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Arriving in Delhi by night doesn’t give you a true sense of the city’s vastness. The low hum of hundreds of taxis whizzing around the airport terminal and the dirt kicked up from the wheels of 11:00 p.m. traffic blur the senses. But when morning came, and I saw the prim, gleaming hotels and office buildings of Gurgaon rise from a sprawling landscape of poverty and poke through the hazy, brown-grey horizon line, a clearer picture of India emerged. Companies from around the world are investing in India, its resources, and its people, to capitalize on the economic growth of what could soon be the most populated country in the world, but critical human rights issues remain unaddressed. With an estimated population of 1.3 billion people, it’s clear that India may benefit more than any other country from realizing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As companies like Amazon, Unilever and Apple continue their investment in India, the private sector will be an integral partner to achieve those goals, particularly the ones focused on human rights. However, getting companies to understand their full responsibility to protect and respect human rights remains a challenge for all but the most advanced sustainability teams across the Fortune 500. That’s why, as I arrived at a workshop with Shift and several sustainability professionals from major U.S. companies operating in India, uncertainty filled my mind. Would these companies understand the impacts of their businesses on a community's access to water? The nuances of using migrant labor? Appropriate compensation for overtime in developing communities? My eyes flitted between the brand names atop massive buildings and the tut tuts stacked high with weary riders. The weight of business and human rights issues was not lost on me, creating both a conviction for action and wariness of the obstacles that lay ahead. As part of an ongoing partnership to support a larger project led by Shift, the sustainability nonprofit organization Ceres convened a select group of eight companies, including representatives from the apparel, technology, consumer goods and agriculture sectors, for a full-day workshop focused on corporate uptake of the United Nations Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). The workshop explored how companies can embed respect for human rights through policies and management systems and how to disclose their progress for external audiences. If the small army of construction workers hammering away in sweltering heat on the scaffolding of the building next to us didn’t make it clear, recent reports and news stories do: risks associated with human rights have never been more apparent, and the opportunity for companies to act has never been more necessary. In a report released just days before our workshop, the International Labour Organization confirmed that 40.3 million people are victims of modern slavery, including 24.9 million in situations of forced labor. That’s why, as participants began opening up about their experiences and ideas for corporate action on human rights, the hope and passion for action I heard in their voices assuaged my concerns of a defensive audience, reluctant to share specific struggles. All around, I heard stories of engaging unions and community leaders to understand the specific impacts of agriculture and manufacturing in India. The impact of industrial runoff in community water resources. The necessity of educating workers on policies, not just posting them on the factory floor. These stories elicited responses of support and encouragement from peers: “That’s great, now go further.” One participant even shared that engaging women and mothers led to the most lasting impact for reducing child labor in west India’s cotton industry, something they wouldn’t have known unless they worked directly with communities. But that doesn’t mean companies weren’t challenged to think through new and difficult situations. Through a series of interactive discussions and exercises, participants were asked to consider specific issues through the lens of saliency. A complement to the more widely understood ideas of materiality and risk to the business, saliency requires companies to think through specific issues from the perspective of the “rights-holder” and where business activities have the largest, most severe, and most irremediable impacts. “By engaging companies on the idea of saliency,” said Mairead Keigher, reporting program manager for Shift, “we can help them prioritize the most important human rights issues to address not just based on financial risk but according to the risk to people. We’ve found over and over again that companies who prioritize the risk to people are better positioned to address the financial risk associated with human rights abuses too.” When it comes to setting corporate strategies for sustainability, the shift from focusing exclusively on material issues to starting with saliency won’t be an easy one. Growing investor pressure and regulations (in California and countries like the UK, The Netherlands, France and Australia) will encourage it, but ultimately it will be companies and their sustainability professionals who will have to shepherd this human-rights focused approach to sustainability. During exercises that asked participants to prioritize action on salient human rights issues for fictional companies, statements like “that’s a reputational risk for us” and “water is a critical resource for us” crept into the conversation, conflating the focus on risk to business versus the risk to rights-holders. With the influx of global capital contributing to consistent GDP growth in India, companies operating in India are in a better position than ever to address human rights issues. Indian law even requires large companies to donate at least 2 percent of their annual profit to CSR-related charities (broadly defined to include things like education, poverty alleviation, and public health) and stock exchange regulations require the top 500 companies in India to disclose their respect for human rights. But despite the opportunities for action and the regulatory push, advocates contest that companies are still philanthropy-focused and not integrating human rights into business planning. “Companies will need to focus on not how they are using their profits to impact human rights but how they are making their profit and what they can do in their operations and supply chains to mitigate negative impacts overall” says Viraf Mehta, an advisor to Partners in Change, an organization leading the charge for corporate respect of human rights in India. “The forthcoming National Voluntary Guidelines will spell out how companies in India should be moving from traditional philanthropy-focused approach to human rights and make it part of the business’s responsibility to respect and protect the human rights of everyone involved." Moving from this philanthropy driven approach, guided by reactionary decisions to the most recently publicized human rights issues, to a proactive assessment and mitigation of impacts will require a shift in thinking that no regulation or resolution can fully realize. The UNGPs give companies a process and framework to guide that shift towards respecting and protecting human rights, but businesses are still unclear on how to realize that vision. Despite the steep learning curve and complex challenges, it’s clear that those working most closely with communities and rights-holders understand the imperative to act. When companies combine that imperative with the focus on rights-holders, we get one step closer to cutting through the haze and seeing the world beyond, a world where businesses thrive alongside the communities that support them.

