Within WWF’s Water Stewardship work, Food & Beverage is a grouping that includes any company that is primarily involved in the production of food or beverage. In addition, many retailers also touch in this space and accordingly, our work with the retail sector is often also tied into our work on Food & Beverage. 

According to FAO, agriculture is estimated to withdraw 70% of the world’s water, arguably making it both the largest direct (i.e., quantitative water use) and indirect (i.e., pollutant loading) source of impacts on the world’s freshwater resources. Moreover, for the sector, water is arguably the most critical dependency as it is not only core to all agriculture, but also represents a key limiting factor for production along with nutrients and insects.  Further, due to the sector’s critical role in food security for most countries, the sector can have significant influence on the political decision making when it comes to water allocations and regulations.

WWF has been working with the food and beverage sector on water challenges for decades. Our transformational work has ranged from supporting partners to assess how water risk is material to their operations, to shaping credible water strategies with robust water targets. WWF also supports partners in implementing investments (both grant-based and bankable) in basin landscapes in order to advance both WWF and our partners interests. This may focus on working with suppliers (e.g., training, bankable investment evaluation) all the way to surrounding communities and natural areas (e.g., restoration efforts and financing nature-based solutions). Lastly, WWF supports our corporate partners in advocacy activities at various levels from sectoral to basin governance to consumer mobilization. WWF enables leading companies to engage with us brand-to-brand, mobilizing positive change from global to local.

Notable WWF corporate partnerships within this sector include:

• Alpro
• Anheuser-Busch (AB) InBev
• Carlsberg Group
• Coop
• Edeka
• Tchibo