ANDREWS S 2015 Water Risk publ RISI Dec 2015 SA
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1. Water is an essential resource for the pulp and paper industry, but global demand for freshwater is increasing while supplies are dwindling, posing risks for the industry. 2. The concept of water stewardship aims to ensure sustainable water management that balances the needs of ecosystems, communities, and future generations. 3. Assessing water usage through methods like water footprint accounting and improving water efficiency will be important for the pulp and paper industry to responsibly manage their water use and impacts on local water supplies.
ANDREWS S 2015 Water Risk publ RISI Dec 2015 SA
- 1. 1 When Will Water Become a Risk? (Author: Stuart Andrews // First published by RISI in PPI Magazine Nov/Dec 2015) Water, we have a very one sided viewpoint of this resource in the pulp and paper industry. Without water we have no industry. Historically, and today in many global locations, it has been low cost; apart from the processing investment and pollution control costs. The word plentiful also applies, why would anyone build a papermill without a plentiful supply of water? Well guys, at some point in the next five years our industry is going to get a wake-up call. Water may still be plentiful from where we operate but will we still be permitted to use it? Equity, this is the future perspective. Sharing water with other users and maintaining an extraction rate that does not deplete resources for future generations. In fact an extraction rate that takes into account the needs of all people and the local ecosystem demands. A society where global demand increases as, what we in the economic North already take for granted, potable water and access to sanitation are spread around the world. Currently around 2.6 billion people lack access to a simple improved latrine system and 1.1 billion have no access to improved water sources (D.L. Feldman, Water, 2012), facilities which are essential for health and have been suggested by the UN as a basic human right. But hold on we all know these important things about water, so what is happening? According to the UN, in 16 years the planet may meet only 60% of the global demand for freshwater. Equity, fairness, water stewardship, water footprint, even virtual water; these are all growing concerns and methodologies to resolve a potential problem. There will simply not be enough freshwater to go round. Academics and scientists have been talking about it, hydrologists have been measuring it and water-management companies continue to sell it, but we are now seeing elements of the global NGO movement move from expressing concern over freshwater supply to offering engagement and designing solutions to safeguard freshwater supplies for all global elements that need it, literally to survive. In rough terms just three percent of the Earth’s water exists as freshwater, 97.2% is saltwater in oceans; there is 2.14% in icecaps and glaciers, 0.61% as groundwater, 0.009% as surface water and 0.0005% as soil moisture (US Geological Survey). Rainfall is erratic, globally uneven and precipitation patterns may change as a result of climate change and man’s influence on landscape & nature. Now here is the rub, human population is growing and getting richer, it needs feeding which in turn requires land and agriculture is a big user of freshwater. Society has been looking at biomass and biofuel as replacement options for fossil fuels and these also need land and water to grow. These are just issues around man’s needs; the planet also needs freshwater to function. Water helps create and maintain productive soils, carrying nutrients within the structure by percolation, maintaining micro-organism life within soil itself. Many ecosystems exist because of water supply whilst simultaneously storing, cleaning and providing freshwater. Forests help create rainfall by pushing moisture into the air (transpiration), changing temperatures and weather
- 2. 2 patterns to cause precipitation (the water cycle). Basically if too much freshwater is used in a specific geographical place then ‘change’ can start to occur and not all change is good. Prioritising use and sharing freshwater use is key to the future. There are tools such as Water Footprint, Water Stewardship and Virtual Water already in the public domain; although these are ‘works in progress’ and likely to need adaption to specific circumstances, geographic locations and industries. Data is also being collected on an annual basis from corporations across a range of industrial sectors; CDP (formally the Carbon Disclosure Project) is sending out an annual water questionnaire to global corporations, adding to their existing projects of Carbon Disclosure and Forest Products Disclosure. Wait a moment, did you just read a sentence that placed information gathering about future water supplies and forestry concerns together? Perhaps a cynical person could draw some connections between previous campaigns against deforestation, current concerns over water, and project these forward into Water Stewardship Certification in the not too distant future. Suddenly the ‘freshwater’ debate becomes more urgent for business. Before attempting simplistic summaries of these concepts we need to look at some definitions applied to freshwater: • Green Water This is rain water that has not become ‘runoff’, it has probably been collected and stored for use. • Blue Water; surface and groundwater. For Water Footprint this is from a specific catchment area, with consumption occurring when it is incorporated into a product, lost through evaporation (including steam through energy production), and also lost when not returned to the water body in the originating catchment area. • Grey Water 1/ For Water Footprint: The volume of water required to assimilate any water borne pollutants back to the natural background level. 2/ Common Usage: Domestic and office waste water with ‘light’ usage i.e. laundry, washing, showers, dishwashers and washing machines etc. • Black Water Comes from sanitation, contains sewage and requires specialist treatment. The concept of Water Footprint has been attributed to Prof. Arjen Hoekstra, who along with Prof Ashok Chapagain, colleagues at the University of Twente and other scientists have constructed a methodology to combine direct and indirect freshwater as used in the supply chain to produce products including paper. A Water Footprint will include blue, green and grey water values, whereas traditional water input calculations would probably be restricted to blue water as piped into the papermill site less the return flow. The addition of indirect water use can make calculations complex. CEPI has been examining Water Footprint, Stewardship and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) for a number of years and Jori Ringman-Beck (CEPI, Director Sustainability) is hopeful of publishing a guide and recommendations on Water Footprint for the European pulp & paper industry later this year. It appears that academia has also been working on an updated methodology ‘Water Footprint version 2.0’ which presumably partially explains the anticipated timing of CEPI’s publication.
