In a challenging global context, where water is becoming the most strategic resource of the 21st century, new leaders are emerging with a unique opportunity to lead the shift toward water management.
When we analyze the current global climate crisis, we must identify the three key aspects concerning water: scarcity, quality, and access to it.
- Water Scarcity: This phenomenon occurs when the demand for water exceeds the amount available in a sustainable way. Scarcity can be physical, as in regions where water sources are limited, or economic, where water exists but the resources to access water are not available. This is such an important point that, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), 2.2 billion people lack access to safely managed drinking water services, representing 25% of the global population.
- Water Quality: Over the years, pollution has deteriorated the quality of water in many regions. Toxic substances from industries, agriculture, and inadequate treatment have contaminated rivers, lakes, and aquifers, affecting both human health and ecosystems.
- Access to Water: Despite water being an abundant resource, many communities, especially in rural and underdeveloped areas, lack proper access to clean drinking water to meet their basic hygiene and consumption needs. In this case, the development of adequate infrastructure is a crucial factor that could make the difference. In fact, the World Health Organization states that improving water, sanitation, and hygiene conditions could save 1.4 million people annually (WHO, 2023).
As time passes and these challenges intensify, new sustainability leaders have appeared and strategies for innovative governance based on sustainability have been developed. Those aim to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, which promotes a comprehensive, equitable, efficient and sustainable water management, key to social, environmental and economic development.
Some of the major pillars of innovative governance are transparency and impact measurement. To fulfill this, globally recognized methodologies, such as Volumetric Water Benefit Accounting (VWBA), are used to quantify water benefits in volumetric terms. (If you're not familiar with VWBA, you can read more about it here.)
Types of Activities to Promote Water Sustainability
Within the framework of water sustainability, there are various activities designed to address the mentioned challenges effectively. They can be grouped broadly into three categories: WASH projects and Replenishment projects.
- WASH projects (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) focus on improving access to safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene to enhance quality of life in vulnerable communities.
- Water stewardship projects have an ecosystem-centered approach. They focus on conserving ecosystems, improving water management, and ensuring appropriate water use to restore and sustain water resources.
- Governance projects strengthen the institutional and collaborative frameworks that enable transparent, inclusive, and data-informed water management. They create the conditions for long-term impact by aligning efforts across sectors and ensuring accountability in water use and sustainability goals.
Here are the main types of activities according to the Volumetric Water Benefit Accounting (VWBA) which are included in the three above-mentioned project characteristics:
- Water Access: These involve the construction or rehabilitation of infrastructure to provide reliable access to drinking water, including wells, water treatment systems, and rainwater harvesting. These measures ensure that communities can depend on clean, accessible water. This is the most frequent type of initiative for WASH projects.
- Water Supply Reliability: These activities aim to ensure a consistent and adequate water supply by improving irrigation systems, repairing leaks, enhancing water reuse, and securing new water sources for both agricultural and urban needs.
- Land conservation and restoration: These initiatives are focused on protecting land from degradation and promoting sustainable livelihoods. It includes efforts like reforestation, grassland restoration, and the removal of invasive species to restore land and improve vegetation.
- Aquatic Habitat Restoration: This category focuses on restoring aquatic ecosystems through activities that protect and enhance water bodies and surrounding habitats. It includes actions such as wetland protection, in-stream barrier removal, dam reoperation, and reestablishing floodplain connections to improve biodiversity and water flow.
- Water Quality: This category focuses on practices that maintain or improve the quality of water, such as stormwater management, wastewater treatment, and conservation practices. Methods like green infrastructure, artificial wetland establishment, and agrochemical management help reduce pollution and protect water quality.
- Water Governance: coordinating efforts for better public water management, improving water policies, and creating mechanisms that ensure the long-term health of water catchments are some activities that promote collaboration among stakeholders and create an enabling environment to develop sustainable policies.
- Catalytic Activities: They support long-term success of water stewardship by laying the groundwork for future actions. It involves data collection, monitoring, hydrological modeling, and the development of management plans to improve decision-making, raise awareness, and promote collective action to address water challenges.
Water stewardship projects connect deeply with some of the activities mentioned above such as land conservation and restoration, because protecting and rehabilitating land helps maintain soil health and natural water infiltration. They enhance water supply reliability by optimizing irrigation and water management to ensure a consistent and efficient supply. Replenishment projects also improve water quality by reducing pollution and managing runoff through sustainable and regenerative practices. Finally, they support aquatic habitat restoration by revitalizing streams, wetlands, and floodplains, which are essential for biodiversity and ecosystem resilience.
At Agrow, we prioritize replenishment projects because they foster collaboration among corporations, farmers, and Agrow’s AI-powered irrigation technology to optimize water use and restore natural cycles. This integrated approach delivers measurable benefits, supporting biodiversity, improving water quality, and enhancing water availability for people and ecosystems.
Collective Collaboration: Key to Success
Due to the diverse nature of the actions required to address water issues, it is complex for a single entity to cover all aspects of the process, from risk analysis to calculating the savings generated by each type of activity.
Currently, in the agricultural field, advanced technologies based on AI are being developed to carry out these practices — irrigation platforms to optimize water use in agriculture and implement replenishment projects is a prime example.
But in addition to the development of technologies that enable these processes, it is also essential to have the commitment of farmers, NGOs and governmental entities who play a key role due to their ability to generate significant changes in water availability, as well as corporations, which have global influence and can make a difference in managing this vital resource.
For this reason, collaboration is indispensable for implementing water sustainability projects. In the case of agricultural solutions, farmers, corporations, and technology platforms that implement these activities must work together to mitigate water stress, which affects approximately 25% of the global population.
Agrow's Role: Experts in Water Replenishment
At Agrow, we understand the immense potential that corporations and farmers, linked by technology, have to generate meaningful changes in the availability of water on the planet. We know their commitment can make a life-changing difference for millions of people.
Convinced of the importance of taking action in this regard, we have become experts in water replenishment projects, helping the agricultural sector optimize its water use in irrigation and certifying the water replenishment of corporations through innovative AI-based technological solutions.
Our mission is clear: to empower companies in leading the way towards water sustainability, bringing technology and agriculture together to create real, measurable change.
Individually, we lead the way in irrigation innovation. Together, we are limitless change agents reinventing water sustainability.