World Water Day: Awareness isn’t enough to save the planet’s water supply
Water is taken for granted.
When my great-great-grandfather, Daniel Swarovski, set up his company in the Austrian Alps in 1895, he chose the area because of the abundance of water, which he needed for creating crystal.
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Water was, and still is, the essential resource for Swarovski crystal, created stones and gemstone products.
More than that, it allowed this visionary man to generate clean electricity to fuel his machinery through small-scale hydro-power.
It is because water has been such a vital part of our story that we are aware of the increasingly complex global challenges that threaten the availability of clean, accessible water.
The United Nations’ sixth Sustainable Development Goal – water for all by 2030 – is something we are committed to; aiming to collectively address common challenges and find solutions.
In 2010, the UN recognised “the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right”.
Today, billions of people are living without safe water, whilst 95 per cent of a household’s water goes straight down the drain.
The challenges are multiple and complex, with the reasons people are left without safe water ranging vastly from marginalisation of groups in society to factors such as climate change.
We wouldn’t want to be part of the global water dialogue without being committed to responsibly managing our own water usage – through water-smart processes, monitoring and internal awareness issues as well as the transformational change that education can bring.
Today, water scarcity affects more than 40 per cent of the global population, one in nine people still live without clean water close to home, and nearly 1,000 children die every day due to preventable water and sanitation-related diseases.
This situation is unacceptable, but we have the power to create change through water education, conservation and stewardship.
This is why 20 years ago we established the Swarovski Waterschools – our flagship community investment programme, aimed to inspire present and future generations on the practice and understanding of sustainable water use, environmental stewardship and hygiene education; educating young people about the various issues and how to counteract these issues.
The work we do has ensured access to clean water at schools across the globe, ultimately seeking to empower children, families and schools everywhere to protect the world’s most precious resource.
The mistake people have made in the past is not taking the problem seriously. We believe that our solutions must be driven by collaboration – working together as individuals and as organisations to protect both people and planet.
That is why, alongside our own efforts as a business, we have also come together to support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the UN Global Compact and the World Economic Forum’s Compact for Responsive and Responsible Leadership.
This sense of collaboration and collective effort is also at the heart of our work with the Swarovski Foundation and the Swarovski Waterschool.
In areas facing extreme water challenges, such as Pune in India where we operate, we constantly strive to make the smartest use of water and nearly achieve a zero-water discharge target, in response to the extreme drought that has been hitting the region for years.
We now see the most significant risks and opportunities around our production sites and in some key regions in our supply chain where there is water pollution, water scarcity, and flooding.
The aim now is to better understand the fresh water challenges and the potential context-based and collaborative interventions we can make.
But awareness is not enough. We need to ensure that our people, sites and communities are also going above and beyond to protect the world’s water.
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We collaborate with our stakeholders to create initiatives that ensure fresh water is managed responsibly and water-related challenges are addressed around our production sites. Water for all is an essential part of the world we want to live in, and there is sufficient fresh water on the planet to achieve this.