Water Alternatives (Jun 2024)
Corporate engagement in water policy and governance: A literature review on water stewardship and water security
Abstract
Water is a central ingredient of all economic activities. Even so, water-using corporations were long absent from the theoretical and practical developments of water management, governance and policy. The past 15 years, however, have seen the emergence, proliferation and gradual maturation of global initiatives, guidelines and tools that focus on the role of business and their value chains under the banners of corporate water stewardship and water security. This article takes stock of the available literature and reviews the development to date. It traces the origins of key concepts and initiatives that are part of this new corporate engagement in water policy and governance, and looks at the landscape and corporate-level drivers of the phenomena. The paper reviews the evolution of the associated theory and practice; it also examines the impact of corporate engagement in water on business strategies and actions, and observes the influence it has had on stakeholders and settings from the national to the global level. While the available evidence base is still fragmented, the review findings confirm the previously documented controversies of operating at the public–private interface of water. Among water-using companies, the water stewardship approach is increasingly positioned as a means of achieving collective water security, merging these two fields; in practice, however, the results indicate still-narrow gains. The article concludes with a call for a comprehensive evaluation of corporate water initiatives and for a transdisciplinary research agenda that steers the engagement towards more equitable and sustainable outcomes.
