It’s a tremendous task. If many of the huge companies reporting to CDP have not managed to anticipate and address water risks adequately, what of smaller companies with fewer resources? The World Wildlife Fund reports that, “it’s the small and medium enterprises that often face the greatest water risk. These companies can’t simply move out of a water-scarce basin; if they close a facility, they close up shop.” But these smaller companies are often risk factors within the supply chains of large multi-national companies and their needs must be part of the equation.
It’s daunting but necessary. Let’s look for a greater number of companies to participate in next year’s CDP report with increasingly sophisticated water strategies. As the California drought demonstrates, we should have done all of this yesterday!
I asked in a 2011 article: World Water Day is March 22nd. Will you have a plan in place?
Tara Gallagher is a Senior Project Manager at Pure Strategies, with a specialty in developing and communicating sustainability strategies and in assessing water resource needs and risk. She assists clients with sustainability communications and with the development and execution of organizational strategies to improve their sustainability performance. She has provided support to leading companies such as Walmart and Seventh Generation on supply chain engagement and the development of performance indicators. She also specializes in CSR reporting and wrote the award-winning 2007 and 2008 Seventh Generation Corporate Responsibility Reports as well as the company’s 2009, 2010 and 2011 reports. Tara has also worked at the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection assessing risks to drinking water supplies and developing water supply protection policies and regulations. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency honored her in 2001 with an Environmental Merit Award for her water supply protection initiatives. Tara was a visiting lecturer in the Geography Department at Salem State University from 2004–2010.
Tara has a Masters in Environmental Management from Yale University and a B.A. in English from Middlebury College. She is a past Chairperson of her town’s Renewable Energy Committee.