I recently returned from the United Nations climate talks in Bonn, Germany, where international leaders wrestled with how to collectively prevent global temperatures from rising to a catastrophic level. Ceres, WWF and Climate Nexus spearheaded the U.S. Climate Action Center, a 27,000-square-foot pavilion where 44 events drew tens of thousands of attendees, assuring the world that “We Are Still In” as an American society. Representatives from U.S. states, cities, businesses and investors came out in force to discuss the climate impacts the United States is already experiencing and share what they are doing – and what still needs to be done. Amid the talk of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, I couldn’t help but notice how often water resources came into the equation – and rightfully so. In fact, at the 23rd Conference of Parties (COP23), there was a day devoted to Water Action and a buzz on Twitter around #bluelineBonn. It was fitting that the climate talks were situated on the banks of the Rhine River where engineers are grappling with how to design solutions to prevent the more frequent floods resulting from climate change. “Water and climate change are directly related,” said Paulo Sergio Bretas de Almeida Salles, the director of ADASA in Brazil (a regulatory agency for water and sanitation), speaking at the COP23 Water Action Day. “Everything that happens on earth based on climate has some relationship with water.” We definitely know the truth of that statement in California. Gov. Jerry Brown, California businesses and others highlighted to the global community that California is still reeling from the most severe drought in state history, the length and intensity of which scientists link to a changed climate; and that we are literally still tinged by last month’s wildfires, whose virulence, scientists say, was because the drought was followed by a one-two punch of the wettest winter on record, then the hottest summer on record, creating new kindling for fire. There were similar stories shared from around the globe. As the climate gets warmer, smart water management grows more important. At COP23, the parties attending the U.N. Convention on Climate Change recognized that. In fact, the U.N. has warned of worsening water scarcity as the global climate warms, with its World Water Development Report predicting two years ago that the world will face a 40 percent water shortage by 2030 unless we change our ways. And many of the water management solutions agreed upon by stakeholders at COP23 likely to have the most potential for enhancing water supplies for the future are ones that we have been debating and advancing in California. Action Plans – Globally and in California Many participants in COP23’s Water Action program cosigned what they called a “nature-based solution declaration” to encourage the use of natural systems such as wetlands and healthy watersheds to improve water supplies. Many stakeholders in California have been encouraging nature-based solutions, believing that watershed protection and groundwater replenishment will enhance future water supplies and prevent California from running out of water, as happened in parts of Tulare County during the drought. In 2016, California passed a bill, AB 2480, which defines source watersheds as part of the state’s infrastructure. As another example, rice and almond farmers have allowed their fields to flood with rainwater in the off-season so the extra water will infiltrate into groundwater basins. Data gathering and improving data interoperability was a second water management theme discussed at COP23’s Water Action Day as well as a solution pursued in California. The importance of data on water availability and water use, and the need to integrate various sources of data so they are useful for planning by governments, businesses, farmers and families, is as true here as it is internationally. In California, water stakeholders and concerned legislators began to address the need for better water data with the passage of two bills in 2015. One authorized the State Water Resources Control Board to develop measurement and reporting requirements for entities that divert or use surface water, including farmers and local water districts. Another, AB1755, the Open and Transparent Water Data Act, directs the state’s water department to create a statewide water accounting system and an online water transfer clearing house. Agriculture’s role in improving or damaging water supplies – depending on farms’ water management practices – was a third theme that surfaced at COP23 and is beginning to be tackled in California. Agriculture uses 70 percent of the globe’s freshwater supplies and as much as 80 percent of California’s freshwater. A growing number of farmers in California recognize that careful tending of soil health and practicing efficient use of fertilizer can help water supplies since healthy soil retains water and fertilizer optimization reduces nitrate runoff into streams and rivers. A plan to study and promote those practices was also taken up at COP23. Lastly, the international negotiators discussed the connection between energy and water – that it takes energy to produce clean water and that it often takes water to produce energy. In California, we’ve learned that energy efficiency is good for our economy and helps us conserve water. We’ve learned that protecting water resources better prepares us for a warming planet. It was extremely important for COP23 to include water as a main theme. The indisputable connection of water and climate stewardship should continue to be part of our international efforts to stave off global warming. Read the original blog on Water Deeply

With COP23 concluded and my Ceres colleagues home from Bonn, I’m grounded in a renewed affirmation of where we stand – as both Americans and as global citizens – and I’m more energized than ever to move faster and more boldly into the future. ​ As Americans, we came to Bonn to deliver a message: We Are Still In. My colleagues, along with scores of U.S. business leaders, investors, governors, mayors and NGOs united at the U.S. Climate Action Center to share our commitment to the Paris Agreement. We delivered that message to a packed house every day, and our voices echoed out across the world. The U.S. Climate Action Center generated more than 1000 articles in national and international news outlets, and #WeAreStillIn was a top trending topic on Twitter in both the U.S. and Germany.  As global citizens, we came to assure our neighbors, our friends and our allies that the U.S. remains steadfast in our commitment to climate action – with or without the federal government. By participating in official U.N. panel discussions, roundtables and private meetings with world leaders, we emphasized that we are right by their side in the fight for a more sustainable, just and prosperous world.  