A collaboration of 19 leading beverage companies developed and tested a pragmatic decision support process for enabling more informed water-related investment decisions across a portfolio of operational sites. The Beverage Industry Environmental Roundtable’s (BIER) insights paper, entitled Performance in Watershed Context: Insights and Opportunities, provides a concise update to and builds upon earlier work completed via key partnerships with technical advisors from Ceres, The Nature Conservancy, and World Resources Institute. This publication demonstrates the continued commitment of BIER members in pursuing context-based thinking and the ability of interested stakeholders to participate in this journey from concept to practical application.

“Most corporate water stewardship activities are focused on operational water use efficiency and pollution reduction,” explains Andy Battjes, BIER Water Working Group Lead and Brown-Forman’s Director of EH&S. “As a result, there’s limited weight being given to a watershed’s specific needs and challenges.”

The roundtable’s work on developing this decision support process, intended for use beyond its members and industry peers, is the next step in answering an increasingly global and complex set of water-related risk and opportunity questions. Through a bottom-up, holistic approach, members have gained further insight and advanced pragmatic techniques to support understanding key local watershed conditions, impacts, and dependencies.

“In support of our ongoing water stewardship activities, BIER has identified a number of insights and next steps which form a working methodology for context-based decision making,” says Nick Martin, BIER Water Working Group Facilitator and Associate Director.

BIER has pursued and championed sound water stewardship practices since its inception in 2006 and views collaboration and open sourcing as primary success factors. Responding to increasing pressure from internal corporate decision-makers, investors and external stakeholders, BIER offers a unique voice in the context- based targets and decision making space that looks beyond traditional water data collection and measurementhttp://bit.ly/Watershed-Approach.

“In terms of the availability of scientific data at the local basin level, there is a critical gap which BIER is able to shepherd and collectively improve upon,” Martin notes.

The complete insights paper is available for download though our website at: https://www.bieroundtable.com/publication/performance-in-watershed-context-insights-paper/-insights-paper/

For more information on BIER’s watershed approach, visit our blog post on our past watershed context work.