Businesses step up energy-food-water risk management drive

Risk management in the waterfood-energy nexus is turning into a more intensified campaign among businesses – and even the Philippines is stepping up to the plate on that initiative.

At the launch of the Manila Declaration of the Water Alliance on Friday as spearheaded by the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP), Shell Philippines chief executive Edgar Chua has noted that they intend “to make a long-term plan that will be consistent with government’s plan and present it to the next administration.”

Chua who is also the current chair of the Philippine Business for the Environment, has outlined several to-do list for the alliance, yet he emphasized that the major starting point will be “undertaking some benchmarking” so they could have realistic gauge on what areas to focus on.

These include the conduct of assessment and research on water stress areas and develop area-based solutions; provision of safe drinking water to waterless communities; rehabilitation of critical watersheds; adoption of measures to lower water footprint and treat wastewater at company and industry levels.

The others delved on: The need to build the capacity of water service providers; policy development and advocacy; as well as the establishment of water capture, reuse and replenishment solutions.

On the planned benchmarking undertaking, Chua indicated that they will be tapping the expertise of multilateral agencies like the United States Agency for International Development.

“There are experts in the US who do this benchmarking like in a particular industry, like the beer or beverage industry, to measure like how many liters of water is needed per output of a product,” he said.

Chua expounded “what we want to do is to get that type of information to give to the business community to see where they stand.”

He stressed that every business must do its share in preserving the planet’s water resources – primarily those that have contributed to its current ‘stressful condition’.

The energy sector has into its core water-guzzling industries – be it in the power or the oil sub-segments. Shell, for its part, claimed that it has been judiciously managing its water utilization including at its gasoline stations or at its offshore oil exploration and production sites.

Chua shared that within the Water Alliance, “we have a number of action items. Each action item, there’s a company which will be responsible to lead …then there are timelines on when these could be delivered.”