The project is funded by the European Commission’s SWITCH-Asia Programme, will be led by WWF-Pakistan, and will involve WWF- UK, the Cleaner Production Institute as partners, and the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority and Lahore Chambers of Commerce and Industry as associates. The project has two main components. Firstly, the project will encourage the adoption of best practice approaches to water management within the operations of SMEs, through direct engagement, to address the impacts of their operations. Secondly, it will bring SMEs into a new collective action water stewardship partnership that operates at a city level. The water stewardship partnership will enable SMEs, through the project associates (Chambers of Commerce and Industry (CCI) and Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (SMEDA)) and other SME representative bodies to engage with water policymakers and institutions in order to encourage interventions that reduce their collective water risk. The specific stated objective of the project is that: By 2015, 300 processing and manufacturing SMEs in the target area have enhanced understanding of Better Water Management Practices (BWMPs), 75 high water using SMEs have increased water management capacity, and 25 SMEs are implementing BWMPs, supported by a multi-stakeholder city-level water partnership. The objective of the project reflects the two levels of water management necessary to be a good water steward and two components of the project: addressing operational impacts on water through water efficiency and meeting effluent quality standards, and contributing to the sustainable management of the shared water resources that businesses and the community depend on. By the completion of the project, there will be a demonstrable improvement in the environmental performance of a number of SMEs with respect to water. These SMEs will act as case studies and provide an evidence base for the wider dissemination of BWMPs to other SMEs. In parallel with this direct engagement with SMEs, the multi-stakeholder water stewardship partnership will support wider interventions at the policy level and at the catchment/basin scale that reduce water risks for the city as a whole. Over the duration of the project, the partners will develop the evidence base needed for the water stewardship partnership to generate support from the industrial sector for addressing collective water risks, identify and prioritize key risks and identify priority risk mitigation activities. This will be achieved through activities such as demonstrating the ‘business case’ for SMEs to engage in wider water issues beyond their own operations, completing a study on the value of water in the economy, and conducting a situation analysis. By the end of the project, these activities of the water stewardship partnership will have gathered the support of a range of motivated partners and established an agreed work plan to take into the next phase of the work. Given experience elsewhere, it is not envisaged that the water stewardship partnership will implement significant risk mitigation activities over the course of the project as the full duration of the project will be required to develop the evidence base, establish a functioning partnership with a common vision and jointly agreed on objectives.

Project Results

1 Reduced water use and pollutant load: By 2015, 25 high water using SMEs in Lahore have reduced their water use by at least 15% and pollution load by 15%, improving the sustainability of production at enterprise level. These SMEs will act as case studies to build a business case for further engagement of other SMEs 2 Capacity building: By 2015, 75 cross-sectoral high water using SMEs and associated business intermediaries have increased capacity to adopt or support more sustainable water management practices 3 Creating broad awareness for water stewardship: By 2015, further 300 SMEs have enhanced understanding and knowledge of the impacts of unsustainable water use and wider community level benefits of better water stewardship. 4 Multi-stakeholder city-wide partnership: By 2015, a multi-stakeholder city-wide water stewardship partnership, comprising SMEs, public authorities, Ravi Commission, supporting institutions and MNCs is supporting water sustainable production and consumption and facilitating better water governance 5 Policy engagement and lesson sharing: By 2015, model replication is supported by provincial and national government and lessons are shared widely with policymakers and regionally through the Switch Asia Network Facility