• Water droplet with an image of a tree and grass inside.
  • Timeline graphic showing the growth of corporate water stewardship.
  • Water splashing on hands with a dark background.
  • Illustrative map of global replenish projects evaluated for LimnoTech clients through 2023.
  • Great Blue Heron in Great Lakes Coastal Wetlands
  • People kayaking down the Huron River in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Water Sustainability & Stewardship

Shared water challenges, such as scarcity, flooding, water quality, ecosystem degradation, and access, are exacerbated by climate change. Corporations have both a responsibility and an opportunity to help address water-related risks emerging from operational, regulatory, and reputational drivers. LimnoTech supports companies across the arc of a corporate water stewardship journey – from developing water stewardship strategies and targets to implementing actions and, finally, disclosure and sharing stories of success and partnership.

Prior to 2008, most companies focused on water management to meet regulatory requirements and improve water efficiency in operations. The context in which companies operate has changed, in part due to the impacts of climate change. Despite improvements at a site level, changes outside a company’s boundaries, in local watersheds and communities, can impact operations. Shared water challenges related to scarcity, flooding, supply reliability, water quality, water access, and biodiversity loss can be caused by increasing water demands, aging infrastructure, wetland loss or land cover conversion, pollution, or climate change impacts such as prolonged droughts or floods. With little or no control over these drivers, companies not only need water for business but also have a responsibility and opportunity, through water stewardship, to improve conditions in the watersheds and communities where they operate and pursue global ambitions such as the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) led by the United Nations.

Action through water stewardship is a continuous journey. Corporations step outside their fencelines into wetlands, forests, agricultural fields, and underserved communities that lack water and sanitation, helping to improve conditions offsite. Businesses move beyond internal water management and commit to the sustainable management of shared water resources through collective action and partnership with other businesses, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the public sector, and communities. While each organization has a unique path and its own water stewardship journey, a common set of elements play an essential role and are woven together to develop a holistic water stewardship strategy.

LimnoTech’s science-based body of work and almost two decades of experience as water stewardship thought leaders guide corporations through every step of a water stewardship journey. Our team supports global corporations in the high-tech, food and beverage, hospitality, energy, agricultural, municipal, pharmaceutical, corporate real estate, and manufacturing sectors.

As a keystone contribution to water stewardship, LimnoTech pioneered pragmatic volumetric water benefit quantification methods grounded in scientific principles that have been embraced by global and multinational companies. In 2009, together with TNC and Coca-Cola, LimnoTech developed the methods for calculating volumetric water benefits. We published the methods on Volumetric Water Benefit Accounting (VWBA) in 2012, 2019 and 2025. These methods have remained largely unchanged over two decades, incentivizing collaboration and investment in projects that address shared water challenges around the world – over 1,000 projects in approximately 100 countries.

LimnoTech supports corporations with foundational water footprinting and accounting, water risk assessment to focus work for impact, ambitious water strategy and target development, stakeholder outreach, stewardship project identification, volumetric water benefit quantification and multi-benefit quantification, water stewardship certification, disclosure and storytelling, and leadership to scale impactful solutions through collaboration and collective action.

LimnoTech continues to lead the development of scientific guidance as the water community moves beyond water volumes to understand and quantify the multi-benefits of activities. We co-developed a Water Quality Benefit Accounting (WQBA) methodology, served as advisors on the Guide to Setting Site Water Targets Informed by Catchment Context, and collaborated with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to develop and pilot a Methodology to Set Science-based Targets (SBTs) for Freshwater. We are core members of the team focused on the Co-Benefits of WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) Accounting and the Benefit Accounting of Nature-Based Solutions for Watersheds, including the NBS Benefit Explorer. LimnoTech is also collaborating with Pacific Institute, CEO Water Mandate, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), and Second Nature Ecology and Design to develop standardized methods for Biodiversity Benefit Accounting of water and ecosystem stewardship activities.

The impacts of corporate water stewardship, through LimnoTech’s support, are real and are felt locally by communities around the world. Corporate investment in projects has protected forests from degradation and restored those damaged by fires and logging. Water stewardship projects have helped channel and infiltrate monsoon rains into the ground to replenish declining aquifers, bring clean water to communities in need, and create wetlands for migrating birds to rest and refuel during their long journeys. This work by corporations is having positive impacts on livelihoods, communities, and ecosystems worldwide.

Water is a shared resource and the common denominator for the world’s top five risks (WEF 2020). There is great power and promise for the private sector to work alongside partners with a shared vision of the overall well-being of communities, protection and restoration of the natural environment, and long-term sustainability of business operations.

Projects

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