But while We Are Still In, we are anything but still. In fact, the U.S. business community is moving faster than ever. Major companies are making new, bold commitments and doubling down on the business case for sustainability. Institutional investors are ratcheting up engagement with companies and deploying more capital toward clean energy projects. Furthermore, cities and states across the country are transforming their economies and creating jobs by embracing the low-carbon transition. On the company side, Microsoft made a major sustainability announcement during COP23, committing to cut carbon emissions 75 percent by 2030. Microsoft President Brad Smith cited the financial predictability of renewable energy as a key reason for their increased commitment, calling the decision “good for the environment, our customers, and our business.” ​ Joining Microsoft in Bonn were leaders from a wide array of industries. Mars, Incorporated, explained the economic reasoning behind their $1 billion sustainability pledge. Patagonia underlined the overwhelming business case for incorporating sustainability into their supply chain. Target and Walmart highlighted the importance of renewable energy procurement. And Fetzer Wines showcased their innovative carbon sequestration system – a practice that earned them one of this year’s Momentum for Change awards from the UNFCC. In addition, investors showed great determination to push us toward a sustainable world as well. On COP23’s Climate Finance Day, the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, declared that climate risk was one of their biggest priorities – underlining their role in helping a shareholder resolution on climate risk disclosure reach an astounding 62 percent majority vote at Exxon’s annual meeting.  New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, who oversees the U.S.’s third-largest public pension fund, joined BlackRock in highlighting the importance of climate risk – laying out the logic behind the need for swift implementation of the recommendations from the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure (TCFD). Val Smith of Citi – who has a $100 billion sustainable finance goal – echoed that sentiment, committing Citi to improved climate risk disclosure and calling the TCFD recommendations “the most important development in the financial world since the 2003 Equator Principles.”  Finally, from virtually every investor or bank who joined us on stage or in a round-table, we heard about the unprecedented appetite for investment in green infrastructure, clean energy and energy efficiency – as well as the need for the public and private sectors to leverage each other to move markets toward low-carbon solutions.  As Sean Kidney of the Climate Bonds Initiative said on a panel with Ceres’ Vice President of Climate and Energy, Sue Reid, “The capital is there in spades. Our challenge is to go out there and get these deals done.”  Abyd Karmali of Bank of America – who has pledged $125 billion in low-carbon business by 2025 – called on the public sector to use its capital to de-risk low-carbon opportunities in emerging markets. Val Smith of Citi – who has a $100 billion finance goal – and Erin Robert of J.P. Morgan Chase – who recently announced $200 billion in clean financing by 2025 – painted the picture of a “sustainability arms race” in which major banks compete to finance more and more clean energy and low-carbon projects. ​ Whether the conversation was on corporate commitments, green bonds or climate risk, it inevitably came around to the real reason we do this work. As Fijian Prime Minister and COP23 President Frank Bainimarama said at the conclusion of a finance panel, “At the end of the day this is about people, people, people.”  Mayor Bill Peduto highlighted how his city’s commitments to sustainability put the people of Pittsburgh back to work. Governor Terry McAuliffe emphasized how clean energy policies helped improve the livelihood of Virginians by attracting major employers. California Governor Jerry Brown explained how his state’s extended cap-and-trade program provides funding to protect those most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.  On top of all this action from U.S. leaders, 15 countries including the U.K., Mexico, Denmark and Ethiopia announced they were joining an alliance to phase out all coal by 2030, just days after President Trump’s administration held an event promoting the fossil fuel industry. This new development proves that world governments are in lock-step with the investors, businesses, U.S. cities and states, and the general public in their desire to accelerate the low-carbon transition. It’s clear that they are all still in and more committed than ever. As we get back down to business after Bonn, we know we need to work harder and smarter than we ever have before. We need to bend our emissions curve dramatically in the next three years. We need to bring more and more leaders into the fold. We need to stand firm in our commitments and message that We Are Still In.  Because all of us – businesses, investors, NGOs, elected officials, concerned citizens – want to pass on a better world to our children. We want to be remembered as bold leaders who, when faced with a grave threat, did the hard work to ensure a healthy, prosperous and just world for generations to come.  Read the original blog on Forbes.com

With the 23rd session of the United Nations Conference of the Parties, or COP23, in progress, it isn’t just prime ministers and presidents of nations gathering and negotiating. This time, the focus is on what’s being done by states, cities, businesses and investors — the so-called sub-nationals — especially from the U.S. where the federal government had reneged on its climate commitments. They’re holding fort and filling chairs at U.S. Climate Action Center. California is particularly in the limelight, with Gov. Jerry Brown serving as the U.N.’s Special Envoy for States and Regions, chatting up heads of state and discussing collaborations with the European Union around carbon markets. California legislators, businesses and investors are also in full-force at COP — and attracting audiences as they speak about how California successfully navigated a path to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions while driving robust economic growth. In fact, from a climate action perspective, California has a runaway success story to tell, with its GDP and job growth both dwarfing those of the nation as a whole as it sharply reduced emissions. California added 2.3 million jobs since 2011 and its real GDP grew 17.2 percent between 2011 and 2016 as the state’s ambitious Global Warming