The Importance of Water Stewardship

The following post summarizes some key ideas from a recent edition of the CFA Institute podcast The Sustainability Story. CFA Institute’s Matt Orsagh, CFA, CIPM spoke with Matt Howard, vice president of water stewardship at The Water Council. Matt oversees The Water Council’s sustainability and stewardship initiatives. He created the world’s first professional credentialing program for water stewardship. In this podcast, Mr. Howard discusses the impact of water in our investments.

Water is critical to every sector of the economy and its impact is felt, not just in obvious places like food and beverage production but in just about everything that we consume. “Water is pervasive throughout supply chains,” according to Matt Howard, vice president over stewardship at The Water Council.

To mitigate the risk of water scarcity and drought, The Water Council, a nonprofit and a global hub dedicated to solving critical water challenges, is driving innovation in freshwater technology, advancing water stewardship, and helping companies and municipalities address water quality and quantity problems.

The Water Council is working on a program called Corporate Water Stewardship Accelerator to help companies better track and manage their water stewardship. Mr. Howard said, “We really see a need to work with investors, asset managers, and the ESG community to come around and reach some agreement on good corporate water stewardship performance and recognizing the credible reporting that follows.”

“I think this investor pressure right now on ESG is a big opportunity to really change the paradigm away from complacency and general water management that we’ve been doing for 100 years and develop this more sustainable long-term approach through water stewardship,” Mr. Howard added.