Water Footprint
Darwin's Water Focus view: total water footprint, blue-water traceability, and basin-level overexploitation exposure aligned with SBTN Freshwater.
Water footprint
Darwin's Water Focus is a funnel-based view that gives a structured picture of a company's water footprint and its exposure to basin-level overexploitation, aligned with the SBTN Freshwater framework. Water volumes come from the platform's water pressure pipeline (ecoinvent, Agribalyse).
Version 1 focuses on blue water. Green and grey water are planned for a future version.
Level 1 — Total water overview
The entry point of the funnel: the total freshwater volume (m³), split two ways.
- By water type — blue water (surface + groundwater withdrawals). Green water (rainwater) and grey water (dilution of pollutants) are planned for a later version.
- By scope — direct operations, upstream value chain, downstream value chain.
Which volume is counted. Withdrawal and consumption are nested — the water a site consumes is part of the water it withdraws — so the two are never added. For each entity, scope and commodity origin, Darwin counts the declared withdrawal; where only a consumption was declared, it counts that consumption instead. A consumption standing in for a missing withdrawal is smaller than the real withdrawal, so a total that includes one is shown as a lower bound (marked "≥", with a Lower bound label): the real figure is at least this. The same selection feeds every level below, so the traceability split, the basin exposure and the untracked remainder all add up to the headline total.
Changed on 2026-09-08. The total used to add withdrawal and consumption together wherever both were declared — a site withdrawing 100 m³ of which 40 m³ is consumed was reported at 140 m³, counting the same 40 m³ twice. It now reports 100 m³, and a perimeter that declared only consumption shows that consumption as a lower bound instead of showing no water at all.
Level 2 — Blue water by traceability
Blue water is the priority type under SBTN's freshwater targets framework. The total blue-water volume is split by how precisely it can be located — which determines whether basin-level exposure can be computed:
- Site-level — volume on an entity with precise coordinates (water declared on the entity itself, or commodity water in its direct operations); assignable to a specific basin (HydroBASINS level 05).
- Region / country — volume on an entity located only at zone, region or country level, or value-chain commodity water whose origin is a country; basin assignment is probabilistic.
- Untracked — volume with no geographic anchor: an entity with no usable location, or value-chain commodity water with no country of origin.
Traceability follows the platform's general localisation rules; basins use HydroBASINS level 05, consistent with the SBTN dataset.
Level 3A — Site & sub-catchment exposure
For volume that can be assigned to a basin, Darwin uses the SBTN Freshwater Quantity Target dataset (per-basin sustainable cap and overshoot) to report:
- the share of the volume in overshot basins (basins where the annual overshoot is greater than zero) versus non-overshot basins;
- the reduction target for overshot basins — the SBTN basin reduction target, expressed both as a percentage and in absolute m³.
Level 3B — Region / country exposure
For volume located only at region or country level (no direct basin assignment), the view reports:
- a water-stress risk ratio (WRI Aqueduct baseline water stress) for the region;
- a weighted-average reduction target and a maximum reduction target across the basins of that region.
Level 3C — Untracked water
For volume with no geographic anchor, this section highlights where improving traceability would yield the most basin-level insight:
- split by scope and by entity;
- top input points ranked by untracked blue-water volume — the highest-priority candidates for traceability improvement;
- top commodities by volume (SBTN water-flagging of commodities is planned for a later version).
Sources
- SBTN Freshwater Quantity Target dataset (Hogeboom et al., 2025, v2) — HydroBASINS level 05 sustainable caps and overshoots; basis for reduction targets.
- SBTN Freshwater Targets methodology (2023) — blue-water priority and science-based target-setting.
- WRI Aqueduct — baseline water stress for region/country-level risk.
- ecoinvent, Agribalyse — water consumption factors by activity.
Framework alignment
Water Focus V1 supports the Sustainable Water Balance outcome of the AWS (Alliance for Water Stewardship) International Water Stewardship Standard v3.0 — as a "gather & understand" and "commit & plan" enabler — and aligns with SBTN freshwater target-setting and TNFD freshwater metrics. HydroBASINS level 05 is consistent with the AWS catchment-delineation requirement for a corporate multi-site view.