Deepa washes clothes for middle class families in a river in southern India. Umar owns a restaurant near a bus terminal in Pakistan.

Mario washes fruit for a banana company in Honduras.

What do these individuals have in common?
Their livelihoods depend upon access to water. Without water, Make could not sell her ice, Deepa would have no means of washing clothes, Umar could not sell food, and Mario would not have his job with the banana company.

Businesses demand water.
All types of business require water to produce their products and offer their services.

Water is necessary for the development of informal home businesses. Water is essential for personal enterprises such as vegetable gardens, food confection, and laundry services. In many cases, these tiny businesses have no formal right to the water they use and are at the mercy of larger economic and political players for their water usage. For example, Deepa washes clothing in a local river that is increasingly being polluted with sewage and agricultural runoff. She can do little to protect the precious resource that her job depends upon.

Water is also important for small and medium businesses such as Umar’s restaurant in Pakistan. Umar relies on clean water to provide his customers with safe food and sanitary conditions. The price of the water is a major factor affecting his profits. When the city water supply runs dry, he has to pay a tanker to bring in extra water. Having to do this too much could encourage him to use too little water, cutting corners on safe food preparation.

Water is essential to large corporations. Big national and international companies rely on a consistent water supply to process their products. If the Honduran government cannot ensure a constant water supply or if it raises water usage prices for the banana company, the company may decide to move, leaving Mario without a job.

Clean water is becoming increasingly valuable and hard to come by as businesses demand more and more of it. The growing scarcity of water raises difficult questions for developing countries: Water is essential for economic development, so who should have priority in obtaining it? Should the government support Make Sibambo’s one-woman ice business by offering a cheap hook-up and subsidized water rates? Should the government demonstrate preference for the multinational banana company, which provides jobs for hundreds? Who will pay the real cost for water services?

Businesses affect the water supply.
Make’s refrigerator breaks, but she lacks the means to repair it or remove the equipment from her property, which is adjacent to a stream. She discards the broken refrigerator in her back yard, where it begins to decompose.

Deepa washes clothes with a phosphate-based detergent. The detergent washes downstream, where another village obtains its drinking water. Umar’s restaurant is one of many local businesses that use a lot of water. In the middle of the day the town’s water supply often runs dry, leaving residents without drinking water.

Mario uses almost fifteen kilos of water to wash one kilo of bananas. He notices that the runoff is deposited into a nearby river that feeds into the ocean. He wonders how this pesticide-and-fertilizer-laden water affects the fishing industry in his coastal hometown.

Many business endeavors potentially harm the water supply. Who should regulate them, and how? At what point should a business be held responsible for polluting? Should Deepa be charged, or should only the multinational banana company be held accountable?

Business must be on board if countries are to have safe water.
According to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, global water use can be divided into three major areas: about 70 percent is put to agricultural use; 20 percent is used by industries; and 10 percent is consumed by households. Therefore, 90 percent of water use (not taking into account subsistence farming) could be classified as being used for business purposes.

How businesses use water is the single most important factor in influencing the availability and condition of the world’s freshwater resources. If the world’s population is to have access to safe water, business at all levels—from home enterprises to multinational corporations—must be on board in making it a priority.