TOP VIEW With clean water supplies under pressure around the globe, many companies may soon see their supply chains interrupted and find themselves mired in local disputes. To secure the water they need in this climate of growing scarcity, global corporations must design and implement multifaceted water strategies. But first they must recognize the water-related risks they face;  to date, few have.

water quality is for human and ecosystem health, it is equally crucial to industries such as high technology, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and food processing, which rely heavily on it. These businesses are often required to utilize already costly water treatment systems prior to using it. Even for companies that do not need the best water, diminishing water quality could lead to new and expensive mandates to treat or reduce wastewater discharges. While most industrialized countries have managed to curtail concentrated point-source pollution emitted from factories and sewage treatment plants, an estimated 90 percent of wastewater in developing countries is still discharged directly to rivers and streams without any waste processing or treatment. This is changing rapidly, and companies operating in those countries will likely have to absorb quickly rising costs associated with meeting new water treatment requirements.

The full extent of water-related risks to a global company may be determined largely by factors outside the company’s on-site operations. Sectors as diverse as apparel, forest products and agriculture require significant amounts of water to fuel important production inputs. For example, growing the sugar that goes into beverages or the cotton that goes into clothing may require more than 1,000 times more water than used in on-site production of the end product. But today’s traditional industrial water-use estimates fail to address water risks throughout the supply and production cycles.