Responding to investors' calls for enhanced guidance on managing water risks, Ceres has released the Investor Water Toolkit, a web resource dedicated to helping investors evaluate and understand water risks in their investment portfolios.
The toolkit, which was launched Dec. 5 on Ceres' website, is intended to be a "one-stop shop" for information and analysis on water risks, said Monika Freyman, director, investor engagement, water, at Ceres in Boston.
More than 40 global institutional investors representing $6 trillion in assets helped produce the toolkit, which includes case studies by investors that have integrated water risks into their investment decisions, recommendations for analyzing water risks by asset class, a summary of existing data on corporate water risks, and an analysis of water risks in four major equity indexes.
Ms. Freyman said work on the toolkit began two years ago after Ceres heard from investors that water risks were becoming a major area of concern. But those investors felt hampered from acting because of a lack of data and information on how to integrate water risks into their investment portfolios, she said.
"For the past several years, the World Economic Forum has ranked water as a top global risk, due to competition for dwindling resources, climate change and weak governance," Ceres said in a news release on the toolkit's launch. "The increasingly extreme nature of water-related weather events, and the tendency for local communities to react swiftly to existing or perceived corporate impacts on water supplies, drive the immediacy of water risks."
The toolkit can be accessed on Ceres' website.
