Christina Copeland, Senior Manager, Water Security, CDP North America

CDP, formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project, runs the global disclosure system that enables companies, cities, states and regions to measure and manage their environmental impacts.  They have built the most comprehensive collection of self-reported environmental data in the world.  Their network of investors and purchasers, representing over $100 trillion, along with policy makers around the globe, use their data and insights to make better-informed decisions.  Through their offices and partners in 50 countries they have driven unprecedented levels of environmental disclosure. 

Participating entities respond to the CDP questionnaire annually.  The responses to the questionnaire are given a score which allows entities to track their progress, supports CDPs research, and serves as the backbone for ESG reporting.  The primary value of a disclosure platform such as CDP is that it enables policymakers, investors, and customers to hold entities accountable for their impact on the environment.  For example, asset owners, asset managers, banks and insurers can use the data to push forward the low-carbon transition to inform their investment decision making, engage with companies, reduce risks and identify opportunities.

CDP’s water program began in 2009, and questions focused on water formally entered the questionnaire in 2010.  At the launch of CDP’S Water Security program, CDP Water Disclosure Project, Paul Dickinson, Executive Chairman of CDP, famously said “Much of the impact of climate change will be felt through changing patterns of water availability, with shrinking glaciers and changing patterns of precipitation increasing the likelihood of drought and flood.  If climate change is the shark, then water is its teeth and it is an issue on which businesses need far greater levels of awareness and understanding.”

While all organizations use water to some extent for worker access to sanitation and hygiene through toilets and taps, CDP focuses on reaching out to companies for whom water is a material issue.  These typically include companies in metals and mining, oil and gas, electric generation, chemical production, apparel, agriculture, commodities, food, beverage, and tobacco.  In some cases, water is the key ingredient to their products, in others it is vital to their processes. 

An important difference between water and climate change as issues is that water typically has local impact whereas carbon has a global impact.  If you release carbon into the air, it contributes towards global warming, but if you release pollutants into a body of water, the impacts are typically only felt locally.  That’s why water issues are closely tied to human right to water issues and companies need to think carefully about the local context in which they operate.

What do you actually do all day? 

A lot of my work is centered around communication, things like preparing to speak at events, writing grant proposals, writing CDP reports, thinking about outreach that can increase our number of responders, and empowering my teammates to talk about water issues with their partners.

For example, our supply chain team partners with companies such as Walmart, Unilever, and L’Oréal to help them engage their supply chains.  It’s important for those companies to encourage their suppliers to respond to the water questionnaire because for certain companies the majority of their water risk is actually in their supply chain.  Think of an apparel company such as Nike, a lot of their water risk is with their cotton providers.  They could see a global price increase if they’re purchasing cotton from water stressed areas or if their providers are in an area experiencing drought or difficulties associated with nutrient runoff.  There’s also water quality risk around facilities that are using a lot of chemicals to dye fabric or reputational risk if any suppliers are polluting local water sources. 

Our water questionnaire is designed to guide organizations along a best practice journey.  The questions are designed to prompt better action or risk mitigation as an organization responds.  There are five main areas of focus in the questionnaire:

1. Measure and monitor
2. Risk and opportunities assessment
3. Additional measurement details for facilities at substantive water risk
4. Corporate governance
5. Targets and goals

The measure and monitor portion collects summary data of an organization’s water withdrawals, discharge and consumption to get an understanding of general overall water usage.  For the risk assessment portion, we offer webinars on how to use either the WRI Aqueduct Tool or the WWF Global Water Risk Filter.  These free online resources put an organization’s facility locations on a map and shows if they are in areas of water stress and the different risks associated with those locations.  For any facilities that are in areas of substantive water risk, we ask for more detailed information about their water use, such as withdrawal, discharge, consumption, any data they may have on their water recycling. 

In the corporate governance section, we ask things like: Is the board briefed on water regularly?  Does the company have a public facing water policy, and does it include things such as acknowledgment of the human right to water?  Is there any incentive in the company for good water management such as meeting targets?  Have they paid any penalties or fines related to water in the past reporting year?  Are their water related targets and goals only company-wide or do they also include targets at the local level such as a river basin or facility?  Do their reports discuss the linkages and tradeoffs between water and other environmental issues?  For example, if a company is trying to decrease water pollution, they may have an on-site water treatment center which uses energy and increases their emissions.  Or if a company uses products that lead to deforestation, acknowledging that deforestation activities often lead to poorer water quality. 

We use all of the responses we get to the questionnaire to compile reports, case studies and sector summaries that show what each sector is doing well and best practices for improvement.  All of these are available to the general public on our website. 

What are some of the key skills for success in this role? 

I’m a big fan of listening.  Listening is a crucial part of working with so many different stakeholders and building and managing so many different relationships. 

You also have to be a self-starter, you have to be willing to roll up your sleeves even if you don’t have all of the resources or answers.  Time management and task prioritization are also key. 

Specifically, here at CDP, you need to understand our scoring methodology.  This methodology is our tool for incentivizing change and action.  It’s important to understand what actions get more points and how that drives companies to behave differently. 

It’s generally very important to be able to convince people.  In the beginning of my career here I started out doing some selling of our services, but now I mostly focus on convincing people why they should care about water issues and disclose their water use. It’s often the same set of skills, and ties back to the importance of listening!

What is your favorite part of your job?

I love all of the amazing people that I get to work with internally and externally.  I’ve been with CDP for more than six years in several different roles.  When I started, I worked closely with a variety of companies externally, and now I focus on empowering internal teams.  I also really enjoy our engagement with our nonprofit partners such as the work we’re doing with WRI, The Nature Conservancy and others to develop a methodology for how to set a robust water target that accounts for local contextual issues.  It’s a really great community of people who enjoy collaboration. 

