VWBA has generated a positive impact worldwide. Practitioners spanning a wide range of sectors have set volumetric goals and have implemented VWBA methods to quantify the volumetric benefits of over 1,000 projects in approximately 100 countries.
Banklick Creek Wetland, Kentucky. Trees are in the background of the wetland. A dock is leading out to the water with floating and emergent vegetation surrounding it.

Location:
Global

Clients:
Food & Beverage, Technology, Hospitality, Energy, Pharmaceutical, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Agriculture, and Non-Governmental Sectors

Partners:
Government, Non-profit, For-profit, and Consultancy Partners

Service Areas:

Our Expert:

As a keystone contribution to water stewardship, LimnoTech pioneered pragmatic volumetric water benefit accounting (VWBA) methods grounded in scientific principles that have been embraced by global and multinational companies.

The Initiative

Since 2007, a growing number of corporations have set volumetric Replenish commitments as part of their water stewardship journey. These companies engage outside their fenceline to ‘balance’ or ‘replenish’ their water consumption through external water stewardship projects. Typically, replenishment projects yield a volumetric water benefit (VWB), which is “the volume of water resulting from water stewardship activities, relative to a unit of time, that modify the hydrology in a beneficial way and/or help reduce shared water challenges.” There is a wide diversity of water stewardship activities that may generate VWBs, including land conservation and restoration, wetland protection and restoration, irrigation efficiency improvements, aquatic habitat improvements, as well as those that provide water access and sanitation.

The Action

In 2009, in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and in support of The Coca-Cola Company’s 2007 replenish commitment, LimnoTech developed the core concepts and calculation methods for volumetric water benefits (‘replenish’) and published this foundational work in the peer review literature in 2012. In 2019, we collaborated with the World Resources Institute (WRI) and others to publish a landmark working paper on Volumetric Water Benefit Accounting (VWBA). We are now working with a team to update the methodology to VWBA 2.0.

We anchored the concept of replenish and volumetric water benefit accounting with rigor, science, and credibility. These scientifically rigorous methods have remained largely unchanged for over two decades, incentivizing collaboration and investment in projects that address shared water challenges around the world.

The Outcomes

VWBA has generated a positive impact worldwide. Practitioners spanning a wide range of sectors have set volumetric goals and have implemented VWBA methods to quantify the volumetric benefits of over 1,000 projects in approximately 100 countries. This work helped to create a strong network of implementing partners: over 500 local, non-profit organizations have adopted the VWBA methods and used them to track tangible benefits back to funding organizations. VWBA became the standardized methodology by which corporate replenish programs across all sectors and geographies have measured success, enabling and unlocking investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for restoration, collective action, and positive change worldwide.

Projects

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