What we do & milestones

CWR pioneered & built financial consensus on water risk valuation methodologies for listed companies using the coal mining & power sectors.

This led Dr. Ma Jun, the then Monetary Policy Commission of the People’s Bank of China to invite CWR to be a part of China’s Environmental Risk Assessment Task Force in 2016, which culminated in the first-ever book on environmental risk analysis for FIs authored by Dr. Ma in 2018 – CWR co-authored the water risk chapter alongside WRI & RMS.

Our work on water risk valuation for listed companies is also featured in the 2021 Palgrave Macmillan textbook “Water Risk & it’s Impact on the Financial Markets & Society” and is recommended reading in various disclosure framework guides.

Separately, to advance green finance, CWR is a founding member of the Hong Kong Green Finance Association, which was launched in 2019. For more on risks see here.

CWR is not only extensively cited by media from Bloomberg, The FT, The Economist, The SCMP, The Straits Times, CNN to Reuters but also by the IPCC AR6, ADB, OECD, IRENA, World Bank and various UN bodies amongst others. You can also watch us on Bloomberg TV here & here, or see shorts created on our reports by other networks here & here.

For example, the CWR report “Crude Awakening! Fast rising seas threaten seaborne oil & energy security – Spotlight: Japan & South Korea” was covered by 35+ media outlets upon publication. Coverage ranged from news sites, insurance post/journals as well as dedicated news sources for shipping, tanker operators, maritime trade, infrastructure to the World Economic Forum. We’re pleased that the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres cited this work in his speech at Davos in January 2025.

CWR was also cited by HSBC’s Co-CEO of APAC in his SCMP op-ed: “How HK can be a climate change superconnector” in August 2024, showing the wide reach of our work. To see all our reports that are being cited, see here.

We have deep access to the financial sector and institutional funds with over US$7trn AUM. Banks, asset managers, asset owners, insurers, sovereign wealth funds, rating agencies, regulators and so on engage CWR on the financial materiality of various water risks and how they can be valued to aid better decision making.

Investment banks have arranged global roadshows for CWR to engage their clients and investors have compensated CWR for one-on-ones to gain sectoral & regulatory insights on water risks. This is because we speak finance – half the team is from the financial industry.

We tap into this network to help our work, for example when creating the CWR APACCT 20 Index over 100 finance professionals from bank board directors to hedge fund partners happily provided input. And our unique access to the financial sector helps us drive change as it can add pressure on corporates & governments. Contact us!

Over the last decade more companies have begun to understand & take action on their freshwater & saltwater risks. CWR has been part of this, helping leading MNCs & global/regional listco’s across multiple sectors including fashion, hospitality, real estate and F&B. Advisory has ranged from water risk updates, water stewardship, China regulatory advice, to crucial risk assessments & stress testing which have led to the curation of holistic strategies and more.

For example, CWR’s stress testing of LINK Asset Management’s portfolio not only led to the disclosure in its annual report but also resulted in a case study for regional actors in “APREA ESG Guidebook for Real Assets in Asia Pacific”.

We’ve also found advisory utility with the financial sector. For example, our work on water risks in China’s coal sector led to sell downs in coal stocks back in 2013-14 as asset managers (AMs) were able to understand the financial materiality of the risks. Today, we are still followed by AMs managing trillions of dollars.

Separately, we’ve also been approached by sovereign wealth funds and AMs for research and advice on water and/or climate risks facing major investments in their portfolio. As this is commissioned work, we are not able to disclose all the companies/ FIs we have helped. If you’d like to engage us on how to rethink climate and water risks for resilience contact us.

We are helping various global tech, F&B & other companies become water neutral or water positive, a growing trend in the corporate water space. These companies have set targets and are now in the implementing stage. This trend is nascent but growing in Asia.

This is because companies & their supply chains are one of the biggest water users & polluters. Companies reach out to CWR because we’ve been unpacking these material risks for businesses & supply chains since 2011. These risks need to be addressed – in 2024, CDP reported potential financial impacts of $594 billion in corporate water-related risks.

