Water risk assessment – June 2021
Summary
In the phase 6 of WWF-IKEA partnership, Water Risk Assessment on both basin level and operational level has been completed on IKEA’s global supply chain, by using WWF’s Water Risk Filter. Risk mitigation plans have been created to help strategic supplier sites to respond to the local water contexts and build resilience on water challenges. The understanding of water risk exposures on global operations also provides a solid foundation for contextual water strategy development and water target setting.
Since 2012, water crisis has been listed in the top 5 global risks in terms of impact by World Economic Forum. Water scarcity will be affecting half of the world’s population by 2024 and it could displace 700 million people by 2030, according to UNICEF. There is also severe impact on freshwater biodiversity which has declined by 84%, equivalent to 4% per year since 1970, revealed by WWF’s Living Planet Report 2020 as a leading scientific study on the health of the earth ecosystem. On top of that, climate change will intensify the water crisis by changing of precipitation pattern causing higher occurrence of extreme weather events such as droughts and floods.
To tackle the shared water challenges, the Water Stewardship partnership between IKEA and WWF started in 2014, building on a continuing engagement on sustainable cotton growing with a specific focus on water and gradually developing into a more comprehensive water stewardship approach which now includes water risk assessment on global operations, internal corporate action to enhance water management and collective action projects in priority river basins in India and Turkey. WWF and IKEA are working together to safeguard and manage natural resources and trans- form business for the benefit of people and planet.
