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The research objectives of this chapter are threefold. First, we explore what is the current status of corporate water accounting tools and methodologies. Second, we develop a framework for analyzing corporate water accounting and reporting. Third, we investigate what French CAC 40 companies account for and report in relations to the water challenge.

We collected annual and sustainability reports from all CAC 40 companies as well as their water Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) responses when available. We also collected all publically available corporate water accounting methodologies to assess the international water accounting field. We coded the data according to our designed framework via qualitative data analysis software.

Although water is seen as equally important to climate change (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), 2009), French multinationals have a very immature reporting on this topic. Most still do not report to the water disclosure questionnaire of CDP in 2014 and rely on basic figures such as global water consumption. We analyzed the multiple water accounting, reporting, and risk assessment frameworks that have mushroomed since 2000, and question the impact of this fragmented field on the maturity of the water performance reporting by French companies.

The developed framework for analysis of water reporting can be used for sustainability teaching at university level.

We developed the first comprehensive analytical framework for water corporate reporting assessment. Moreover, this research is the first comprehensive study of water reporting in Europe. We therefore contribute to extend our comprehension of corporate maturity in water stewardship and water performance reporting.

The purpose of the chapter is to develop the pragmatic logical framework for safeguarding successful Public–Private Partnership (PPP) implementations in water supply in emerging markets. The case analysis related to the research question of how efficacy of PPP implementations could be improved revealed considerable shortfalls within the current modus operandi. The research was limited to urban water utilities of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan with implications most relevant for emerging markets conditions. The proposed logical framework could improve efficacy and sustainability of PPP undertakings in water supply in developing countries. The framework is centred on the simple question: ‘What would constitute a meaningful quid pro quo within the envisioned PPP arrangement to eligible counterparts?’ The framework would necessitate properly answering many complex and uncomfortable questions of PPP arrangements, especially in terms of performance management, public accountability and underlying benefits to the parties. PPP in water utilities is a popular notion amongst governments and the international financial institutions (IFIs). PPP is commonly considered to be a tool for providing an optimal solution to chronic problems of water utilities in terms of underperformance and underinvestment. In-spite of massive efforts of modernization and institutional upgrade of the water utilities in Central Asia, success rate with PPP modalities is still rather low.

As demands on global water resources intensify, battles are emerging over water ownership and governance. Evidence to support opposing views is scarce, however, especially with respect to the impact of ownership on water quality. Using a data set of 168,823 municipal water systems in the United States from 2010 to 2014, we find evidence that stakeholder attention moderates the effect of ownership on compliance with drinking water quality standards. Private systems’ compliance improves more rapidly with system size, consistent with greater social movement pressure, while public systems’ compliance improves more rapidly with local educational attainment, consistent with greater responsiveness to stakeholder attention and concern.

We detail the evolution of open interaction coding schemes that have long been used to capture behavioral indicators of the power and prestige order in status characteristics research. Although the theoretical variables ostensibly measured with these methods are few and explicit, the implementation of open interaction coding is not standardized and different projects have keyed on different specific behaviors. We argue that open interaction coding could benefit from the utilization of a more refined and standardized coding scheme. We offer precise operational definitions and some illustrations from our own recent projects in hopes of fostering more transparency in future research.

In this chapter the potential to use water-based Trombe walls to provide heated water for building applications during the summer months is investigated. Design Builder software is used to model a simple single-story building with a south-facing Trombe wall. The effects of using different thermal storage mediums within the Trombe wall on building heating loads during the winter and building cooling loads during the summer are modeled. The amount of thermal energy stored and temperature of water within the thermal storage medium during hot weather conditions were also simulated. On a sunny day on Toronto, Canada, the average temperature of the water in a Trombe wall integrated into a single-story building can reach ∼57°C, which is high enough to provide for the main hot water usages in buildings. Furthermore, the amount of water heated is three times greater than that required in an average household in Canada. The results from this work suggest that water-based Trombe walls have great potential to enhance the flexibility and utility of Trombe walls by providing heated water for building applications during summer months, without compromising performance during winter months.

In decades since the Rio Summit, freshwater has become an increasingly prominent issue in the global arena and attention has turned to the role of the corporate sector. Various (predominantly voluntary) corporate water accounting standards currently exist, from water-related components in wide-ranging sustainability standards such as the Global Reporting Initiative through to standards specifically focused on water and/or a particular industry. While academic research on adoption of these standards is sparse, initial findings reveal generally poor water reporting in terms of both quality and quantity. In future, the major areas where reporting (and standards) could be improved are the provision of site-level water information and the assessment of water risk throughout the supply chain.