Target 6.4: Water-use efficiency and sustainable withdrawals
By 2030, substantially increase water-use efficiency across all sectors and ensure sustainable withdrawals and supply of freshwater to address water scarcity and substantially reduce the number of people suffering from water scarcity
Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
Why shareholder democracy is necessary
Agriculture takes about 72 percent of global freshwater withdrawals, and 60 percent of irrigated agriculture already faces extremely high water stress. The sectors that decide water-use efficiency are therefore farming and its corporate suppliers and buyers. Beverage, mining, semiconductor, data-center and apparel firms with large direct withdrawals matter too. Suppose every listed company set basin-level withdrawal limits, required efficient irrigation from growers, priced water risk into sourcing and lobbied for sustainable allocation rules. The corporate and supply-chain share of withdrawals would then fall. Ceres' Valuing Water Finance Initiative already asks 71 companies not to harm availability in water-scarce basins. Its 2025 benchmark, though, finds only half target high-risk areas. Joint investor letters supported by the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, signed by more than 60 investors managing 2.6 trillion dollars, urged 15 food and beverage companies to disclose and better manage their water risks. What corporate change cannot reach is the allocation system itself. Governments grant water rights, subsidize irrigation and energy for pumping, and manage reservoirs and groundwater. Most farms drawing that water are small and unlisted, and in 2022 some 35 countries, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa, had under 1 percent of their cultivated land irrigated at all. Owners supply a necessary input and can end corporate resistance to allocation reform. Public water governance and household and smallholder behavior must also change for the outcome to arrive.
How this was scoredNecessary
Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
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
- FAO: 2025 AQUASTAT Water Data, UN-Water, 2026-01-12
- 25 Countries, Housing One-quarter of the Population, Face Extremely High Water Stress, World Resources Institute, 2023-08-16
- Valuing Water Finance Initiative, Ceres, n.d. (accessed 2026-08)
- 2025 Valuing Water Finance Initiative Benchmark, Ceres, 2025
- Leading Global Investors Urge Food and Beverage Companies to Better Manage Water Risks, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, 2015-08-19
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Supported Ceres-coordinated letters from more than 60 investors managing 2.6 trillion dollars asking 15 food and beverage companies to disclose water risk to CDP and improve water risk management.
Coordinated the 2015 investor letters on water risk to 15 food and beverage companies and the 2019 investor letters asking six fast food companies to set targets on the freshwater impacts of meat and dairy supply chains.
3 campaigns on record
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.
Adopt a supplier policy requiring animal protein suppliers to report and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and freshwater impacts, and publish quantitative time-bound targets for the freshwater impacts of meat and dairy supply chains.
Result: not stated in source
Disclose water risk information through the CDP Water Questionnaire and improve water risk management practices.
Result: not stated in source
Related subjects on other maps
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 UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.