Solutions Act was implemented. Meanwhile, emissions from California are down 12 percent from their peak in 2004 and 33 percent per $1 million unit of productivity. Governments around the world are watching California’s cap-and-trade program and two Canadian provinces already joined it, while Mexico and China are emulating it in creating their own. The main agenda at COP23 is for the 195 national signatories of the Paris Agreement to measure progress against their commitments and set up rules for how to update them for 2020 and be accountable to those targets. The United States — a major polluter that spews 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, second in volume only to China — isn’t providing much of an example of how to follow through on commitments since the Trump administration vowed to pull out of the Paris Agreement. But thousands of U.S. sub-nationals — states, businesses, cities, investors, universities, tribes and faith organizations — are fully committed to carrying out the U.S. pledges and are doing so. In fact, the We Are Still In coalition counts 2,500 of these entities working on reducing their carbon emissions by volumes that collectively, they hope, could meet the U.S. pledge to the Paris Agreement. Together, these entities represent 127 million Americans from all 50 states and $6.2 trillion of the U.S. economy. California is galvanizing states, just as my organization, Ceres, is galvanizing investors and businesses. Many in America share an enduring commitment to tackle climate change and We Are Still In signatories are their presence at COP23. Some of the businesses attending — Autodesk, Fetzer Vineyards, Patagonia, Facebook and PG&E — are living examples of businesses that have reduced emissions or even cut emissions to zero and yet prosper. Fetzer Vineyards is receiving a U.N. award this week for innovation in reducing emissions to become the first American winery to reach carbon neutrality. Fetzer is one of only 19 winners globally to receive the U.N. Momentum for Change award. But it is not the only California business that’s transitioning to 100 percent renewable energy. Autodesk, Apple, Facebook, Google and scores of others are well on their way. These business leaders, Brown and the six state legislators traveling with him to Bonn are telling others about specific steps they’re taking to achieve ambitious climate goals. The world needs these voices. For sure, the road ahead to meeting the Paris Agreement and prevent global temperatures from rising to catastrophic levels is tough. But steadfast commitment and the example of those bold enough to try eventually will get us there. photo source: Shutterstock / a1vector Read the original blog on GreenBiz

As Wall Street ratchets up the pressure on companies to be open about the risks they face from sustainability, the spotlight is falling on boards. Investors expect directors to understand these risks, so they can help companies prepare for them.  That's because it’s becoming impossible to ignore the connection between sustainability and how companies perform. Two recent examples make that clear. The one-two punch of hurricanes Irma and Harvey this year will cost $115 billion in total losses, estimated Goldman Sachs. And in 2016, multinational corporations disclosed that they faced $14 billion of water-related risks (PDF), a five-fold increase over the previous year. When an environmental or social issue is material, boards have a responsibility to act on them. And it’s the job of the corporate staff, from investor relations to corporate secretaries to sustainability officers, to help the board become fluent in these sustainability risks — so that directors can understand why it matters to their business and what they can do about it. "Rather than focusing primarily on bringing on a director or two who is an expert in sustainability, we call for companies to build sustainability-competent boards." In our new report, "Lead from the Top," Ceres lays out how corporate boards can build this competence for sustainability. Boards can integrate sustainability issues into board recruitment; companies can educate directors on sustainability issues and why it’s critical for directors to engage with external stakeholders, including investors and experts on sustainability issues. The goal is straightforward but critical. Rather than focusing primarily on bringing on a director or two who is an expert in sustainability, we call for companies to build sustainability-competent boards. By tackling material sustainability risks as one cohesive deliberative body, the board can ask the right questions, support or challenge management as needed and importantly, make knowledgeable decisions on strategy and risk. Corporate management and staff are key to building a sustainability-competent board, especially the sustainability department, the corporate secretary’s office and investor relations. In an earlier blog, we called on these departments to work together to ensure that "corporate boards are on board for sustainability." The sustainability department’s knowledge of key sustainability risks and programs, combined with investor relations' sense of investor expectations, can help fill in the gaps and enhance the board’s knowledge in a number of ways.  How can this work in practice? Corporate boards should recruit directors with expertise or exposure to material sustainability issues. Sustainability staff could play an invaluable role in helping board nominating committees to outline the parameters of the company’s director searches to include sustainability expertise and even suggest potential candidates — not that a company should recruit people who are simply experts in sustainability. Directors need to be able to analyze and translate the potential impact of sustainability issues on business for the rest of the board. Sustainability has to go hand in glove with a company’s core business strategy. "The sustainability department and investor relations team can work with the corporate secretary’s office to help educate directors on sustainability issues." Investor Relations is critical to this process. Investors have long paid attention to board composition, including leading the charge calling for more diversity on corporate boards. Now that focus has grown to include climate competency, with major investors including CalPERS, CalSTRS, Blackrock and State Street (PDF) calling on boards to bring on to bring on climate-competent directors. The sustainability department and investor relations team can work with the corporate secretary’s office to help educate directors on sustainability issues. For instance, they can prepare educational materials and sessions, report on material sustainability issues and discussion to boards and involve boards