So, in addition to helping various companies, MNCs & listco’s across sectors with their water stewardship journey, we’ve also advised companies on risk mitigation & adaptation strategies – see Strategy Curation for more.

The Water Leaders Interview Series is a collaboration between CWR and Singapore International Water Week (SIWW), which is organised by Singapore’s national water agency, PUB. The purpose of the jointly produced interview videos was to hear directly from global water CEOs, GMs of water authorities, development banks and IPCC Co-Chairs. Topics discussed ranged from key challenges, emerging trends, game changing innovations, areas needing more collaboration like transformative adaptation and how climate change is impacting their operations.

The interviews took place over 2 years and span 19 water leaders. In the first instalment in 2022, CWR interviewed 13 leaders including IPCC Working Group II Co-Chair, Asian Development Bank, World Bank, Manila Water Company, Apo Agua Infrastructura Inc., VCS Denmark, Scottish Water, SAUR Group, Greater Western Water, RSK Group, Southern Nevada Water Authority, New York City Economic Development Corporation and the International Water Association. Watch them here.

In the second instalment in 2023, CWR interviewed a further 6 leaders including award winning Indah Water Konsortium Sdn Bhd, Department for Environment and Water for the Government of South Australia, Hong Kong’s Water Supply Department, NEOM, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and NYC Department of Environmental Protection. Watch them here.

We pride ourselves on being a trusted partner for science by building bridges from science to business and finance communities as well as policy. For example, back in 2011 when the World Resources Institute’s (WRI) Aqueduct was in its infancy, we worked closely with its development team and helped “mainstream” its use with global financial institutions, MNCs and global brands. Now, it is widely used.

As you can see from our wide range of partners as well as contributors, we have deep access to leading experts and institutions in the fields of climate change, water resources, and environment. This includes collaborations with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China’s national research body for science and technology. This global reach have enabled us to tap into cutting-edge research and insights.

One such space with fast-evolving science is the cryosphere which is melting at unimaginable rates unleashing fast rising seas as well as glacier losses in our Himalayan Water Towers. Here, we partner with the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI) to help form a bridge from science & policy to business & finance. At COP29, we presented at the Cryosphere Pavilion on business impacts of ice losses from Mountains (freshwater losses) to the Ocean (sea level rise) in Asia.

Notably, we were the only ones there to address this critical issue from a business & financial perspective. This was also the case in the Malaysia Pavilion in Baku, where ASEAN stood on melting ice to rising seas was discussed; Malaysia is the ASEAN chair for 2025. As 2025 is the International Year of Glacier Preservation, we will be working to spotlight these “hidden” ice risks – if you are interested in this – contact us.

Finally, these partnerships, have not only enriched our work but also positioned us as a respected party and trusted contributor to high-impact initiatives such as being invited to be a contributing author to the Water Chapter in the latest IPCC report: Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation & Vulnerabilities as well as Nature Springer books and top environmental policy journals in China. The scientific community also cites our work – most prominently in the Asia Chapter of the IPCC AR6.

The economy runs on water so water risks will impact the economy. However, these macro impacts were not valued. We were the first to explore the need to wed economic growth with the management of water resources, which we termed waternomics. We introduced this concept in a 2015 HSBC report and again in the 2016 G20 magazine when China hosted the G20.

At the time, CWR was 5 years old and we were truly honoured to have been selected out of thousands to contribute to this G20 issue which had welcome messages from both President Xi Jinping and President Barack Obama; other authors included Christine Lagarde, Ban Ki-Moon and Anthony Fauci.

CWR then collaborated with China’s Foreign Environmental Cooperation Center of the Ministry of Ecology & Environment to apply waternomics to the Yangtze River and partnered with the Chinese Academy of Science to expand the application of waternomics to 10 major rivers that flow to 16 countries in Asia. For the first time ever, GDP generated in major river basins were assessed – this treatment of rivers as assets led credit rating agencies to realise that basin risks can impact sovereign risk ratings. This report was cited in the IPCC AR6, amongst others.

