Nature positive plan for Yarra Valley Water

Project summary

Yarra Valley Water provides water and wastewater services to the city of Melbourne, Australia, and the surrounding area. To deliver on Yarra Valley Water’s purpose of supporting the health and wellbeing of its customers and the natural environment, Edge Impact developed a Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) aligned plan to drive this nature positive future.

The background

Yarra Valley Water’s purpose is “to support the health and wellbeing of our customers and create a brighter future for communities and the natural environment”, recognising the connection between the health of people and nature. This purpose, launched in 2020, was a revision of its historical responsibility to protect public and environmental health.

The challenge in meeting its purpose requires Yarra Valley Water to work to both minimise negative environmental impacts and restore nature. At the time of the project, Yarra Valley Water was also exploring what intergenerational equity could mean for the organisation and the water sector more broadly in Australia.

The challenges

The concept of nature positive, a science-based, measurable goal to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030 on a 2020 baseline and achieve full recovery by 2050, provides a framework to advance Yarra Valley Water’s current 2030 Strategy’s pillar of ‘leading for our environmental future’.

This pillar, which currently focuses on the outcomes of ‘beyond zero carbon’, ‘towards circular’ and ‘healthy ecosystems’, has enabled Yarra Valley Water to build a foundation of knowledge and projects from which it can then look at its nature positive pathways.

The solutions

To achieve this, Edge explored ways to articulate potential nature positive pathways and opportunities for the organisation and to understand its readiness to develop its first nature positive plan.

To identify potential nature positive pathways, the team conducted a comprehensive review of the business’s relevant research and data. In line with global best practice, this review was aligned to the TNFD’s ‘locate, evaluate, assess and prepare’ (LEAP) approach and benchmarked strategies and practices against local peers and global leaders, identifying strengths and areas for development. Through stakeholder interviews, insights were gathered into Yarra Valley Water’s aspirations, challenges and existing progress towards nature positive outcomes.

To explore intergenerational inequality, an opportunity assessment was conducted on the types of nature positive and intergenerational outcomes that Yarra Valley Water can directly control and influence, balancing the short-term needs of today with the longer-term needs of the future. To support these strategic discussions, Edge engaged with senior leadership, attending a strategic planning session to understand the intersections of nature positive and intergenerational equity, alongside Yarra Valley Water’s role in protecting and restoring nature for current and future generations.

The impact

These studies culminated in a Discovery Report, which provided a review of Yarra Valley Water’s current and potential relationship with nature, alongside opportunities to further assess its nature-related issues. This helped lay the foundations for Yarra Valley Water to potentially conduct credible, robust nature-related reporting in future, in line with TNFD recommendations.

As a result, Yarra Valley Water has made strides towards understanding what nature positive opportunities and pathways there are for the organisation, as well as opportunities to support intergenerational equity outcomes. It has laid the foundations for Yarra Valley Water to finalise its TNFD LEAP assessment in the future and develop a nature positive strategy and plan.

The next steps for Yarra Valley Water will be building understanding of its material dependencies and impacts and its nature-related risks and opportunities, while ensuring it has robust evidence to inform its nature positive strategy and plan.