Performance in Watershed Context: Beverage Industry Environmental Roundtable Collaborates with the CEO Water Mandate

April 24, 2017 /3BL Media/ -- The Beverage Industry Environmental Roundtable (BIER) is proud to have been profiled in “Exploring the Case for Corporate Context-Based Water Targets.” This collaborative discussion paper details a new approach for setting corporate water metrics and targets. The paper was jointly authored by CDP, the CEO Water Mandate, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), World Resources Institute (WRI), and WWF.

Over the past eleven years, BIER has promoted the fundamental business imperative of water stewardship. Along with key stakeholders, BIER has developed innovative approaches, tools, and methodologies to addresses water stewardship challenges. By driving business decisions that influence the beverage industry and beyond, these initiatives work toward the achievement of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #6: ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.

BIER members joined technical advisors from leading water and environmental organizations to develop a beverage sector perspective on decision making and performance measurement based on local watershed context. BIER’s approach was originally outlined in a Concept Paper and has evolved into the methodology outlined within the recently released CEO Water Mandate discussion paper. “The beverage industry continues to propel water stewardship initiatives with this aggressive transition from a concept to a practical decision support process,” says Nick Martin, BIER Water Working Group Facilitator and Associate Director. “While there are still challenges to collaboratively overcome (data gaps, actionable outcomes, business case), BIER is working to show that context and science-based concepts are directly applicable to business decision making for companies outside the beverage sector.”

BIER strives to be a catalyst for collaboration between the related initiatives and shared objectives of other organizations. “The beverage sector has been a leader in corporate water stewardship and BIER’s Performance in Watershed Context work is one strong example of this leadership - pushing member companies to incorporate watershed-level thinking and analysis into business planning” says Roberta Barbieri, Vice President, Global Water and Environmental Solutions at PepsiCo.  “Collaboration between BIER and the Mandate on this initiative will not only increase our ability to make informed decisions that maximize positive impact at the watershed level but will increase the potential scale of impact beyond the beverage sector.”

The discussion paper is available for viewing or download at http://www.ceowatermandate.org/files/context-based-targets.pdf

About BIER
The Beverage Industry Environmental Roundtable (BIER) is a technical coalition of leading global beverage companies working together to advance environmental sustainability within the beverage sector. BIER aims to affect sector change through work focused on water stewardship, energy efficiency and climate change, beverage container recycling, sustainable agriculture, and eco-system services. BIER members include: American Beverage Association, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Bacardi, Beam Suntory, Brown-Forman, Carlsberg Group, The Coca-Cola Company, Constellation Brands, Danone Waters, Fetzer Vineyards, Diageo, Heineken, Jackson Family Wines, New Belgium Brewing, Molson Coors, Pernod Ricard, Ocean Spray Cranberries, and PepsiCo. For more information, visit www.bieroundtable.com

About CEO Water Mandate
The CEO Water Mandate is a unique public-private initiative that mobilizes business leaders for water stewardship. Established by the UN Global Compact in 2007, the Mandate was created out of the acknowledgement that global water challenges create risk for a wide range of industry sectors, the public sector, local communities, and ecosystems alike. The CEO Water Mandate is rooted in the belief that cross-sectoral collaboration on shared water goals is the most effective path to more sustainable water management and that the private sector can be a critical partner in this effort. For more information, visit http://ceowatermandate.org