Water is rapidly emerging as a critical concern that affects economies, communities, and businesses alike. Growing demand, declining quality, and climate pressures are putting immense strain on available water resources. For companies, this challenge goes beyond environmental responsibility and directly impacts operations, supply chains, and long-term growth. At the same time, there is increasing scrutiny on how businesses contribute to sustainable and equitable water use. Aligning with Sustainable Development Goal 6 is therefore becoming essential, not just as a commitment but as a measurable practice. However, achieving meaningful impact requires a shift in approach and stronger accountability. In this article, A. Vikram Joshe, Founder and MD of WAE, shares insights on how organisations can move from basic water management to a more responsible and outcome-driven approach that supports water security at both local and global levels.
Water is no longer a peripheral sustainability issue. It is an operating constraint, a supply-chain risk, a public-health variable, and increasingly a strategic test of corporate credibility. Sustainable Development Goal 6 calls for the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all, with targets spanning drinking water, sanitation, water quality, water-use efficiency, integrated water resources management, ecosystem protection, international cooperation, and community participation. In other words, SDG 6 is not merely about access to water. It is about water security as a system condition.
The urgency is evident in the latest global data. In 2024, 2.1 billion people still lacked safely managed drinking water, 3.4 billion lacked safely managed sanitation, and 1.7 billion lacked basic hygiene services. At the same time, water stress remains severe in many regions, while progress on integrated water resources management and transboundary cooperation is still too slow to meet the 2030 deadline. UN-Water’s recent synthesis makes the larger point starkly: despite progress, the world is not on track to achieve SDG 6 by 2030.
For business, this matters not only ethically but financially. CDP reports that companies disclosing through its 2023 water security questionnaire identified potential water-related financial impacts exceeding $531 billion. WRI’s Aqueduct analysis adds a structural warning: around 4 billion people live under highly water-stressed conditions for at least one month each year, and 25 countries already face extremely high water stress annually. Water insecurity is therefore not a distant environmental concern; it is a material condition affecting industrial continuity, agricultural input stability, energy production, workforce welfare, and license to operate.
Yet many corporate water strategies still remain too narrow. They focus on volumetric efficiency inside the factory fence while ignoring basin depletion, wastewater quality, ecosystem degradation, and inequitable access. That approach may improve internal metrics, but it does not necessarily improve water security in the places that matter. SDG 6 alignment requires a more mature doctrine: companies must move from water management to water stewardship, and from stewardship rhetoric to measurable basin-relevant outcomes. The CEO Water Mandate and Pacific Institute argue that effective water targets should be informed by catchment context, aligned with priority water challenges, and designed to reduce corporate risk while contributing to broader catchment water security.
This distinction is critical. A company can reduce water intensity per unit of output and still worsen local water stress if production expands in a depleted basin. It can claim “water positivity” through offset-like narratives while discharging poorly treated effluent into a stressed watershed. WWF has cautioned against simplistic “net positive water” claims that rely on theoretical balance rather than real basin conditions. The more credible route is context-based target setting: identify where the company’s sites and suppliers overlap with high-risk basins, define the priority challenges in those basins, and set targets that reflect both the site’s contribution to the problem and the condition required for the basin to recover or remain resilient.
What, then, does measurable SDG 6 alignment look like in practice?
First, companies must map water materiality beyond operations. This means assessing physical, regulatory, reputational, and social water risks across owned sites, contract manufacturing, agriculture, mining inputs, logistics nodes, and key communities around operations. Water risk is inherently local, so site-level mapping matters more than generic enterprise-wide averages. Tools such as WRI Aqueduct can help identify current and future basin stress, but the real discipline lies in linking geospatial risk to capital allocation, sourcing decisions, and resilience planning.
Second, companies should set targets against the SDG 6 architecture rather than against a single efficiency metric. For example, SDG 6.4 supports targets on water-use efficiency and water stress; SDG 6.3 supports wastewater treatment and ambient water quality; SDG 6.6 supports restoration of wetlands, rivers, aquifers, and lakes; SDG 6.b emphasizes community participation. This allows companies to report not only how much water they use, but whether they are improving the condition of the shared resource. That is a more meaningful test of alignment.
Third, wastewater must move to the center of corporate action. Water security is not only about quantity; it is also about quality. Recent UN-Water facts indicate that 44% of household wastewater is not treated properly, and only 38% of industrial wastewater is safely treated based on limited available data. For companies, this makes effluent treatment, reuse, and pollution prevention central to SDG 6 credibility. Advanced treatment, closed-loop systems, nutrient recovery, zero-liquid-discharge where appropriate, and real-time monitoring of effluent quality can all create measurable gains, especially in heavily industrialized basins.
Fourth, workplace and value-chain WASH should not be treated as secondary philanthropy. Safe water, sanitation, and hygiene for workers is directly relevant to SDG 6 and linked to workforce health, productivity, and social legitimacy. WASH4Work explicitly frames workplace WASH as both a business value driver and a contribution to SDG 6. For companies with large distributed workforces, agricultural supply chains, or contractor-heavy operations, WASH standards can become one of the most immediate and measurable ways to improve water security outcomes for people.
Fifth, companies must participate in collective action. No single firm can secure a basin alone. Water security depends on governance quality, infrastructure, ecosystem health, agricultural practices, and the behavior of multiple users. That is why integrated water resources management, stakeholder participation, and basin collaboration are embedded in SDG 6 itself. Effective corporate action may therefore include co-funding recharge structures, wastewater reuse infrastructure, wetland restoration, farmer transition programs, watershed monitoring, or local water governance platforms. WWF’s stewardship framework and the 2030 Water Resources Group both emphasize that basin-level progress requires collaboration at scale, not isolated site projects.
Finally, measurement and disclosure must be rigorous. Companies should disclose basin-specific withdrawals, consumption, recycling rates, effluent quality, compliance breaches, supplier exposure in stressed basins, WASH coverage, and progress against contextual targets. Internal water pricing can also improve decision quality by forcing capital budgeting to reflect scarcity and resilience value, not just utility tariffs. CDP’s recent work suggests this is becoming a more serious frontier of corporate practice.
The strategic conclusion is simple: alignment with SDG 6 is not achieved through symbolic water-saving campaigns or generalized ESG language. It is achieved when a company can show, with data, that it has reduced basin-relevant water risk, improved water quality, strengthened ecosystem resilience, expanded access to WASH where it has influence, and contributed to better governance of shared water resources. In a century defined by climate volatility and resource constraints, companies that do this will not merely appear more responsible. They will be more resilient, more investable, and more legitimate. That is the real business case for measurable action on water security.
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