in materiality assessments, including ongoing updates of the business case for managing sustainability issues. Materiality assessments are particularly important. A growing number of companies are putting in place formal process to assess materiality sustainability issues as a part of their reporting on GRI and other sustainability standards. Board members could be involved in these processes to provide input, as well as to vet the results. Finally, corporate staff can help the board engage with investors and other expert stakeholders on the topics important to the company. Ways to do this include doing the initial outreach to stakeholders themselves, putting together advisory councils that have sufficient expertise to engage with directors and helping brief and prepare board members for investor engagements on sustainability issues. Climate change, water scarcity, labor inequality, product safety. These are just a few sustainability issues affecting the bottom line of businesses. By understanding the impact of these risks on their companies and making them part of decision making, boards can meet the demands of a growing number of investors around the world — and unlock real business opportunities. Read the original blog on GreenBiz

Three years ago, during the height of the drought when water was top of mind, California voters overwhelmingly approved a $7.5 billion water bond, known as Proposition 1, to help the state better manage the precious resource. Of its many purposes, $2.7 billion of the bond money was earmarked to improve water storage infrastructure. So after its passage, water utilities and other stakeholders got busy preparing proposals for a slice of the storage pie. By the state’s deadline in mid-August 2017, a dozen storage proposals had landed at the California Water Commission, which will decide how the money is allocated. Commissioners met October 18 and vetted the 12 completed proposals, voting that 11 of them met the eligibility requirements to be considered for funding. It’ll be many more months before commissioners “score” the proposals and decide which ones get some funding and how much. But the requested amounts add up to more than double the earmarked storage sum, so there will be competition. When the bond was developed and the California Water Commission decided eligibility criteria for the storage funding proposals, many of us concerned about sustainability and the environment feared that long-planned surface water reservoir projects would win all the funding. I am surprised and pleased that two projects are focused on groundwater storage and four projects propose “conjunctive use” infrastructure that will serve both to replenish groundwater basins and maintain adequate surface water flows. Conjunctive use, as defined by the Prop. 1 regulations, involves both underground and surface storage facilities in ways that add efficiency to each. That is good news. The Commission should give serious consideration to projects that include groundwater replenishment in their proposals since the state cannot rely solely on surface reservoirs, which are predicted to have diminishing storage efficiency in a warming California. Reservoirs also can have other environmental implications. Hydrologists studying California’s situation agree that replenishing groundwater basins is a good bet for long-term water security – and sorely needed. During the drought years when California pumped groundwater for 60 percent of its water supplies, most groundwater basins depleted to dangerously low levels. The future – and smart implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) – compels us to restore water to these aquifers. Even in normal years, California relies on groundwater for 40 percent of its water, so to allow aquifers to be squeezed dry without efforts to replenish them would be foolhardy. In addition to helping restore groundwater, some of the proposals submitted maintain that they would benefit agriculture or habitat and wildlife. And several would make use of innovations in water recycling. Here are some of the project concepts I found encouraging, in that they would provide for water needs both now and in the future, building resilience. A project in the farmlands of south Sacramento County involves recycling water for use in irrigating agricultural fields, which in turn would reduce farmers’ needs for pumping groundwater and allow the aquifer to replenish from its depleted condition. Among its unique features, the south Sacramento County groundwater storage project would use recycled water to provide about 50,000 acre-feet of water a year to area farms, providing irrigation for 16,000 acres of crops south of Sacramento. For Kern County, which lies above one of the most stressed groundwater basins of the state, the Irvine Ranch Water District has proposed a water capture and banking process, with applicants forecasting they can store in aquifers up to 100,000 acre-feet of water by capturing water during rainy seasons, letting it remain on agricultural fields in the winter and slowly infiltrate into the San Joaquin Valley Groundwater Basin. In San Bernardino County, the Inland Empire Utilities Agency has worked with the Nature Conservancy to develop an environmental water bank within its Chino Basin groundwater bank. This project involves recycling wastewater for use in the region and then leaving a like amount of water at the top of the State Water Project in Lake Oroville. This water can then be used to enhance environmental flows and protect water quality in the Feather River. This project outlines a “water exchange” encouraging local water supply development and dedicating water to meet multiple needs. A unique element of this project is that both the water that would be developed in the Chino Basin and the dedication of water for environmental purposes behind Lake Oroville would be provided with 100 percent reliability – actually creating “new water” within the system. “Pure Water San Diego” is a water recycling project that aims to supply one-third of San Diego’s water needs. That would eventually be about 83 million gallons per day of recycled high-quality drinking water, stored in the city’s Miramar Reservoir. In the area of the damaged Oroville Dam, there’s a proposal for a “modest” re-operation of Lake Oroville and San Luis reservoirs to take some pressure off the State Water Project by moving water south of the Delta and storing that water in a groundwater basin in the Antelope Valley in Southern California. The Willow Springs Water Bank Conjunctive Use Project would reserve water for State Water Project contractors and enhance environmental flows. Ceres and nine of its company partners, including Driscoll’s and Fetzer Vineyards, engaged with the Commission and policymakers when the bond’s implementation was being charted to urge that smart groundwater-recharge projects be considered on equal footing as surface reservoir projects. Ceres is glad stakeholders came to the table with groundwater storage projects and that commissioners deemed them eligible for consideration. Ceres is also pleased to see innovations in recycling and other technologies in several of the proposals. Wise, insightful and careful use of the Prop. 1 Water Storage Investment Program funds can go a long way to shoring up future water security. We are glad the California Water Commission sees fit to consider both groundwater recharge and surface reservoir projects as well as smart water recycling projects. Hopefully, this is a sign of changing thinking around what is “storage” and how our state can better manage our connected groundwater and surface water supplies. Read the original blog on Water Deeply

