A coalition of 64 institutional investors is collaborating to get world's biggest corporate water users and to address water as a financial risk.
The Valuing Water Finance Initiative represents institutional investors with a collective $9.8 trillion in assets, and is coordinated by shareholder advocacy group Ceres and the government of the Netherlands.
Pension fund members include the $459.4 billion California Public Employees' Retirement System, Sacramento; $301.6 billion California State Teachers' Retirement System, West Sacramento; A$26 billion ($18.2 billion) AustralianSuper, Melbourne; the U.K.'s Environment Agency Pension Fund and Local Authority Pension Fund Forum; and $70 billion rand ($4.2 billion) Government Employees Pension Fund of South Africa, Pretoria.
Asset managers joining the initiative include Aviva Investors, Ballard, Boston Common Asset Management, Dana Investment Advisors, DWS Investment, Federated Hermes, Fidelity International, Franklin Templeton, Impax Asset Management, KBI Global Investors, Lombard Odier and PGGM.
Initiative members will first focus on 72 companies in four sectors — food, beverages, apparel and high technology — using a methodology developed by Ceres that shows companies with the greatest water use and impact, and tracking the United Nations' 2030 Sustainable Development Goal for Water, SDG6.
The investors "are poised to engage with portfolio companies around the corporate expectations for valuing water and help the private sector value and act on water as a financial risk and drive the necessary large-scale change to better protect water systems," said Kirsten James, senior program director for water at Ceres, in an announcement.
