Leading environmental organisation WWF has unveiled its updated Water Risk Filter - a powerful new online tool which allows users to map production facilities, supply chains and commodities.

The new version of the website includes data on more than 120 agricultural commodities – including cotton, palm oil and corn – making it the most sophisticated tool for tracking water risk exposure.

Jochem Verberne, Head of Corporate Relations at WWF International commented:

“What we’re seeing with water is a real convergence of the business agenda and the conservation agenda."

“Companies and investors are beginning to understand that their futures depend on a natural resource that is shared among many users. That creates business risk, and it creates incentive to be part of the solution. The Water Risk Filter can help.”

The Water Risk Filter generates a score based on the physical, regulatory and reputational risk related to water in basins around the world. It also includes an extensive risk mitigation toolbox, allowing the user to reference relevant case studies demonstrating actions to improve water management.

By simply inputting a facility location or a commodity and where it’s grown, the user will receive information identifying risk hot spots. Once those locations have been identified, the user can review possible responses in the filter’s mitigation toolbox.

Close to 50,000 individual facilities have been assessed by the Water Risk Filter since its original release. Over 1,500 different organizations have used the tool, including global fashion retailer H&M, which utilized the filter when creating a new water strategy for its entire value chain. Felix Ockborn, Environmental Sustainability Coordinator for water at H&M said the Water Risk Filter had helped the group to see all the places where water touches its business, and create strategies to address raw material risks, support supplier factories and improve efficiency in its own stores and offices.

Water risk on the rise

Water crises ranked third among 10 global risks of highest concern in 2014, according to the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Risks Perception Survey. Roughly 40 per cent of the world’s population lives in river basins that experience severe water  scarcity during at least one month of the year; 780 million people lack access to safe drinking water and 2.5 billion lack access to basic sanitation services. Climate change, population growth, increased demand for food and changing consumption patterns are set to further increase pressure on vital freshwater resources.

Easy to use tool allows immediate bulk upload and analysis of 100s of facilities or commodities

The Water Risk Filter is designed to be easy to use by non-water experts and sees risk from a business perspective. The Filter is the first tool to cover all elements that can influence the bottom line, not just scarcity and pollution, with results which are based on the best available scientific data. Additional unique features include:

• A simple water risk assessment uses industry or commodity and geographic information to determine water risk in seconds. Hundreds of facilities or commodity-specific operations can be bulk uploaded, and results can be analysed immediately. To refine the assessment, a facility- or commodity-specific risk questionnaire can be completed.
• In-depth country profiles outline the physical, governmental and geopolitical context for every country in the world.
• Users can plot their facilities or supply chains on 300+ map overlays.

First released by WWF in 2012, the Water Risk Filter, which is free to users, was developed in collaboration with the German development finance institution DEG. Click here to access user information.