As the Ohio Senate considers House Bill 114, a proposal that would dismantle the state’s renewable energy and energy efficiency standards, lawmakers should consider the significant opportunities for clean energy investment in the Buckeye State. In September, General Motors announced it would power its Ohio manufacturing plants in Toledo, Parma, Lordstown, and Defiance entirely with wind energy in 2018. In August, Facebook announced its new $750 million data center in New Albany will also be powered by 100 percent renewable energy. These new clean energy investments are just the beginning of what is possible in Ohio. Click here to read the full article on www.bizjournals.com

Vanguard Group CEO William F. McNabb III just tipped the list. The world’s top three asset managers—Blackrock, Vanguard, and State Street Corp.—are now calling the companies that they invest in to adopt climate risk disclosure. In a recent open letter to corporate directors across the globe, McNabb explained that Vanguard, the $4.5 trillion mutual-fund management firm, expects businesses to embrace materiality-driven disclosures to shine more light on sustainability risks. Summing up the challenge of climate risk, McNabb wrote that it’s the kind of risk that tests the strength of a board’s oversight and risk governance. That’s the crux of the challenge for directors. As investors ratchet up the pressure on companies to analyze their exposure to the impacts of a warming planet, they’re calling on boards to be knowledgeable about material climate risk and capable of preparing for its impacts and capitalizing on its opportunities. As we heard in Karen Horn’s opening keynote of NACD’s 2017 Global Board Leaders’ Summit, directors can no longer ignore the inherent impact of these issues on the long-term value creation of the corporate world —ranging from climate risk, natural resource capital, and implications of the Paris Climate Agreement. This growing scrutiny has directors’ attention—especially after a high-profile vote in May by nearly two-thirds of Exxon Mobil Corp.’s shareholders demanding an analysis of climate risks. The number of directors who think that disclosure of sustainability risk is important to understanding a company’s business jumped to 54 percent  in 2017 from 24 percent last year, according to a survey of 130 board members by the accounting firm BDO USA. Board-level competence around climate change and other sustainability risks is the way forward. Through an understanding of what climate change means, why it matters to their business, and what their organizations are capable of changing, directors can successfully make climate risk part of their governance systems. In a new report by Ceres called Lead from the Top, we outline ways that companies and boards can build up that competence. But rather than settling with bringing on a director who is competent in sustainability, our report explains why companies must work to build an entire board that is competent to oversee these risks. By engaging thoughtfully on material sustainability risks as one cohesive body, this kind of board is able to ask the right questions of its management, support or challenge senior management as needed, and ultimately make informed and thoughtful decisions affecting corporate strategy and risk. We identified three key principles that companies and boards can use as they work to build a sustainability-competent board: 1. Sustainability needs to be integrated into the director nomination process. Finding directors who can apply their knowledge about climate and other sustainability risk to relevant board deliberations is a good first step. Companies can get the right people on board by approaching this systematically as a part of the board nominations process, specifically identifying experience in material environmental, social, and governance (ESG) risks in the board skills matrix and by casting a wide net to consider candidates with diverse backgrounds and skills. 2. The whole board needs to be educated on sustainability issues that impact their company. For sustainability to become part of the fabric of board oversight and integrated into decision-making on strategy, risk, and compensation, all directors on the corporate board need to be well informed on material sustainability issues so they can lead thoughtful deliberations and make strategic decisions. Companies can do this through focused, ongoing training programs that bring in experts from outside the company and by educating the board on the connections between climate change and material impacts and the connections to risk and strategy. Embedding ESG into the existing board materials so it does not become one additional issue topic to vie for directors’ attention is essential. Sustainability managers embedded within companies can play a key role in driving this integration. 3. Boards should directly engage a diverse array of stakeholders, including investors, on sustainability issues impacting their company. With more investors paying attention to climate change and other sustainability issues, shareholders increasingly expect boards to engage directly with them on critical issues. One of the goals of McNabb’s letter was to nudge directors to engage directly with shareholders. Given this growing focus, material environmental and social factors should be made a part of any dialogue between directors and investors. It all comes down to the bottom line. Risk and opportunity define business. Corporate boards will have a difficult time performing their fiduciary duty to the companies they lead and the shareholders that they represent without understanding the risks and opportunities created by climate change. Our report lays out practical steps directors can take as they consider how to make their board competent in addressing climate change and other environmental, social, and governance issues. Read the original blog on NACD Online

