Collecting inputs for the Bonn2011 Nexus Conference preparatory process

The question of how to effectively use our water resources has been debated for decades, yet what we need more than ever is direct action at the field level.

A message from Felix Dodds, Executive Director of the Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future and International Steering Committee (ISC) Member

No resource is more fundamental than water to the health and security of people and the environment. Yet the alarm bells are ringing as this finite, yet essential, natural resource comes under increasing pressure from growing demand, poor management and climate change creating a growing global water challenge. With Rio+20 on the immediate horizon, and a focus on water, energy and food, water will be an issue that world and business leaders are likely to find absorbed into their agendas - and rightly so. Water scarcity and stress is not only an issue of protecting ecosystem and biodiversity, but is also presents a real and present risk to local communities, business and world economies.

We have left behind an era in which energy, food, water, and other resources have been relatively cheap and plentiful. Rising demand is carrying us into an age of higher and more volatile prices for energy, food and raw materials. Political tensions in the regions traditionally supplying the world’s oil have added to the uncertainties. Climate change is amplifying these stresses, and will do so increasingly. These risks post a serious threat to growth, through price shocks and inflation. Their political consequences could be more serious still, with some tempted to see a zero sum competition for resources between consumers and between nations.

Systems thinking comes of age as KPMG says environmental, social and economic problems cannot be solved separately. The megaforces that KPMG highlights represent all the usual suspects, from climate change, unpredictable energy supplies and water scarcity to urbanisation, deforestation and food security.

This week, businesses, governments and NGOs came together for the annual World Water Week conference in Stockholm. PepsiCo hosted three events, and participated in several others, focused on the nexus between water and sustainable agriculture. Of the three events we hosted, one was a small, closed session for two dozen peers and potential partners; the others were panels on the official agenda. One about farm verification programs cohosted with Unilever and BSR and the other about supply chains cohosted with the Columbia Water Center In addition, we gave a keynote presentation in the WBCSD Founders Business Seminar entitled “Water and Energy for Food, Fiber and Fuel.”

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have become a contentious proposal among Member States that are currently negotiating the outcome document for Rio+20. Member States and the international community are looking for the successors of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which will expire in 2015. The current framework helped the international community to rally behind a common understanding of poverty eradication, and it provided targets and indicators to guide policy decisions. However, the MDGs overemphasised economic poverty and gave limited attention to the structural causes of poverty or to sustainable development.