Next-generation water policy for businesses and government

McKinsey Quarterly (Briscoe, Registration Req'd) - The solution to water scarcity, in part, will come from new technologies for better managing water as a resource. But to make these technologies more effective, business and policy leaders will need to work more closely to implement them.

Water insecurity looms as one of the great challenges of the 21st century, and it is one that policy makers and business leaders must face together. Policy makers recognize that certain technologies being developed by leading companies are critical tools for effectively managing scarce water supplies. But business leaders must do more to help shape the understanding of how good policies make it possible for technologies to be productive—and how ineffective ones do the reverse.

Public-sector leaders and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have long dominated the debate on water policy, but within the last five years, a growing number of progressive private-sector companies have also started to lend their perspectives on how best to effectively manage water. These companies have begun by paying much more attention to the water environment in which they function. As they develop a new generation of water-related technologies, they also increasingly influence a new generation of public policies that stimulate the development and use of these technologies. Here is how a number of them are engaging along both of these dimensions.