The water constraint

Water is often treated as a public good. In many industries it is regarded as a free input with most large users paying far less than its true economic cost. But the real burden eventually falls back on companies: through higher treatment costs, tighter permitting, operational disruption, reputational risk, and the need to secure access to increasingly scarce supply. The fiction that water is “free” has shaped decades of industrial planning, steering capital into energy efficiency, automation and logistics as if water abundance were permanent. Read the full report to discover why water is becoming...