Water risk: too much, too little, too dirty.
Three simple framings for a complex exposure that already sits on most corporate balance sheets.
Water risk is often discussed as a single thing. It is more useful to break it into three: too much water, too little water, and water that is too dirty. Each one connects to different sites, different sectors and different parts of the balance sheet.
Too much water is acute. It looks like floods, surface water on sites, blocked logistics corridors, insurance claims and downtime. Too little water is chronic. It looks like abstraction limits, production constraints, supply chain pressure and stranded capacity in water-intensive operations.
Too dirty is the one most often under-priced. It looks like compliance costs, treatment investment, reputational pressure and limits on growth in places where receiving waters cannot take more load.
Nature can reduce all three. Restored catchments slow and store water. Reconnected floodplains absorb peak flows. Wetlands and woodlands improve water quality before it reaches treatment works. The opportunity is to pay for those outcomes over time, and to treat the resulting assets as part of resilience infrastructure rather than as charitable contributions.