5 years after we coined the term waternomics, the topic makes it to the world stage. Waternomics is a chapter in a Springer Nature book “Water Security Under Climate Change” curated by global water experts to help policymakers design effective action. This book was launched at Glasgow COP26 by Scotland’s Minister of Net Zero.

See more details on our waternomics journey here.

Given fast rising seas, CWR created the CWR APACCT 20 Index to benchmark coastal threats across 20 major APAC cities from Tokyo to Sydney with the help of 100+ finance professionals in 2020.

We were also the first to value sovereign risk from coastal threats, which led to deep discussion with sovereign credit rating agencies.

Our coastal threat benchmarking & valuation methodologies are now showcased in prestigious textbooks – see 2021 Palgrave Macmillan textbook “Water Risk & it’s Impact on the Financial Markets & Society – New Developments in Risk Assessment & Management”; and again in 2023 “Water Risk Modeling – Developing Risk-Return Management Techniques in Finance and Beyond” textbook; a German edition was released in 2024. See Valuation & Benchmarking for more.

Current stress testing approaches often underestimate sea level rise risks because of a time frame that is too short, and the level of sea level rise used is too low. To address this, we published a report with a 3-step guide to stress testing right in 2022. This report also explains the “triple whammy” concentrated risks for over US$7.9trn of loan books of 17 Asian banks from fast rising seas.

After vigorous engagement with institutional investors, CWR & The Asia Investor Group on Climate Change (AIGCC) released an open letter urging the regions’ banks to overhaul their climate stress tests for escalating coastal threats as banks’ stress tests should be enhanced to keep up with the latest science.

We also carried out one-on-one engagements on stress testing with some banks mentioned in the report with AIGCC plus others in China with ARE.

Our access to banks were at C-suite levels with regional Chief Risk Officers in some cases. We also dialogued with financial regulators from various countries. For more see Stress Testing.

The ICT (Info & Communication Tech) sector is thirsty & power hungry. In Asia, many data centres are run on coal-fired power. Global ICT emissions are similar to that of shipping and are set to balloon with AI, yet ICT is not a transition sector in Asia. So in 2023 we kickstarted this conversation with our China ICT report. We also highlighted ICT’s thirsty nature – one ChatGPT conversation can suck up half of litre of water!

Besides media coverage which was wide ranging (from The Economist, The SCMP, Nikkei Asia, The Times to Tech Times) the reports were also cited by banks like JP Morgan. We partnered with BNP Paribas, the HKGFA (Hong Kong Green Finance Association), PRI, Syntao and Tencent to co-host events, closed door roundtable discussions and seminars. We also conducted countless one-on-ones – all in all we engaged over 1,000 finance professionals.

Within a year of intense engagement, the ICT sector will now be included in Hong Kong’s green taxonomy – by 2025 Hong Kong’s Green and Sustainable Finance Cross-Agency Steering Group co-chaired by the SFC and HKMA has a transition finance workstream and is developing transition finance sectoral principles with ICT identified as the pilot sector. We will therefore continue to engage on this front – see Emerging Green Finance Sectors.

As fashion is extremely dirty, thirsty & wasteful and largely Made in China, we’ve pushed conversations to fast-track its clean up & transition to more circular ways since our launch in 2011. This includes reports to expose sector risks with global banks CLSA (2013) and HSBC (2015). One of these led the fashion industry to nominate CWR as a finalist for the Global Leadership Award in Sustainable Apparel (GLASA) in 2015.

We’ve also worked extensively with the sector itself to close gaps for clean & circular fashion. Here, our report that surveyed 85 Chinese textile manufacturers inspired the development of a wastewater tool. We’ve also sat on the council that helped design the Business of Fashion’s Sustainability Index.

Along with the above, CWR has and continues to do various engagements and speaking events with global banks, investors, leading fashion brands and more on the fashion sector. This has included being flown to present at a European fashion brand’s HQ in Paris, investor roadshows in Guangzhou, leading round tables in Taihu Lake & more.

Given fashion’s material impact on climate change and that fashion is frolicking in oil, making dirty thirsty fashion circular is ever pressing. Is there room for fast fashion in a Beautiful China? Access our intel by sector.

