Invitation issued to tackle replenishment challenges

An open invitation to collaborate on overcoming barriers and maximising impact has been issued to the water stewardship community co-authored by Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, WaterAid, Water.org, Wetlands International and WWF.

Significant challenges need addressing

The reports authors have produced the report to provide impetus towards finding solutions for the many challenges that remain for freshwater replenishment projects.

Since 2007, more than 40 Fortune 500 companies have sought to embrace replenishment as part of corporate water stewardships that often form part of their wider sustainability policies.

The goal of the report, Strengthening Corporate Water Replenishment: Leveraging lessons learnt to maximise the benefits for all, is to drive collaborative efforts to 'refine replenishment efforts, align expectations, and integrate them into broader water strategies'. To do so, it acknowledges that the challenges need to be explored from multiple perspectives, including corporate funders and the NGO's who often implement the replenishment schemes.

What needs to change in replenishment

The report sets out what the co-authors believe needs to evolve in freshwater replenishment. These suggestions are based on feedback and the experience shared by all involved in the project and focus on three main areas: methodologies; financing; and systemic linkages.

The report states: "Improvements in these areas could help to ensure that the community can more meaningfully leverage replenishment efforts to better deliver systemic catchment outcomes."

Methodologies

This includes:

• Accounting (metrics, models, measures, geographic extent of benefits, including linking those back to catchment health risks in a public/transparent way). The co-authors state: "We believe that much of this will be covered in various Volumetric Benefit Accounting methodology discussions currently underway via VWBA 2.0 (and linked Quality & Biodiversity Benefit Accounting efforts)"
• Verification (including the creation of more/stronger guidance around verification and claims, including issues of plus attribution)
• Scope of replenishment (from operations to value chain)
• Evidence of impact/monitoring: Better long-term on-the-ground monitoring and evaluation of interventions (including greater consideration of local best practices for quantify replenishment).
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Financing

This includes:

• Standardising minimal requirements: Establish principles and market oversight mechanisms to control the quality and permanent value of the volume of water replenished so that the assessment metrics for projects are more directly connected to delivering impacts in catchments
• New approaches for how to scale and provide predictable financing/co-financing for investments in replenishment
• Incentivisation (and limitations) for collaboration with among/between implementers, among/between funders (corporates) and connections to public sector investments (including recommended attribution and how this is balanced with when and how the project is funded).

Systemic linkages

This includes:

• SDG 6.4 to SDG6+: Provide joint guidance on how replenishment is connected to 'Net'/volumetric/quantity focus versus other water issues
• Initiative cross-links: Provide joint guidance on how replenishment is connected to other initiatives (e.g. SBTN, Freshwater Challenge, NPWI, etc)
• Public sector engagement: Greater public sector involvement through guidance or a collection of lessons learned on linking replenishment to other government efforts (IWRM, NBSAPs, NAPs, NDCs, etc).

Next steps for freshwater replenishment projects

The co-authors hope the paper will foster a dialogue between a wider community of stakeholders that will identify and evaluate a suite of potential solutions to the tackle the challenges that prevent current freshwater replenishment schemes from the 'teeth' needed to deliver tangible and real outcomes for catchments and communities.

The report concludes: "Without a robust suite of solutions, we collectively run the risk of not being able to leverage the full potential of the concept of replenishment. These discussions can help ensure that the community evolves away from having replenishment be the core company outcome, simply 'counting drops' and towards the more systemic activities and actions that are at the level of impact that's needed. Let's improve whilst walking the action!"