Busting myths in corporate water stewardship

In season three of Brooklyn Nine Nine, the fictional police precinct at the center of this comedy series receives a new commanding officer, Captain Seth Dozerman. Glaring at his new team, Dozerman snarls, “My motto is simple: efficiency, efficiency, efficiency”—to which Sergeant Jake Peralta replies: “You could probably just say that once.”

This silly interaction evokes an important reality about how we manage water: while efficiency is important, excessive emphasis on it can be, well, not all that efficient.

Given all that you’ve heard about the world running out of fresh water, water-use efficiency must seem like the obvious answer to ensuring enough water for all. After all, growing food and manufacturing products must use some water…thus, doing so efficiently must be the key.

But faith that efficiency leads to sustainable water management is a myth that needs to be examined and revised into a much broader understanding of water – particularly when and where it’s used, alongside where it comes from and where it goes.

Let’s examine the myths swirling around efficiency.

First, companies striving to become better stewards of water typically start with their own facilities, making sure their water use is efficient and clean as possible. These “inside the fence line” investments are important — but for most companies, the vast majority of their water impacts lie outside their fence lines, in the supply chains they draw on, particularly when those include crops.

For example, let’s look at clothing. Considering all the water consumed in the process of making and selling clothes, about 15% is in the production and distribution of clothes – i.e., those things that are directly under the control of a clothing manufacturer.

But nearly 80% of the water consumed is in the production and processing of raw materials, such as cotton (another fun fact: ¾ of global cotton production relies on irrigation).

Thus, while there is much to be gained from companies becoming efficient with their water use inside their fence lines, it’s something of a myth that a product coming from a water-efficient factory is therefore consistent with goals for sustainable water stewardship. This is particularly true if that product relies on water-intensive supply chains, such as irrigated agriculture, an activity responsible for more than 90% of global water consumption.

Ah-ha, you are likely thinking, the key to sustainable water management lies with maximizing irrigation efficiency.

In fact, increasing irrigation efficiency is a standard recommendation for solving water challenges in hydrologically stressed regions. And it makes intuitive sense: if we can only get “more crop per drop,” then we will simultaneously have crops to harvest while freeing up more drops to dedicate to other purposes – drinking water, river ecosystems, etc.

But now we encounter a second myth—namely, that increasing irrigation efficiency will decrease water consumption in a region.

Hold up…how can that not be true? In fact, the truth is even shocking than you might think: increasing irrigation efficiency often results in a net increase in water consumption.

Unpacking that further, irrigation efficiency provides a perfect watery manifestation of the economic principle known as “Jevon’s paradox.” As irrigation becomes more efficient—getting more output of crop per drop of water applied—farmers can often be incentivized to increase the area they irrigate or switch to higher value, but thirstier, crops. Further, most of the water “wasted” by inefficient irrigation isn’t really lost, but rather runs off the field, or sinks into the shallow groundwater, and finds its way back into streams, available for other purposes – including sustaining wildlife and ecosystems.

So, while increasing irrigation efficiency improves the crop per drop, it also causes a set of management and hydrological responses that can result in increased water consumption and/or reduced water availability.

But perhaps “myth” is too harsh a label here: just as there is value to improving water management “within the fence line,” irrigation efficiency is in fact crucial to a more sustainable water future. It just needs to be coupled with governance mechanisms and allocation systems that ensure that water savings are made available for other priority purposes, including the restoration of freshwater ecosystems.

What’s more, it’s increasingly clear that the scale of the water challenge will require moving beyond siloed efforts—that of individual companies, or of companies and governments working in isolation—and toward collective action and collaborative solutions.

In short, we need to move from the simple motto of “efficiency, efficiency, efficiency” and toward “efficiency, governance, and collaboration.”