For over a decade, we have been analyzing the complex and interconnected risks within the water energy climate (WEC) nexus. Our journey began with producing tailored reports for leading financial institutions such as HSBC and CLSA, as well as publishing our inaugural CWR tome, “Towards a Water & Energy Secure China“.

Building on this foundation, we collaborated with IRENA on the policy brief “Water Use in China’s Power Sector: Impact of Renewables and Cooling Technologies to 2030”. Released in early 2016, this CWR-IRENA policy brief showed significant “double savings” for both water & carbon emissions by transitioning to renewables, providing critical insights for policy & investment decisions.

The findings were used by IRENA in prep meetings in Beijing for the Clean Energy Ministerial gathering of 24 energy ministers in the US (CEM7) to drive the global transition. China’s 13FYP on Renewable Energy Development released later that year noted that renewables expansion in China can save around 3.6 billion cubic metres of water – we like to believe that CWR played a part in this mindset shift. For at-a-glance insights into China’s water energy climate nexus – check out our Big Picture.

As climate risks intensify from faster rising seas, drying rivers to more extreme weather events, we’ve expanded our research into their impact on energy & power security. Our reports, “No River, No Power” and “Coastal Blackout,” reveal how these risks could strand significant power generation assets, threatening energy & economic security. Plus, oil no longer ensures energy security but threatens it, as fast rising seas could submerge top global oil ports. This shift prompted our report, “Crude Awakening,” which explores the national energy security associated with reliance on oil – this was widely cited by the media; even the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres referenced it.

We aim to extend this rethink of energy security from North Asia to ASEAN. If you’re interested in collaborating or want more insights, contact us.

When we started back in 2011, daunting was an understatement – can we help clean up China’s waterways? How can we foster responsible use of water by SOEs? Will corporates & the financial sector worry enough about water risks to account for them? Will stakeholders pay attention to our recommendations?

After deploying multiple change strategies we have managed to gained traction. In China, on the finance side, we sat on its Environmental Risk Assessment Task Force, presented at the PBOC, and  participated at various international forums hosted by ICBC & the Green Finance Committee of China where we had the chance to engage with the Bank of England & the Bundesbank on systemic shocks to the financial system from macro water risks in a changing climate.

In 2015, we were part of MEP-FECO’s “International Clean Water Partnership Initiative” and collaborated with them expand waternomic research for the Yangtze River through to 2020 – by that time, the MEP had become the MEE (Ministry of Ecology & Environment) – see the waternomics milestone or check out our whole waternomics journey.

The uniqueness of our work in unsiloing water & finance also attracted partnership with China’s national think tank – the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Our collaboration with CAS’ Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research (which leads its water research) started in 2016 and is still going strong today – watch this space as we will soon publish a report together in 2025!

Our deep knowledge of China’s waterscape also led to a strong following from finance & business communities. The fact that they are still following our newsletters and continuing to engage with us after all these years is testament to our access and insights into China’s water risks & opportunities – they wouldn’t have made time to engage if we’d called the wrong trends.

We’ve been keeping C-suites, heads of departments and senior management of leading corporates and financial institutions abreast of fast-evolving climate risks since launch. Often time these keynote intel briefings, seminars, roundtables or idea labs are internal or arranged for their top clients in close-door formats.

While we cannot discuss these in detail, we can say that we have prepared materials for board meetings, CEO presentations, investment decisions as well as delivered keynotes in regional EXCOM meetings with country heads. Banks have even flown us to New York to deliver future trends on water & climate risks and we’ve also been included in high-level off-sites to discuss global equity strategies for large asset managers in Tokyo.

Interactive learning is important as are idea labs as we may not have solutions to many climate challenges present today. Besides several closed door ideas lab on how to defend cities against rising seas, we also held an invite-only lab on “Waterproofing Asia” upon the release of our report “No Water, No Growth” to help Asian leaders, business elites, top financiers and entrepreneurs get on top of Asia’s urgent water risks. The lab was joined by some of the world’s top experts in water and mountain development including ICIMOD, CAS, WRI, AWS as well as other water gurus who advise China & India on their national water challenges.

