Guiding water stewardship
Our Water Stewardship work helps businesses to work together and deliver sustainable solutions for water.
Our work on Water Stewardship helps businesses to work at the catchment scale on shared risks and deliver sustainable solutions for water. We can help companies develop a more ambitious sustainability agenda and put targets into climate action. Our understanding of the national and local challenges makes us a valuable partner on your road to resilience and net zero.
Our Water Stewardship expertise helps connects businesses to the 108 Catchment Partnerships, to implement on the ground activities that improve the sustainability of both the water environment and the businesses involved. We are particularly focussed on agricultural supply chains, working with farmers and communities to replenish water resources, regenerate productive land and recover biodiversity.
We are working across England and Wales with WWF-UK, Coca-Cola GB, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, M&S, Tesco and Asda, with catchment partnerships to drive change.
The service provides a ‘one-stop-shop’ for businesses who want to be good water stewards, with the tools, knowledge and local expertise.
We help businesses link to their local catchments groups, encouraging collaborative action. Collective action is at the heart of water stewardship. By mapping supply chains we can identify opportunities for improvements, helping to build climate resilience whilst minimising impacts and maximising environmental and social benefits.
The video below, featuring Chief Exec Mark Lloyd, explains a bit more about how we're guiding water stewardship.
How we're doing
Farmers worked with
farmers received essential support and advice from our local Trusts in 2022-23
Catchment partnerships
Catchment partnerships supported
Case Studies
Coca-Cola: supporting Nature Based Solutions
A partnership between WWF-UK, Coca-Cola Foundation, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners and The Rivers Trust to support the implementation of a series of local projects in water-stressed areas with benefits for both nature and business.
Asda: reducing agricultural run-off
Take a look at the following case studies to find out how we’ve been working with Asda to reduce agricultural run-off:
Intercontinental Hotel Group: engaging staff in water management
Through the Water Stewardship Service, the Intercontinental Hotel Group (IHG), has developed a web portal to help IHG staff to understand the pressures on their local rivers and the steps they can take to be good water stewards.
Here’s an example of a website we created for IHG so they could learn more about their local river and how they could reduce their impact on rivers
Courtauld 2025: collective action on water
The Water Stewardship Service has been helping signatories of the Courtauld 2025 to meet their commitment to work collectively to improve water quality and availability of water, in key sourcing areas in the UK, to address water stress.
See below a map of the key areas where we have been implementing the Water Stewardship Service to help water-stressed locations, as well as an infographic about the Courtauld 2025 ambition.
- Wye & Usk Catchment: Agri-food partnership
- East Anglia: CamEO & Broadlands Catchment: Water sensitive farming
- Medway Catchment: Holistic approach for water management in polytunnels
Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS)
Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS)
The Water Stewardship service can offer support to any businesses who are thinking about becoming AWS certified or those who just want to learn more about becoming good water stewards, including working with their local catchment partnerships.
If you are interested in learning more about how the Water Stewardship service could help your business, please contact [email protected]
The Water Stewardship service is supported by the WaterCo-Governance (WaterCoG) project under the Interreg North Sea Region VB programme, funded by the European Regional Development Fund.
