There’s a lot of talk about how water is now a critical issue for businesses. But in contrast to carbon, water hasn’t yet made it onto the Board agenda in many companies, and it definitely hasn’t made it onto most consumers’ list of concerns.

But that may be about to change. Last week, at the World Water Forum in Istanbul, the Alliance for Water Stewardship  launched a plan to establish a new label: a Water Stewardship Certification.

The certification will apply to food, clothing and many other products and will focus on what is known as embedded, or virtual, water – the water needed to grow, process and manufacture goods. For example, it takes 16,000 litres to produce one kilo of beef according to the Water Footprint Network – not many people realise that. The idea is that the new label will be a credible assurance that the water used to make a specific product came from a sustainable source.

Will it create change? Difficult to say.

It made me think of our recent evening seminar with Bob Doppelt, Director of Resource Innovations and The Climate Leadership Initiative, University of Oregon. He talked about how to provide the right type of support and incentives to encourage change in organisations and people at different stages on the road to sustainable behaviour. Although awareness raising and information provision are critical, information alone is not enough if we want to see mass behaviour change on the scale required to halt climate change and avoid an acute water crisis.

So, what will it take to quench our thirst for water? I can think of three key things beyond just creating a consumer label.

1. Tackle label confusion
It is critical to make consumers more aware of water usage, but a Water Stewardship label has to do more than inform. Confusion and complexity are both barriers to behaviour change, and with so many different labels for ethics, organics, local, seasonal, nutrition and carbon, the conscientious consumer often faces a difficult task in the supermarket aisle.

We really do need to start joining forces to help the consumer understand the impact of different choices in an easy and straightforward way, from bundling some labels together, to lobbying for higher minimum standards, and ideally removing some goods altogether.

For example, I’d really like to see companies commit to supply only certified ‘good water’ products, in the same way as companies like the UK’s B&Q have committed to sell only timber certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. All this will require working with other labelling organisations, NGOs, companies and governments.

2. Use the label to drive change in business
The task of identifying the sustainability of the water embodied in products requires:

• a detailed knowledge of all steps in a supply chain;
• an understanding of the geographical journey a product takes; and
• an analysis of the issues associated with each watershed it passes over on its way to the shelf. And that’s not even touching on the issue of water used after sales – for a laundry detergent, that’s where the big impact is.

Carbon labels are helping to drive real change in business. Once companies have identified the CO2 associated with each stage of the product lifecycle it becomes much easier to reduce it by re-designing both products and supply chains. A successful water label should be equally powerful. The Alliance should push the business change potential of the label as hard as they push the consumer change.

3. Provide the tools and knowledge to help businesses manage water risk in their supply chains
I’d like to see the Alliance play a more ambitious role. Water is a critical issue for business – without it supply chains will collapse. Electric power plants need vast amounts of water to function and it is used in many industrial processes. It is also vital to grow crops for food and clothing. Businesses face a range of threats: risk to the security of supply; ecological risk to the watersheds they depend on; and social risk to other users in the watershed.

The Alliance could provide the tools and knowledge to help companies understand their exposure to water risk and re-design supply chains to manage it better, preferably in collaboration with existing initiatives such as the Water Footprint Network or the UN’s CEO Water Mandate.

Water is more complex than carbon when it comes to assessing sustainability – it’s not just about volume, it’s more about where and when and for what purpose it’s used. Using a large amount of water for a production plant in Finland may well be more sustainable than using a third as much in northern Africa; local authorities will probably prioritise drinking water for their communities over supplying a factory for export goods. It’s not easy and not straightforward. But it is important.

We’d love to hear what you think about the pros and cons of a water label, so please do get involved through the comment section.