In 2024, we also launched CWR pub quiz nights for our key stakeholders from finance to business – the inaugural event in HK was so popular that we also held one in Singapore. This then led to the first ever Inter-Chamber of Commerce ESG Night in Hong Kong – over 100 attended across the American, Australian, Belgium-Luxembourg, Canadian, Dutch, German, Indonesian, Malaysian,  Singapore, Swiss and Swedish Chambers.

See more in Training for the Future. Or contact us if you would like us to curate a session for you.

We were the first to map the impacts of IPCC’s “cannot be ruled out” multi-metre sea level rise (SLR) scenario for Hong Kong showing that it was just as vulnerable to rising seas as small island nations. Our 8 factsheets survival guide distilled from stress tests of 195,000+ assets in the SAR caught the eye of academia, the government, real estate developers, the stock exchange, banks and insurers as well as the media. The SCMP even produced a short documentary on coastal threats featuring CWR alongside the IPCC Chairman, Hoesung Lee.

Dialogues ensued with engineering firms, Institution of Civil Engineers, various government departments, planning associations, universities, corporates and banks. The topic was firmly tabled. We even collaborated with the Hong Kong Jockey Club Museum of Climate Change on a sea level rise exhibition and worked with corporate leaders like LINK Asset Management to stress test their HK & GBA assets for coastal threats, the results of which were disclosed in its 2021-2022 Annual Report.

We started this push to Re-IMAGINE HK to prepare it for fast rising seas in 2021 and by 2023 through extensive close door engagement with input from multiple parties, we’re pleased to see the Real Estate Development Association (REDA) & the Hong Kong Federation of Insurers (HKFI) directly engage on city-wide adaptation plans with the government. Work with us to build resilience.

To emote climate change beyond data science, we partnered with the HK Ballet and M+ to explore climate change challenges through culture & arts. Our work inspired choreographers to create 4 short dances addressing various climate emergencies which were performed at the opening of M+ in 2021. These were later expanded to eight short dances showcased in a 2022 online festival of Live Art on Beyond Carbon from two perspectives: Mortal Ignorance & Human Trace. The dances were set against the monumental architecture of the Herzog & de Meuron–designed M+ building.

There was also a curated behind-the-scenes discussion between CWR, the Artistic Director of Hong Kong Ballet and M+ Deputy Director, Curatorial & Chief Curator to unpack the background of the collaboration and discuss the responsibility cultural institutions have to bring public attention to critical issues. Together with HK Ballet, we also curated parent-child workshops to inspire children to take meaningful climate action through science and ballet dance.

This unusual collaboration was a powerful learning journey for all involved – “climate ballet” previously unknown is now known and the message through dance was so effectively conveyed that a global investment bank used it as a centerpiece for its climate and sustainability conference.

Our dance with the art world also led M+ to invite us to participate in the 2023 Prada Frames at M+ during Hong Kong Art Week to discuss the role of the world’s seas and oceans through the lenses of art, design and science. There, we showcased flood maps of Hong Kong as well as simple habit tweaks to fight climate change. We hope this inspires the art world & fashion industry to create art to emote future risks and catalyse societal change. For more on risks see here.

Rare earths – a critical group of 17 elements – are needed in nearly every part of modern & green tech from smartphones to speakers and wind turbines to EVs and more. Yet, their extraction & processing are far from clean and green. As a significant chunk of rare earths come from China, we spotlighted these overlooked risks with our report, “Rare Earths: Shades of Grey – Can China continue to fuel our global clean & smart future?” in 2016. This was both in English & Chinese.

Besides wide media coverage, the report also kickstarted important conversations and interest on the topic. Institutional investors highlighted our report in the 2016 PRI in person meeting which led to the tabling of rare earths as an emerging risk alongside cybersecurity and antibiotics.

The report also inspired a deep dive with a bank into the use of rare earths and other CRMs (critical raw minerals) in smartphones the following year. This report – “Toxic Phones” was well received by institutional investors leading to an APAC road show. This report was also used by various stakeholders to push smartphone brands towards more rare earth recycling and a circular economy and by September 2019, Apple announced that it will use recycle rare earths in the “Taptic Engine” of its devices, a good first step.