What is the hardest part of your job?

As an issue, climate change is so much farther ahead than water that it’s tough for water to get the attention it deserves.  Climate has the IPCC and a global agreement on the direction we need to move in and it’s an issue that people and corporations have been talking about for a very long time.  Water wasn’t even mentioned in the Paris Agreement. But, in the UNFCCC Secretariat’s synthesis of NDCs (Nationally Determined Contributions) – which captures the submissions of 161 parties – water emerges as the leading sector for adaptation action.  The thing is, climate change, water, and deforestation are totally connected. When you talk about climate change, you have to talk about water and deforestation, but that’s not really the case right now. 

What is your proudest professional achievement?

In 2016 I was named on the GreenBiz 30 under 30 list.  That was a really nice recognition and an honor to join this community of inspiring people.  It’s wonderful to see GreenBiz highlighting the people who are working in this space and making an impact at such an early point in their careers.  It’s been a great experience and continued to provide me with opportunities even today. 

What are the game changers in your world?  

Some of the biggest challenges when it comes to water issues are the laws and policy governing water.  Oftentimes the laws can be outdated and incentivize the wrong thing.  For example, the water laws in the Western US have a ‘use it or lose it’ approach.  Water users are pressured to use all of the water that’s allocated to them in a given year because if they don’t, they won’t be given the same allocation next year.  We need better water policy and governance around the world in general. 

Another important game changer is innovation.  Levi’s announced that they discovered that they can use lasers instead of chemicals to distress their denim.  That lowered the number of chemicals they used for processing jeans from the thousands to fewer than a dozen, which was a big win for water quality.  It also created all kinds of additional benefits such as shorter processing times, reduced hazards to employee health, and fewer expenses associated with safely storing, using, and disposing of chemicals.  The cattle industry is a huge driver of deforestation, carbon emissions and waterway pollution.  Innovations such as the impossible burger and other ways of providing protein for people can make a huge impact on that.  Hops is a water intensive crop, so if craft brewers instead use a new synthetic hops, it will really help protect their company against future water shortages. 

What was your path to this role? 

I studied environmental science and policy at Cornell and wanted to work in corporate sustainability after graduation.  Ratan Tata has a program that brings recent grads from around the world to India to work for Tata in a variety of jobs; Ratan also went to Cornell, so he expanded this program to include US grads the year I joined.  At the time, Tata Consultancy Services had a very small corporate sustainability consulting team and I was fortunate to get the one available position they had.  In India I learned both personally and professionally how important access to clean water was.  I was living in Mumbai where everyone always has a filter for their drinking water, but we didn’t have one on our shower.  After living there for only three months my roommates and I started losing our hair because the water was so polluted. 

I was assigned to a full-time project working for a cement company.  I got to go to cement plants all around India doing water accounting and risk assessments and wrote a massive report about what they were doing well and where they needed to improve.  Those experiences really helped me become passionate about water as a connector of people.  When you have access to clean water you have so many more opportunities in life.  It helped me start to see water as a massive tool for equality. 

I came back to the US and briefly worked for a New York nonprofit, The Lower East Side Ecology Center, focused on composting and recycling e-waste.  I loved that job but wanted to get back to working within the corporate space.  I started working for CDP as a generalist but always tried to work as much as I could on water.  About three years ago this position was created and I’ve been able to focus exclusively on water issues ever since. 

What’s your advice to someone interested in a role like this?

Think about which pathway you want to take to make your impact on water or sustainability.  You could go the consultant route, or work at an NGO, or for the government, or focus on the science, or work within a company.  Try to take every opportunity you can, you never know how it might open doors for you 2-3 years down the road.   

Build skills that are really relevant to this space – demonstrate your writing skills through publishing work or being active on social media.  Get data analysis experience so that you can turn data into meaningful content.  Don’t forget to focus on your people skills, learn how to convince people and build relationships. 

What are your favorite resources? 

There are some great NGO’s working on water issues right now – World Resources Institute (WRI), World Wildlife Foundation (WWF), the Nature Conservancy, the Pacific Institute, and Ceres.

Circle of Blue is an amazing website for water news.  They put out a weekly newsletter.

Josh’s Water Jobs is fantastic for jobs focused on water.

Our industry’s biggest conference is World Water Week, it’s always held the last week in August in Stockholm, Sweden and is usually attended by two to three thousand people from all over the world.  You can also look for water tracks in most major sustainability conferences. 

Blue Tech Research is a group that puts on water conferences focused specifically on innovations and tech for water solutions. 

The Atlantic Water Summit was a joint event put on by the magazine The Atlantic and WWF.  It was more focused on the general public and how they interact with water issues.  They may be doing more of them in the future. 

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goal number 6 (Clean Water for All) is a bit like the water world’s version of the Paris Agreement.  All of the countries in the U.N. have agreed to meet hundreds of indicators under the SDGs by 2030 and there are a lot of great reports out there around SDG 6 and global progress. 

UNESCO put out a report called the SDG 6 Synthesis Report 2018 that gave an excellent state of the world’s progress on SDG 6, and included some CDP Water data.

UN Water is the secretariat for all UN groups on water. 

Principles of Responsible Investment (PRI) is a membership for investors in responsible investing and has a water component to it.   

Who (or what) is your sustainability hero?  

National Geographic.  They’ve done such an incredible job of getting people to understand and care for the earth just through their documentation such as Planet Earth and Blue Planet. 

I also grew up loving Jane Goodall, I love how she and National Geographic are so effective at teaching the importance of nature to the general public and bringing people into the environmental movement.