Feeding the world is a mounting challenge for our food system, as climate change impacts collide with burgeoning population growth. And more mouths to feed means demand is rising globally for resource-intensive meat, just as water scarcity and challenges such as deforestation accelerate. But today on World Food Day, I see exciting trends that give me hope. The food sector is beginning to step up. More and more food companies are doing their part to tackle urgent sustainability challenges, while also ensuring our long-term global food security. They – and their shareholders – see both the business imperative and competitive advantage for acting.   1.     Cutting Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Agricultural Supply Chains  Agriculture produces about a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Fertilizer production, energy use on farms, land clearing for grazing or crops, and methane release from livestock and rice fields all contribute to that big footprint. Food companies have a key role to play at mitigating those impacts, where a sizable chunk of their GHG emissions are produced.  Increasingly they are. Food giants like Mars, General Mills, Kellogg, Unilever and Smithfield are setting robust science-based targets to reduce their agricultural supply chain emissions through such strategies as eliminating deforestation practices by suppliers, fertilizer optimization, manure management, methane gas capture and deployment of renewable energies. At the retail end of the supply chain, big players like Walmart are also setting GHG goals, and that’s a key driver for the food companies that supply them to get their own houses in order. Mars pledged to spend $1 billion on an expansion of its sustainability goals, including cutting greenhouse gas emissions across its supply chain by 67 percent by 2050.  General Mills pledged to cut absolute GHGs by 28% by 2025 “across the entire value chain.” By 2050 it will slash emissions up to 72%, “in line with scientific consensus.” Kellogg’s 2050 target is to cut its own and supplier emissions by 65% and 50% respectively. Smithfield’s plans to cut its value chain-wide greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent over the next eight years.  Their actions are coming none too soon as rising global temperatures are beginning to impact our food supply, with one of the most significant impacts to our water system. 2.     Sustainable Sourcing and Traceability Grow Hand in Hand Global food companies are setting time-bound, measurable goals to sustainably source their major commodities, such as wheat, corn, soy and palm oil. Ceres’ benchmarking analysis of 42 food and beverage companies, Feeding Ourselves Thirsty, found that more than half had set goals to source at least two of their major agricultural inputs more sustainably. Even better, six of these companies—Coca Cola, General Mills, Kellogg Company, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Unilever—have set sustainable sourcing goals for a majority of their major agricultural inputs.  On a parallel track, commodity supply chains are becoming more traceable—which is an essential ingredient for sustainable sourcing. Supply chain complexity and a lack of data at the farm level can make it difficult for global food companies to ensure that their ingredients are being sourced without environmental or social harm. New tools are emerging, however, to help food companies and their investors gain greater transparency into supply chains. Trase, for example, is an open-access online platform that maps agricultural commodity flows at scale. Trase maps soy and cattle exports from South America and Indonesian palm oil down to the level of producer municipalities and departments. Similarly, University of Minnesota scientists have developed a tool that identifies which U.S. counties use the most water and fertilizer to grow corn, and tracks where that corn ends up, whether in a cow, a corn dog or ethanol in a car. 3.     Food companies are helping their growers produce more sustainably Since Ceres first benchmarked food and beverage companies on water risk management in 2015, the number providing some form of direct agronomic support to growers on sustainable farm practices has doubled to more than 70 percent. Perhaps more significantly, twice as many are providing some form of financial incentives to growers to improve farm practices, such as by shifting to more efficient irrigation systems. These efforts are typically targeted and small, yet nonetheless they are a sign of progress. Unilever is a leading example. It partners with farmers on complex sustainable agriculture projects they might not be able to tackle alone. Its soup brand Knorr, for instance, will invest 50 percent of any agreed project budget to enable growers to try out new ideas and speed up the implementation of sustainable agricultural practices. Each year, the company co-invests one million Euros with its suppliers and farmers in training and equipment to accelerate the adoption of sustainable practices.  4.     Meat companies are turning to non-meat alternatives Meat, and beef in particular, is heavily resource-intensive, requiring more land and water, and generating more emissions per unit of protein than any other food. In addition, as consumer demand for protein is shifting away from meat in some markets, investors are taking notice, and meat companies are starting to respond.  Last year, Cargill sold off its feed lots in the U.S., stating that it wanted to reinvest the money in other sources of protein, like plant-based, fish, and insects as well as other opportunities linked to livestock and poultry. This year it’s making good on that promise with a recent announcement that it was investing in an alternative meat startup, Memphis Meats, which grows meat in tanks by feeding oxygen, sugar, and other nutrients to living animal cells. Cargill is not the first meat company to enter this brave new world. Tyson Foods has taken a five percent ownership stake in Beyond Meat, which produces meat and cheese substitutes from vegetable proteins.  Even non-meat food companies are getting into the vegetable-based protein trend through their venture capital. General Mills investment arm partnered with private equity firm 2X Consumer Products Growth Partners to invest in vegan company, D’s Naturals.  Our food system faces urgent and daunting challenges, but these trends show that food companies are beginning to take meaningful measures to reduce their impacts. Ceres will continue to drive change in the food industry through our Investor Initiative for Sustainable Forests, our research efforts, including the online resource Engage the Chain, our stakeholder engagements and the AgWater Challenge.

