trends and future of sustainable development - TransEco

security as its resources are being grabbed by the faster developing economies. The global marketscannot solve the water crisis alone due to this power asymmetry and due to the still prevailingexternalization of underlying resource fundamentals in the complex system. Accordingly, the powerfulactors of the global agro-food value chains and networks need to be brought under greater stakeholderscrutiny in global governance setting in order to ensure water security ranging from local to global level.General awareness raising on their position is needed among the other actors in the value chains andamong the governmental and non-governmental actors in their wider network, who they do stillultimately depend on.Through their major share of the international virtual water 'flows', both the transnationalcorporations and the state-led enterprises will likely gain from realising their role as global watermanagers besides food suppliers and will have to adopt water security as their strategic interest as itultimately also underlies their license to operate. Even if the corporations kept resisting their role inglobal water security, pressure for more adequate water reporting and accountability will grow in thefuture from the agro-food value chains and networks the corporations participate in. How they respondto this pressure will influence investor and buyer decisions. Foreign direct investment in land and waterhas already aroused such public outcries for example in Madagascar and Philippines that they have leadto cancellation of leasing agreements (Brown 2011; World Bank 2010). The foreign investors wouldbenefit themselves from clearer international rules of the game that would ensure shared benefits andwater and food security to the locals too.To conclude, the global water security challenge cannot be solved without the involvement of thecurrently most powerful actors in global agro-food value chains and networks. Their practices andstrategies deserve stark criticism, but the urgency to solve the complex global crises cannot wait foroverthrowing the global capitalist system even though the unsustainability of its imperfect marketstructure has lead to the crises themselves. Understanding of the interdependency of the differentstakeholders on the shared resources could ultimately force to governance interaction. Corporate watermanagement - like any other form of corporate environmental management - is not just a set ofunilateral corporate practices. Eventually it is a political response to stakeholder pressure over watersecurity, vertically in the value chains and horizontally in the wider network governance setting. Asentities important to global economy whose whole functionality and license to operate may be at risk dueto resource depletion and whose “technological power” could also contribute to more sustainablemanagement reform, corporations could be seen as ”regime actors of their own right” (Levy and Newell2002; Falkner 2004). On the material level the corporations could address resource depletion problemssuch as water scarcity decreasing their water risks and simultaneously benefit from access to premiummarkets with their more sustainable products. On the organisational level the corporations could buildup alliances with other stakeholders and contribute to the overall horizontal governance architecture andpress other members of the vertical chains and networks to adopt more sustainable practices. On theideational level corporate discourse could create win-win situation for both their business interests andother stakeholders influencing the whole framework for interaction (after Newell and Levy 2006; Gereffiet al. 2005; Henderson et al. 2002.)Global standards as a result of roundtable governance interaction are needed for more sustainablewater governance in agro-food supply chains and networks. They could include obligation totransnational corporations to also collaborate more with the water management institutions in their167