In an effort to reduce their water footprint, food & drink companies in the UK came together to join the water roadmap, which aims to establish 20 water stewardship projects by 2030 with at-risk catchments identified as being key sourcing areas for UK food & drink. The aim of this project was to better understand and reduce! the negative impacts of freshwater abstraction and use for the UK food & drink companies on the ecosystems and people in areas where the water is sourced.
In the summer of 2022, Fresh Thoughts Consulting checked all existing water stewardship projects linked to the Water Roadmap. This was based on the previous work of the “The Rivers Trust” in the UK and the WWF overseas, which helped establish an annual independent project review process that Fresh Thoughts had also worked on during the previous year. The review included reviewing all reports and assessing the progress on the key performance indicators (KPIs) as well as checking potential financing gaps and conducting interviews with the project leads. The findings were then reported to the water supervisory panel and summarised.
The project was commissioned by the UK-based climate action NGO WRAP.