By Eryn Stewart, Research Assistant, SEED
Alexis Morgan, Lead Advisor of the Water Stewardship & Standards at WWF, made a splash of a performance at the Students of the Water Institute- Graduate Section (SWIGS) event on June 23rd.
Alexis began by introducing the business case for Water Stewardship quite honestly, “Businesses have shareholders, and these are the people that they have responsibility to. They are not going to do things just because it is the right thing to do, it has to make business sense- plain and simple.” As a SEED student, this can be a hard pill to swallow- knowing that not every company is going to embrace sustainability like Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) or Interface. But if businesses are not in the sustainability mind set, how does one engage them effectively?
According to Morgan, one method is a bit of the stick instead of the carrot. Over the course of his talk, he underscored the importance of understanding where a company is at risk and then using that as a way to engage in productive discussions.Morgan identifies companies’ weak points by investigating their water related issues or in his words, "[he] finds out where water touches their world". Alexis has helped the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) build a global water stewardship standard. He worked with numerous Fortune 500 companies to address water risk in their operations and supply chains. “For companies, losing a water source could cost billions of dollars. The more case examples you can show of companies losing money over these issues, the more businesses will start to listen. They simply can’t ignore what will happen in 10-20 years”.
After the talk, I caught up with Arun Raj, a Sustainability Management student at SEED, who approached Morgan to speak at the event. “Alexis was a keynote speaker at the Canadian Water Summit, he is really passionate about what he does and his work ties in with my thesis work. I knew his enthusiasm would resonate with the SWIGS students. I also thought it would help prepare students for the realistic challenges they may face when speaking with businesses”
SWIGS aims to bring in a speaker each month to talk about water-related issues. If you are interested in learning more about SWIGS
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