Nestlé in society Creating Shared Value and meeting our commitments 2015

Nestlé in society:
Creating Shared Value
Nutrition, health
and wellness
Rural development
Water
Environmental
sustainability
Human rights
and compliance
Our
people
Water G4-DMA, G4-EN9, G4-EN11, G4-EN13, Overall G4-DMA, Local communities G4-DMA, G4-SO1
Water stewardship beyond
our factory gates
The sustainable supply of water of a sufficient quality and
quantity is essential for our factories, but with many other
stakeholders extracting water from, and returning water to, a
single catchment, the process is complex. We therefore
understand that, sometimes, we can make the greatest
difference to the health of a local water catchment by investing
in multi-stakeholder initiatives beyond our own operations.
Collective community action can help embed long-term
sustainable water use, so we aim to invest in shared initiatives
that help other catchment users to improve water stewardship
in selected sites.
Our objective
By 2016 – Define water stewardship initiatives and start
implementation in five high-priority locations.
Our management teams have identified five high-priority
locations where water stewardship initiatives are necessary.
Although progress varies, by the end of 2015, activities had
begun in all five locations; two examples are provided in the
case studies on this page and pages 142 and 161.
Implementing these programmes will improve the
sustainable management of shared water resources in the
water catchments where we operate, and strengthen
stakeholder perceptions of our local contribution.
Water stewardship in the
Kabini River basin, India
The Kabini river flows through the state of Karnataka, where
Nestlé’s Nanjangud factory is located. The river catchment is
7000 km 2 in area, 46% of which is agricultural land. In recent
years, low rainfall, combined with high water demand within
the catchment, has resulted in periods of insufficient water
supply for the sugarcane and rice farmers in the river basin.
To extend water stewardship efforts across the whole
catchment area, Nestlé India’s Nanjangud factory continues to
engage with local government departments. It also signed a
Memorandum of Understanding with AgSri, an agricultural
services company that developed ecologically sustainable
systems, such as the Sustainable Sugarcane Initiative (SSI) and
the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), to conduct pilot
projects. These trials will test the likelihood of rice and
sugarcane farmers adopting improved techniques for growing
water-intensive crops over a three-year period.
After a three-month delay, the project to implement the SSI
activities in the Kabini basin eventually began in September
2015. In the first quarter, this has involved:
• Identifying sugarcane and rice-growing villages in the Kabini
catchment, and selecting farmers for training;
• Collecting baseline information and establishing planting
protocols for SRI/SSI;
• Establishing greenhouses and an SSI nursery with a
capacity for 45 000 plantlets; and
• Preparing and distributing training materials in the
local language, and training around 110 sugarcane and
101 rice farmers.
We will continue to conduct training for rice and sugarcane
farmers across the entire river basin and the seedlings will be
sent out from the nursery to a selection of farms in early 2016.
Nestlé in society – Creating Shared Value and meeting our commitments 2015 148