Hurricanes Maria, Irma and Harvey have starkly exposed just how vulnerable America remains, and how much more must be done to rein in the causes and impacts of climate change and strengthen our nation’s resilience to extreme weather events. American citizens in Puerto Rico are likely to go for months without reliable electricity, or adequate drinking water as a result of the devastation left in the wake of  Maria. If you combine that alongside the storm’s massive economic impacts, estimated anywhere from $40 to $85 billion in insured losses throughout the Caribbean, Maria exposes the fragility of the built environment--and the extensive economic losses caused by the lack of climate resiliency. While the exact degree to which global warming increases the intensity of hurricanes continues to be analyzed and debated, indisputably there are basic physical dynamics of climate change that contribute to the impacts of hurricanes. Warmer waters in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico evaporate more readily; warmer air can hold more moisture, which can then be dumped in increasingly extreme rainfall events; and warmer waters provide more fuel to strengthen hurricanes rapidly and boost wind speeds.   Days before Harvey made landfall, President Trump signed an executive order that weakens the country’s resilience against growing climate risks. The executive order specifically rolls back implementation of the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard, known as FFRMS. This was done on the very same day that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced that July tied the record for the hottest month in recorded history. FFRMS, signed in 2015, provided federal agencies three options to reduce the risks of flooding when investing in new infrastructure projects and federal facilities. Agencies could use the best available climate science to evaluate and reduce risk exposures; they could require standard infrastructure to be built two feet above the 100-year floodplain, with critical infrastructure like hospitals elevated three feet; or they could require infrastructure to be built to at least the 500-year floodplain -- all common sense approaches in the face of a changing climate. Federal Emergency Management Agency studies have shown that each dollar spent on mitigating disaster losses saves an average of $4 in avoided post-disaster recovery and rebuilding costs. So why would the federal government reverse course and choose not to invest taxpayer dollars in a responsible and risk-informed way? One silver lining of Harvey’s unprecedented and devastating flooding is that it has provided compelling cause for reconsideration. The Washington Post recently reported that the Trump administration might be reconsidering its planned rollback of the FFRMS. Members of Congress are demanding action as well, with Sen. Tom Carper (D-MD), the ranking member on the Environment and Public Works Committee calling for President Trump to reinstate the FFRMS, along with a range of other climate preparedness and resiliency actions. Businesses are also joining the chorus, with the Ceres BICEP Network recently sending a letter to President Trump stating, “we must, as businesses, pursue long-term preparation to lessen the costly climate change-fueled impacts on our economy and communities.” Even before Harvey’s landfall in Texas, recent major flooding events struck different parts of the country as a result of extreme rainfall events. Thunderstorms flooded New Orleans, dropping up to 10 inches of rain in a matter of hours, and overwhelmed the city’s pumping stations, which are designed to move water out of low-lying city’s streets. A few days earlier, Miami was subjected to up to 7 inches of rain in a few hours, flooding city streets after pump stations lost power due to lightning, and sea level rise-enhanced high tides blocked drainage routes for the run-off. And now Irma and Maria have brought extreme rainfall, high winds and massive sea level rise-enhanced storm surge to Florida’s Gulf and Atlantic coasts, as well as Puerto Rico and across the Caribbean, respectively.  Recognizing that such climate-driven impacts are intensifying, credit rating agencies are taking stronger positions on building flood resilience. For example, in 2016 Moody’s Investors Service, one of the leading global credit rating agencies, identified climate-driven natural disaster risks as having huge economic impacts in both developed and developing economies. In particular, Moody’s noted that over the past 35 years, floods and storms have been occurring more frequently, and 80 percent of natural disasters were weather-related. Moody’s research has led the company to integrate climate risk into its sovereign credit assessments. Rhode Island-based commercial insurance company FM Global recently released a forward-looking Global Flood Map that highlights moderate and high-hazard flood zones around the world. The company’s goal is to help its clients, ranging from Fortune 500 companies to smaller enterprises, more responsibly site their facilities and build resilience into their operations and supply chains. Catastrophe modeling firm AIR Worldwide, which provides data and analytics for insurance and reinsurance company clients, released a U.S. flood model that provides realistic estimates of how flooding-related losses could affect specific geographic areas down to individual property locations. Such analyses could help evaluate potential flood risks for existing and planned infrastructure. All of these developments are happening amid debate about reauthorization of the National Flood Insurance Program, the FEMA-administered program that provides flood insurance to millions of homeowners and businesses. A major focus has been on provisions related to making smart investments to help reduce property owners’ flood risks and build resilience in order to shield the NFIP – and taxpayers – from excessive, avoidable losses. As the flood-related losses from Harvey as well as Irma and Maria will strain the finances of the massively-indebted NFIP, lawmakers must consider how to shore up the program for the long term -- including by helping to reinforce infrastructure against future risks. While it cannot substitute for robust federal government action, the good news is that many private sector leaders, and many local governments, are setting examples that can and should be followed to minimize the risks of climate change. At a minimum, the current administration should reinstate the FFRMS to protect people, the environment and the economy, and to build a more climate resilient future. Read the original blog on Forbes.com