounts, as well as
a preliminary Australian water accounting standard
that is meant to harmonize the methods and indicators
that are used to measure water use and discharge.
These documents are applicable to many different
sectors, including the private sector.
Beverage Industry Environmental
Roundtable (BIER) Water Footprint
Working Group
BIER – a coalition of global beverage
companies working to advance environmental
stewardship – has formed the BIER Water
Footprint Working Group to develop sector-specific
guidelines for assessing the water use and impacts of
a company or product. These guidelines will attempt
to establish common water accounting boundaries,
definitions, and calculation methods for the beverage
industry. They will provide detailed instructions for
specific inputs and operations that are unique to the
sector. These guidelines will be developed with assistance
from ISO, WFN, WWF, and UNEP/SETAC and
will be published in late 2010.
Corporate Water Gauge
The Corporate Water Gauge is a
context-based measurement tool/
method that measures the sustainability
of a facility’s and/or enterprise’s water use
in light of locally relevant watershed and precipitation
conditions, while taking into account the volumes,
sources and sinks of water inflows and outflows, and
the populations with whom such resources must be
shared. The Gauge produces quantitative scores that
reflect the sustainability of a facility’s/organization’s
water use relative to locally renewable supplies. Sustainability
performance is determined by comparing
rates of water use against rates of water regeneration,
after allocating shares of available resources to specific
facilities and/or organizations. It uses GIS technology
to profile, analyze and report local hydrological,
demographic and economic information at a watershed
level of analysis in combination with site-specific
datasets. It was developed by the Center for Sustainable
Innovation, a non-profit corporation dedicated
to the advancement of sustainability measurement,
management and reporting in organizational settings.
Minerals Council of Australia
The Minerals Council of Australia (MCA)
is an organization - composed of over
60 member companies and associate
members – that represents Australian
mining and mineral processing industries
in their efforts to reach sustainable development.
It works to promote policy and practice that is safe,
profitable, environmentally sustainable, and socially
responsible. Since 2005, MCA has been developing
a water accounting framework meant specifically
for the mineral industry. This framework aims to
provide a way to quantify water flows into and out of
facilities, metrics for reporting about water use and
discharge, an approach to account for recycled water,
and a model for detailed operational water balances.
A preliminary framework was released in July 2008
and results from a pilot test of the framework were
released in November 2009.
Other supporting
organizations and initiatives
Alliance for Water Stewardship
The AWS is an initiative developing a global freshwater
stewardship certification program. This certification
program will provide a voluntary “eco-label”
that rewards responsible water use management with