The mining industry also took notice inviting us to speak at the 16th International Rare Earth Conference in 2019 plus site visits to processing plants; it was the first time the rare earth conference invited an NGO to present. Three years after starting the conversation, we still continued to enjoy media coverage in 2019 with Yale Environment 360 to Fortune citing CWR in their reporting on rare earths & future tech – SCMP even produced interactive graphics from CWR’s work.

Fostering this was our first mission. The task was daunting – rivers ran red/blue with textile dyes, cancer villages were abound and 300mn people in China did not have access to safe drinking water when we started. Today, safe drinking water issues are resolved and we’d like to think that our work unpacking these challenges helped facilitate this – from countless reviews, opinions & interviews on the topic to our collaborative series of investigative reports with China Dialogue on China’s long march to safe drinking water.

We also tried to stymie the the rise of bottled water especially bottling in the source region of the Himalayas with a bottled water report which led to deep coverage within China to The Guardian. More importantly, we worked to rein in agricultural & industrial pollution with our partner IPE – working with brands to understand China’s water challenges so that they rein in pollution as well as promote efficiency across 6 sectors. For an idea of what we’ve done – check out the Fashion & Rare Earth milestones.

We also helped investors’ understand the value of IPE’s pollution database so that they too could push for a cleaner supply chain in China. Today, IPE’s interactive Blue Map Database plays an invaluable role to individuals, corporates & institutional investors in interactive reporting, monitoring & understanding of water pollution. Ma Jun, the founder of IPE still sits on our advisory panel today.

On the policy side, we were part of MEP-FECO’s “International Clean Water Partnership Initiative” and worked to highlight pollution carried by rivers – moving industry westward toward inland provinces didn’t work. The campaign to clean up China’s rivers is well underway and we are coming up to a decade since the implementation of the Water Ten Plan. With over a million river chiefs its not just blue skies but clear surface waters are within China’s grasp.

However, we can’t rest on our laurels as sizeable Grade V groundwater pollution still persists and there are emerging pollutants to contend with such as antibiotics, microplastics and endocrine disrupters.

Are corporates disclosing data? Is it comparable? And importantly, is it decision-relevant? We have been working to improve these in China and beyond. In China we have worked with our partner Syntao to push for more environmental disclosure to match rising risks.

Globally, we have worked with CDP since the early days of water disclosure more than a decade ago and since its inception, we sat on the CDP Water Advisory Committee – this has since been dissolved. However, we continue to support CDP to evolve its disclosure framework by sitting on its Disclosure Framework Advisory Group. Recently, we sat on a Steering Committee to keep disclosure relevant resulting in a 2023 report “Shaping High-Quality Mandatory Disclosure”.

We’re also a part of the Water Technical Working Group for the Climate Disclosure Standards Board – now IFRS as well as the Practitioners Advisory Group on Freshwater for the Science Based Targets Network. These have resulted in technical guides to inform the ISSB standards – access these guides here – our various reports on valuation and benchmarking are recommended reading in these.

We’ve come far – from hardly any disclosure to upcoming mandatory disclosure of the ISSB standards. However, comparability and relevance issues still exist and we will continue to highlight these to improve regulations.

Getting relevant, reliable & accurate information has never been easy and in today’s environment it’s even more difficult. But it’s absolutely critical as we are making decisions & allocating resources today for water & climate tomorrow. That crucial information is what we’ve been delivering with the monthly CWR newsletter.

We’ve published this monthly newsletter since our launch in October 2011. As of the start of 2025, that is more than 13 years and 156 newsletters on cutting edge water and related topics from us as well as a wide range of 500+ contributors. Tap into this resource now – access our newsletter archives.

We don’t shy away from the daunting hard facts but it’s not all doom & gloom with innovations & solutions showcased too. This unique combination and highly relevant topics have led to a wide and loyal following of 3,000+ subscribers consisting of C-suite leaders, leading academia, water experts, sustainable heads and more. Don’t miss out, subscribe now! Or if you want to contribute, contact us.