Corporate water stewardship in desalination: a content analysis of CSR reports

Keywords: desalination, corporate social responsibility, stakeholder perspective, water industry, water stewardship
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 9

Abstract

Corporate takes a critical role in sustainable urban water management. However, water stewardship is still weak in most businesses, even water-intensive industries, and businesses operating in high water stress areas. To understand water stewardship of the water-intensive industry, we investigate the desalination industry. While desalination is seen as a major technical intervention to address the current challenges on freshwater, the sustainability issues of desalination are not much discussed. To fill this gap, this research examines the perspective of major desalination corporations on sustainability via corporate social responsibility (CSR) report. As CSR report aims to communicate their CSR effort with their stakeholder, it can be a lens for understanding their perspective on sustainability. For analysis, we collected CSR reports from twelve companies in the top desalination plant suppliers and conducted the content analysis. Based on the definition of water stewardship, this paper examines their perspective on "socially equitable", "environmental sustainability", and "economically beneficial" on their awareness and action. The result showed that they had good awareness but little action. In addition, we discovered they consider the sustainability of supply chain limited and their current action is not enough for urban sustainability transition as they stay on the business as usual and rely on technological innovation. This research will contribute to the desalination industry for establishing management strategies for a sustainability transition. In addition, this paper provides a chance to discuss the role of corporate sustainability beyond privatization and commercialization.