Six companies led by the world's largest food group Nestle pledged to cut water usage and called on other companies to do the same, saying it was a key environmental issue and business should do its part. "There is a great and immediate water crisis that is affecting us all," Nestle Chief Financial Officer Paul Polman told business and government leaders on Thursday at the UN-sponsored Global Compact summit on corporate responsibility.

Polman said the business-led initiative to cut water use, the "CEO Water Mandate", would hold companies to a pledge to set specific water-reduction targets, invest in water-reducing technologies and publish progress toward meeting those goals. "The problem of water sustainability does not lie in its availability, it lies in how we manage our supply," Polman said. "This is essentially a solvable problem that we in industry need to play a role in."

Already 1.2 billion people worldwide have no access to clean drinking water, while experts project that by 2050 two-thirds of mankind will live in water-stressed areas, Polman said. Signatories to the new mandate include Nestle, Coca-Cola Co. , Levi Strauss & Co., Laeckeby Water Group, SABMiller Plc and Suez. Food and beverage companies were natural leaders in the water sector, Polman said, but other industries including manufacturing and especially agriculture needed to play a more active role.

Paul Faeth, head of the UN-sponsored group Global Water Challenge, called on other firms to sign the voluntary mandate, saying it should help make companies aware of the need to rein in water use and to hold each other accountable. Faeth said he was looking for 50 additional companies to sign the mandate and focus on water and sanitation issues, particularly in developing countries. The United Nation's Global Compact, created in 2000 as a counterweight to growing popular discontent over globalisation, has more than 3,000 corporate signatories from 116 countries worldwide.
(By Thomas Atkins, Planet Ark, 06/07/2007)