Valuing Water: Copperleaf Celebrates World Water Day

March 22nd is World Water Day, an annual event coordinated by UN Water. World Water Day was created to advocate for the sustainable management of freshwater resources, take action to tackle the global water crisis, and raise awareness of the 2.2. billion people living without access to safe water. A core focus of World Water Day is to support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 of ensuring access to water and sanitation for all by 2030.

This year’s theme is “valuing water”. The value of water is about much more than its price—water has enormous and complex value for our households, food, culture, health, education, economics, and the integrity of our natural environment.

At Copperleaf^®, we place value at the heart of our approach to decision making. In partnership with our clients, we develop value frameworks that reflect how an organization sees value in alignment with its strategic objectives. The Copperleaf Value Framework enables clients to objectively compare all proposed investment ideas on a common economic scale. It also promotes transparency and improves consistency in the evaluation of all asset lifecycle costs and benefits of investment options.

Copperleaf has been working with Anglian Water since 2015. Together, we have developed a comprehensive value framework that supports investment decision making across the entire organization. The Anglian Water Value Framework contains a set of value models and value measures that track factors related to service levels, risk categories, benefits, and financial impacts—including factors influencing stewardship and sustainability. Anglian Water has mapped the activities and target outcomes from its 5-year Business Plan to the SDGs. These targeted outcomes and associated performance commitments (e.g. “flourishing environment”, “safe, clean water”, “supply meets demand”, “a smaller footprint”, etc.) form a key part of its value framework.

Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)	Example SDG Target	Anglian Water Value Framework Examples
	6.5 By 2030, implement integrated water resources management at all levels	Target Outcome: Supply Meets Demand Example value measures within the Copperleaf Value Framework: Leakage Network supply
	9.1 Develop quality, reliable, sustainable and resilient infrastructure, including regional and transborder infrastructure, to support economic development and human well-being, with a focus on affordable and equitable access for all	Target Outcome: Resilient Business Example value measures within the Copperleaf Value Framework: Percentage of population supplied by a single supply system Risk of severe restrictions in a drought Risk of sewer flooding in a storm
	13.2 Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning	Target Outcome: A Smaller Footprint Example value measures within the Copperleaf Value Framework: Operational carbon Capital carbon

If you’d like to find out more about developing a value framework to support your Asset Investment Planning and Management (AIPM) processes, I would be delighted to hear from you.

To learn more about continuous investment optimization and planning at Anglian Water, please read our case study.  Anglian Water’s annual report can be found here.