South African Breweries Ltd (SAB Ltd), WWF South Africa and GIZ have come together to help tackle the issue of Water Scarcity in South Africa. The organizations share the common objective of developing strategic responses to future water risks faced by SAB Ltd, as well as other users. They also have the ambition of improving long-term water sustainability at local, national, and transboundary river-basin levels. To understand the water risks facing SAB Ltd’s business, the partnership based its work on SAB’s water footprint assessment – essentially an assessment of the amount of water consumed by different parts of the business’s production process. This identified several potential water risks for SAB Ltd, two of which were prioritised for tackling through collective action: 1) Addressing the risk of water scarcity to SAB Ltd’s agricultural supply chain: this will be done by ensuring water availability to hop farms located in the Gouritz water catchment, located in the Southern Cape, an action that will also benefit other water users in the catchment. 2) Addressing risks relating to water quality at SAB Ltd’s brewery at Polokwane: this will be done by upgrading the municipal wastewater treatment works which the brewery currently uses. The sewage works is under pressure to treat the brewery’s effluent to expected standards and this presents a reputation risk to SAB Ltd as well as pollution risks to users downstream.

Project Results

The Water Futures Partnership works to reduce water risks shared by communities, ecosystems and businesses. By facilitating collective local action between the the public, private and civil society sectors to address some of the most pressing water issues, Water Futures helps to find local solutions to improve the water security of all stakeholders.