A Standard for Water Ethics?
I'm in Portland, Oregon attending a conference of the International Society of Sustainability Professionals (IISP), and there is a lot of discussion about standards. "If you don't measure it, you can't improve it," advised Craig Moss of Social Accountability International (SAI). That's the idea behind the ISO standards, which earlier this year released ISO 26000 a comprehensive set of social and environmental indicators aimed at businesses that want to be considered green and socially responsible. An ISO water standard based on the concept of the "water foot print" is in the works, and an independent group, the Alliance for Water Stewardship, is working on a very detailed set of water standards that hopefully will cover indirect water impacts as well.
Can standards be developed for water ethics too? Most readers of this blog would likely agree that we need a different set of ethics guiding our water management, if we are to arrive at a sustainable way of doing things. But can we evaluate the ethics directly or must we rely on measures of physical outcomes (water quality, quantity, etc.)?
The experience of social accounting standards offers some encouragement that the murky world of ethics might also be amenable to measurement. SAI came up with a hugely intricate set of criteria to assess how workers are treated in their SA8000 standard. SAI offers training courses around the world to help companies assess how well they are doing in meeting these standards. Imagine training programs for water agencies that would help them assess whether their management practices are adequately supporting the cultural values of their stakeholders!
Some first steps towards this outcome are being taken through the newly launched Water Ethics Network, an initiative of the Water-Culture Institute, which helps connect people and organizations working on the values-dimension of water policies. A network today....and perhaps standards tomorrow?
Posted by Dave Groenfeldt at 22 Sep 2011, 9:52 PM 
Categories: business ethics, Water Ethics
Tags: Sustainability ISO 26000 Alliance for Water Stewardship water footprint Water Ethics Network SA8000
Categories: business ethics, Water Ethics
Tags: Sustainability ISO 26000 Alliance for Water Stewardship water footprint Water Ethics Network SA8000
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