ABSTRACT
Wise water governance is a shared responsibility of consumers, governments, businesses and investors. Each of those players has a different role. It will be in the interplay of actors that things can happen. Players can discourage each other to move in the right direction – as currently often happens – but they can also encourage each other. Let me first explain how we discourage each other. Most consumers prefer to buy cheap food, clothes and other things, and apparently don’t care about the origin of it all. Furthermore, many of the things we buy are, in the end, hardly used or just thrown away. According to a recent study by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, consumers in rich countries waste almost as much food (222 million tonnes/yr) as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa (230 million tonnes/yr) (Gustavsson et al., 2011). The fact that consumers do not care about the origin or the fate of products is a clear signal to the market: sustainability is not a relevant factor in producing for the masses. Even though, superficially, people seem to subscribe broadly to the goal of sustainability, actual behaviour is different (Vermeir and Verbeke, 2006). In the race to the bottom, producers are not encouraged to put great efforts in making their operations and supply chain sustainable. Apart from some initial easy gains, reducing water consumption and pollution along the supply chain of products will require investments that need to be covered by final consumers. If final consumers would rather choose the lowest price, it is difficult to see how things will easily move in the right direction. And if then, in addition, governments fail to put proper incentives in place for companies to become sustainable in their operations and procurement, and if investors let short-term gains prevail over long-term sustainability, which companies will still be willing or even able to implement appropriate measures? This creates a negative spiral, because one of the reasons that consumer behaviour does not correspond to the initial positive attitude of most people is the feeling that most products are not sustainable anyway. As Vermeir and Verbeke (2006) put it:
low perceived availability of sustainable products explains why intentions to buy remain low. So far it’s a black scenario. If each player takes his/her own responsibility and acts accordingly, it will bring us into a positive rather than negative spiral. There is sufficient evidence that if consumers take more positive-labelled products from the shelves in the store (‘fair trade’, ‘organic’, etc.), those products will get a boost, at the cost of products without the positive label. The growth in sales of fair-trade and organic products during the past decade has been driven by consumers, who are willing to pay more for such products than for conventional products (see for instance Howard and Allen, 2008). It is at the account of governments and business, however, that an increasing number of labels and certification schemes exist. Even though many complain about the large number of labelling and certification schemes and the lack of transparency, and have doubts about the genuineness of some labels, it is doubtful whether many actual improvements on the ground would have occurred without the encouragement provided by some of the labels. Unfortunately, existing labelling and certification schemes hardly include criteria regarding sustainable use of water. Most attention has gone so far into securing public health, good labour conditions, animal welfare, reduced energy use, sustainable forestry and sustainable fishing. Good water stewardship is not yet part of existing labels. But enough about labels, because this is just one of the many vehicles that can play a role, but not a determining one in itself. The essence is that consumers express preference to sustainably produced products by their actual buying behaviour, whether informed through labels or otherwise. Governments can and should play a key role by providing incentives to consumers to buy such products and to companies to provide them. This can easily be done, for example through lowering the value-added tax for sustainable products compared to non-sustainable products, by taking a leading role in developing meaningful certification schemes and by progressively introducing regulations that force producers to become more sustainable over time. Finally, investors can and should apply social and environmental sustainability criteria when making their investment decisions. Fortunately, there is an increasing interest in this issue among investors. Consumers are also workers, voters and investors of their savings, so that they can exercise their power not only as buyers but also in their own work and by influencing the programmes of political parties, by electing and impelling their government and by lending their savings to banks that apply strict sustainability criteria. It all starts and ends with individuals who, in their various capacities, can and should take responsibility. Let’s review a number of cases that have been discussed in this book, and how different players can take positive measures in the direction of sustainable use of freshwater resources in the world. Chapter 2 about the water footprint of soft drinks has illustrated that – in order to deliver sustainable drinks – beverage companies will need to invest in their supply chain even more than in their own operations. And this will be true for many other companies, particularly companies that draw on agricultural inputs. Chapter 4 about meat has shown that consumers
can mitigate problems of freshwater overexploitation and pollution much more effectively by reducing their meat consumption and being critical towards the origin of meat than by installing water-saving devices at home. Chapter 6 on the water footprint of biofuels has illustrated that governments should translate water protection goals towards smart energy policies that account for the implications on water use. Chapter 7 on cut flowers nicely illustrates the potential for cooperation along the supply chain, where consumers in western countries can contribute to a reduced water footprint in flower farming in a developing country by paying a certain premium per flower. Chapter 12 on trade makes clear that governments should also integrate water-protection goals into their trade policy.