- 3. 3 As you would expect CEPI has been researching the physical use of water by European pulp and paper mills. The trend over the last twenty years has been to reduce freshwater withdrawal by 20% in total volume and by 47% when calculated as a cubic metre per tonne of product (CEPI Sustainability Report, 2013). In 2012 the total water input for our industry in the CEPI member countries was approximately 3.71 million cubic metres from surface and groundwater sources, with 92.3% returned to surface water supplies and returned cleaner than before extraction. Modern mills, machine upgrades and investments are all working to gain further efficiencies around this valuable natural resource. How much freshwater used is one aspect but this does not tell you the circumstances of the water used, water stewardship aspires to fill in some of the gaps. Water Stewardship looks at the ecosystem, human and inter-generational demand for freshwater; the three being interconnected. It also takes a catchment or water basin perspective, which may or may not coincide with regional or political boundaries. Water Stewardship is still evolving as a concept and is focussed on the sustainable management of water resources which may not be aligned with current water management practices in all locations. Adaptability is likely to be a keyword. WWF UK has recently published a guide “From Risk to Resilience: Does your business know its water risk?” (May, 2015) to help companies embrace “… a new way of thinking about water management … “ so “… businesses can become better water stewards”. Although this document is based on UK usage the underlying principles can be applied globally. It looks at helping companies identify risk to their water supply chain and to their reputation from water use. Processes outlined include business and communities cooperating over specific ecosystems for freshwater benefits and jointly investing in sustainable water management ‘beyond their fence line’ for mutual benefit. The London based organisation CDP has been collating water use and water risk data from around five hundred corporations annually in recent years. This aspect of water risk is complex, especially for the paper industry that uses large quantities of water at papermills for actual manufacture and requires trees to be watered to produce fibre. The international aspects are going to include where is it best to grow trees or site a papermill around the concept of who else needs to use the water and what that water would be doing if the papermill or forestry operation were located elsewhere. Plantations and forests may well be contributing to ecosystem services and be part of the precipitation cycle, but with annual rainfall volumes of say 400mm or even 2,200mm who is able to state that one forestry location has better water stewardship than the other especially if one of these regions has high urban demand and inadequate water treatment infrastructure. The same principles will apply to pulp and papermills; what are the wider impacts on the local ecosystem, communities and the economy. WWF also want to consider the possibility of future weather pattern changes with climate change and describe water stewardship as an adaptive and shared learning journey. It is looking like a journey that will require some hard work in understanding the complexity of issues. The concept of Virtual Water also requires contemplation. Talking about water footprint we touched on ‘indirect water use’ and Virtual Water partially deals with this. Virtual Water starts to deal with water ‘embedded’ in an item, that is the water used at all stages to create and produce the product. Initially Virtual Water was used mainly around agricultural crops and livestock for food production. It is a process that helps to identify and compare global water scarcity, using elements of Water Footprint in the process. The concept of Virtual Water is now starting to appear in relation to forestry in some global locations. Virtual Water can be a positive. An area with low rainfall and high population needs to import food and this food contains virtual water. The total litres of water required producing large quantities of food in a semi-arid area can be high, but importing food from a temperate climate region with plentiful water uses a lower total on the global water balance-sheet and effectively ships water, as
- 4. 4 part of the food, to the semi-arid region. This action helps address aspects of water scarcity and involves water security. In all likelihood we are increasing the calculated water content of a product when we talk Virtual Water. Opening ‘Virtual Water’, a book by Tony Allan, at a random point here is the virtual water cost of breakfast; espresso coffee 140 litres, toast 80 litres, bacon 480 litres, eggs 120 litres, milk 240 litres, apple 70 litres; over 1100 litres or three bathtubs of water. These are generic figures; the true Virtual Water cost of any item will depend on the local geography, landscape, rainfall and catchment. Can these numbers be accurately calculated for the paper industry? Once again this is a catchment area approach so different tree plantations and different papermills should have different Virtual Water counts for paper, evaluating these difference will require a standard methodology to be adopted by the industry. Virtual Water will however let buyers and specifiers compare a water-cost when choosing materials and packaging. Retailers in the food sector will be used to Virtual Water more quickly as the concept has been mainly used around food and food commodities to date, which means that packaging and tissue sectors of our industry probably need to enhance their knowledge of the issue. So where does that leave us in the present? Well as an industry deforestation risk is currently being eradicated by certification and the EUTR but responsibility around fibre sourcing requires ongoing vigilance, knowledge and good supply chain management. Water will also become an instrument of choice for buyers and specifiers in the future. With more questions being asked about water a standard approach will be needed to benchmark, explain and gain sales opportunities. ISO have Standard 14046 which pulp and paper mills can adhere to. The CEPI Water Footprint guide will hopefully follow their Carbon Footprint 10 Toes approach giving us all clarity in Europe, which will probably lead to requests of international mills to reveal similar information. The Alliance for Water Stewardship has drafted Standards to allow for verification of water stewardship practices. Perhaps we can expect WWF or some other body to implement certification and a chain of custody at some point in the near future. What is certain is that in the management of water supply quality, cleansing and pollution controls will soon be a smaller part of the workload at pulp and paper mills. Author’s contact details: Stuart ANDREWS / +44 (0)7921 264557 / [email protected]