Today at the Stockholm International Water Institute's annual World Water Week, PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP) announced the company's latest Water Report and unveiled Hydro-BID, a ground-breaking data management and modeling tool developed in partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) that estimates the availability of freshwater in water-scarce regions throughout Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).
The IDB's Hydro-BID is an open-source modeling tool that has the potential to forecast water availability and supply in the LAC region under virtually any climate, population and land use scenario. To date, the tool has projected water supplies in Brazil, Peru, Haiti and Argentina, and is expected to impact more than three million people across the LAC region by 2017.
PepsiCo Foundation's $5 Million grant to IDB's AquaFund is contributing to fund pilot projects, in partnership with the governments of Switzerland and Austria, in five countries and will reach approximately 500,000 beneficiaries by the end of 2015. While some projects are aimed to improve access to safe water and sanitation services for scattered communities in extreme poverty, other projects like Hydro-BID present an unparalleled effort to develop a suite of watershed modeling tools that could be applied worldwide.
In addition to aiding countries with water budgeting and water-resource planning, Hydro-BID helps policymakers and communities prepare for floods and droughts. "Contrary to popular belief, floods and droughts are foreseeable phenomena that governments and communities can prepare for," said Dr. Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm, Hydrologist and Water Resources Engineer at IDB. "Not only will Hydro-BID help communities prepare for natural disasters, but it will also help public utility and water managers get a better handle on water planning and budgets. Through the support of partners like the PepsiCo Foundation, the IDB is able to develop and implement innovative solutions and approaches like Hydro-BID that will forecast water availability, aid infrastructure projects, and drive local and regional economic goals."
As a global food and beverage company dependent on water-intensive agricultural activities, PepsiCo seeks to drive water efficiency in its operations and throughout its supply chain, as part of the company's public commitment to help protect and conserve global water supplies. In fact, water stewardship is a critical component of PepsiCo's approach to sustainable business development—what it calls "Performance with Purpose"—and one way the company strives to "future-proof" the business in today's competitive, resource-scarce world.
"Water is a critical global resource and few challenges are as significant as the global water crisis," said Dan Bena, Senior Director, Sustainable Development and Operations Outreach at PepsiCo. "Water is also a central part of our business, and we know that we need to be water stewards in order to sustain our business and the communities of which we are a part."
Click picture to download Pepsico's 2014 water report
