Water

In shortfall: one in four people, 2.1 billion globally, still lacked safely managed drinking water in 2024 per the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme.

Helpful Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.

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Why shareholder democracy is helpful

Safe drinking water is overwhelmingly a public-provision problem. Private operators serve only about 10 percent of the world's population. The World Bank puts the cost of reaching the water and sanitation targets near 114 billion dollars a year, roughly three times current spending. WHO identifies microbial contamination from inadequate sanitation, not industrial chemicals, as the greatest risk to drinking-water safety. Corporate conduct matters most in rich countries, where chemical makers' PFAS discharges contaminate supplies. The American Chemistry Council lobbied against the EPA's PFAS drinking-water standard before the 2026 rollback of limits, which EWG attributes to chemical industry and water utility pressure. Investor organization has begun here as well. The Ceres-led Valuing Water Finance Initiative engages 71 companies with large water footprints to value and act on water as a financial risk. The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility and Ceres coordinated 45 investors asking Cargill, JBS, Perdue and Smithfield to adopt water stewardship policies, citing roughly 146 million pounds of toxic discharges to U.S. waterways over five years. If every listed utility, chemical producer, bank and engineering firm made universal safe water a core objective and lobbied for treatment funding, contamination in wealthy markets would fall. Finance would loosen at the margin. The unserved, however, live mostly where utilities are municipal or absent and households invest in their own supply. Governments and donors carry the outcome, and owners help at the margin.

How this was scoredHelpful

Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.

We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.

Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.

Sources

What civil society organizations are helping owners on this

Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility☆ Followcoordinator

Co-organised with Ceres a letter from 45 institutional investors asking the four largest meat producers to assess water pollution across their operations and feed supply chains and to adopt water stewardship policies.

Leading Investors Press Meat Producers to Tackle Water Pollution Risks, Ceres (Feeding Ourselves Thirsty), 2016-11

Ceres☆ Followcoordinator

Co-organised the same 45 investor letter and runs the Feeding Ourselves Thirsty programme that benchmarks food company water management for investors.

Leading Investors Press Meat Producers to Tackle Water Pollution Risks, Ceres (Feeding Ourselves Thirsty), 2016-11

1 campaign on record

Ceres at Domino's Pizza Inc☆ Follow2022 · engagement

Recognize water as a financial risk and meet six corporate expectations covering water-quantity management, water-quality protection, ecosystem protection, sanitation access, board oversight, and responsible water-related public policy engagement, by 2030.

With Mercy Investment Services, other institutional investor signatories

Result: not a proxy vote; an ongoing multi-year engagement and annual benchmarking effort

Chipotle and Domino's Pizza are cited by Mercy Investment Services as companies that had already made commitments under the initiative as of 2023; Ceres publishes an annual benchmark tracking company progress.

Valuing Water Finance Initiative, Ceres

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Doughnut Economics, every item scored for how far it depends on owners voting their values, with the reasoning and the sources behind each rating.

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How this rating was made

Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.

Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.

The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is Doughnut Economics's, and we link to their original.

How we score dependency, in full.