The Valuing Water Finance Initiative is a global investor-led effort to engage companies with a high water footprint to value and act on water as a financial risk and drive the necessary large-scale change to better protect water systems. The initiative calls on companies to meet Corporate Expectations for Valuing Water that align with the United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable Development Goal for Water (SDG6) and the actions laid out in the Ceres Roadmap 2030.
We are facing an existential and multi-faceted threat to our freshwater resources, across the U.S. and globally. In addition to the danger this poses to human and ecosystem health, the global water crisis is also a systemic, far-reaching, financial risk to nearly all economies. The water crisis is exacerbated by climate change, making it even more urgent to drive capital market actors – including large institutional investors and major corporations – to address water issues.
Launched in August 2022, Ceres’ Valuing Water Finance Initiative is a new global investor-led effort to engage 72 companies with a high water footprint to value and act on water as a financial risk and drive the necessary large-scale change to better protect water systems. These companies, while at different stages of their water journeys, all have the potential to better steward and protect freshwater resources within their business operations and global supply chains to drive meaningful, global change. Currently, more than 90 investors representing $17 trillion in assets have committed to engage with companies. This initiative continues to grow as the private sector increasingly recognizes the water crisis's material risks.
Using new research and analysis as the foundation, Ceres co-developed — with members of the Valuing Water Finance Task Force, plus, other investor and NGO partners — a set of clear action steps called the Corporate Expectations for Valuing Water. This set of six, science-based, actionable expectations provide investors with the framework required to help move companies to strategically address water risk, aligning with the United Nation’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goal for Water (SDG6) and the actions laid out in the Ceres Roadmap 2030. Broadly, investors will engage companies around their:
- Actions to ensure current practices don’t impact water quality and water availability
- Integration of water management into business processes, including board oversight and policy engagement
- Efforts to ensure access to the essentials – water and sanitation – across company value chains
- Protection of ecosystems is critical to the freshwater supplies that their businesses depend on
For more information, view our frequently asked questions for companies.
The Valuing Water Finance Initiative builds on Ceres’ decades of leadership and success in building investor and corporate climate leadership through our powerful networks and engagement initiatives. Through the influential global Climate Action 100+ initiative and many other engagements, Ceres has moved hundreds of companies toward climate action and is replicating that success in tackling the water crisis.
Ceres has partnered on this effort with the Government of the Netherlands, which leads the global Valuing Water Initiative.
Join
We need more leading investors to be part of this movement. Are you ready to be part of a global investor-led engagement effort shaped by bold action step to move companies on their water use?
Investor Signatories
Task Force Members
The Valuing Water Finance Task Force serves as an advisory body for the Valuing Water Finance Initiative. Task Force members, who have experience engaging companies on water related topics, together guide the priorities of the initiative by providing feedback and support to ensure the initiative is driven by investor priorities and is achieving its objectives.