We sat down with Sara Traubel, Nature Lead at Quantis Switzerland, and Torsten Kurth, Managing Director & Senior Partner at BCG Berlin, to reflect on the most impactful moments, emerging trends and what companies need to know now about shaping credible water strategies.
Torsten Kurth
Managing Director
BCG
Sara Traubel
Nature Lead
Quantis
What key themes or takeaways stood out to you during World Water Week 2025, and what do they signal about the future of water and climate action?
Sara: There is an increasing recognition of the links between water, biodiversity, climate action, energy production and water’s links to global peace and security. There is also a promising de-siloing of water in relation to regenerative agriculture, nature-based solutions, and putting local communities – including indigenous communities – in the driver’s seat.
How far have companies progressed toward achieving their 2030 water stewardship ambitions?
Sara: Companies are lagging behind significantly in terms of achieving their water stewardship ambitions. Unsustainable water use and governance, coupled with climate change, is driving catastrophic impacts across the world. Yes, there are leading companies who are taking inspiring action – but these are still far too few and far between. Given that water is a shared resource, businesses across the globe of all industries and sizes need to radically rethink how they value and govern water in order to be resilient in the future and not drive highly undesirable societal outcomes.
Torsten: If companies are lagging on water stewardship targets and supply chain water targets, then we need a strategic shift when it comes to water that addresses broad water resilience rather than small scale approaches. Companies brave enough to make this shift will not only address the growing business continuity risk and are likely to find new business opportunities.
From a strategy perspective, what kind of business value can be unlocked by scaling a methodology like Danone’s SPRING across operations?
Sara: Water scarcity and pollution are already triggering operational disruptions across the globe. Because water is cheap, these often go unnoticed. Implementing methodologies such as SPRING [Danone’s internal water stewardship methodology, publicly released with the support of Quantis] across operations helps build resilience and can help secure the social license to operate.
By ensuring water is appropriately managed within the factory gates and by generating an understanding of the basin conditions and shared water challenges, companies can effectively engage with other stakeholders in the same basin to drive solutions that generate lasting benefits for all water users involved.
What are the risks of not investing in freshwater resilience today – especially as more regions experience water-related climate extremes?
Sara: The cost of inaction is immense. A recent BCG x Quantis report on agrifood supply chain resilience shows it — major droughts and floods trigger associated price volatility on the global agricultural commodity markets; water risks are rippling all the way through global value chains, leading to price increases, supply chain disruptions, and eventually impacts on the whole global economic system.
What industries do you believe are most vulnerable to water-related climate risks, and are they acting fast enough to adapt?
Sara: The majority of industries depend on agricultural crops at some stage of their value chain – given the concrete impacts climate change is already having on these supply chains, companies are largely in a reactive mode in the face of these challenges: switching suppliers and sourcing regions, absorbing costs, or finding short term solutions to avoid supply disruptions.
Similarly, industrial hubs producing the world’s consumption goods – clothes, technology, homeware – are often concentrated in clusters where they draw on the same water source, leading to, for example, rapidly declining groundwater tables or contributing to large-scale water pollution issues. This in turn increasingly threatens community access to clean drinking water, impacting societal health and well-being.
In your experience, what’s the biggest barrier to turning high-level water commitments into measurable local action?
Sara: The biggest barrier, in my view, is the absence of standardized frameworks for action – there is no equivalent for water to the Paris Agreement or the GHG Protocol.
Context is incredibly important for water action: Given that water is a local issue, solutions should always be adapted to the local context and involve other stakeholders. It’s about doing the right thing in the right places – and determining this requires companies to assess its water related impacts and dependencies on water all along its value chain. Thankfully, with the science-based targets for nature methodology, we are seeing frameworks emerging that help companies conduct assessments in a scientific way, prioritize and put in place credible actions.
Torsten: Financing adaptation and resilience efforts is notoriously difficult, and this includes water resilience projects. However, our work has shown that if companies invest in finding and orchestrating water resilience projects, they are able to achieve returns. And lets not forget: water resilience is not only a lever for business continuity but increasingly also a business opportunity.
How can companies integrate their water strategy into a holistic nature strategy?
Sara: Water, biodiversity, land-use change, climate – these are all issues which are closely interlinked and have mutual benefits and trade-offs. It’s key to have a holistic understanding of these interconnections.
For some companies, depending on context and business model, it may make sense to have a separate strategy on water and one on biodiversity. In other cases, it may make sense to develop one holistic nature strategy which drives action that is mutually beneficial for freshwater outcomes, biodiversity , and land protection and restoration, all the while driving synergies with climate action and social goals.
The reason why we often recommend to have a specific focus on water is because water is everywhere. Highlighting and elevating the role of water in sustaining the business, precisely because it is such a highly undervalued resource, is in my opinion key to building long-term business resilience.
Torsten: We know that only few companies are considering comprehensive nature strategies now that go beyond analyses and reporting, while there is recognition that companies need to do more on nature, starting this journey is complicated. Water strategies allow for tangible business impact and an excellent starting point to advance the nature agenda.
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